Remarks
The Keramikos Cemetery, the largest in Athens, located outside the ancient city, takes its name from the clay (keramos) used to make funerary vases. From the 6C B.C. the tombs were decorated with stelae and statues which reached their greatest splendour in the century of Pericles. Excavations begun in 1863 led to splendid discoveries, exhibited in the National Museum; a few statues and stelae are still in place. The southern path leads to the best preserved part of the cemetery: tombs from 4C B.C. to 1C A.D. You enter by the western route, lined with tombs from the 4C B.C. erected by rich Athenian families with, notably, a family tomb with a bas-relief (moulding) of a fighting horseman (Dexileos). Further on you will distinguish a group of three monuments of a family of Herakle, in Pont-Euxin. The tomb of the treasurer Dionysos is recognisable by the bull placed on a pillar; that of the archon Lysimachides and his family is surmounted by a dog. Also note the famous stela of Hegeso, the original figure of which is in the National Museum; that of Antidosis, which was painted, and the lecythus of Aristomachos.