Part of a burial larnax

A long side of a Mycenaen burial larnax. Larnakes were four-sided clay coffins set on legs and covered by a lid. Their sides bore painted decoration, usually processions of mourners or, more rarely, scenes of burial, marching warriors, mythical creatures, etc. Clay larnakes of this type have been brought to light in the Mycenaean cemetery of Tanagra in Boeotia. It is possible that this fragment come from Tanagra, too; for, apart from that site, the custom of larnax-burial was virtually unknown on the Greek Mainland, by contrast to Crete, where it was common practice already from the Middle Minoan period. Nonetheless, the iconography of the Tanagra larnakes is purely Mycenaean in style and their thematic repertoire differs from that of the corresponding Minoan examples. The depictions on the Tanagra larnakes are extremely useful for the study of Mycenaean mortuary customs. This particular larnax preserves traces of a procession of mourners. The women wear the typical Mycenaean garment and headdress, known from frescoes and sealstones. All figures have the hands raised above the head, in an expression of lamentation that is also encountered much later on Attic funerary vases of the Geometric period. In iconography, the lament is associated with the "prothesis" (the lying in state of the dead), which precedes the "ekphora" (the transfer of the corpse to the grave).