Word: sarcophagi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
George VI had the feelings of a good trade unionist toward fellow monarchs, even dead ones, and at his own expense ordered the dilapidated sarcophagi of the three Stuart pretenders in the crypt of St. Peter's in Rome to be restored. When the time came for him to die, all men knew it. London might be a shambles, but its chief resident had come through it all with dignity and slim-waisted aplomb. At the end of his reign there were probably more supralapsarians than republicans in the country. He died, beloved within his Commonwealth of Nations...
...Appia Antica, right next door to the place where the Empress Poppaea used to take her daily bath in the milk of 300 asses. They have planted 300 trees on the grounds, laid out broad English lawns, strewn the area with ancient paving stones and 3rd century sarcophagi. As she surveys these domestic comforts (which she can en joy. only on weekends), Gina sighs, not quite convincingly: "I hope that the producers next year will give me time to do a baby...
...carvings of workaday subjects were both vigorous and elaborate. The dean of Renaissance art experts, Bernard Berenson, was instantly reminded, when he first saw them, of "the Early Christian sarcophagi that line the grand staircase of the Lateran Museum in Rome. The same stumpy, neckless bodies, with disproportionately big heads of late antique shape, the same crowding, the same . . . distribution of light and shade...
Withered Roses. When the stone lids of the sarcophagi were slid off and the pinewood caskets opened, the assembled scientists made an astonishing discovery: 24 of the bodies were completely mummified and in an excellent state of preservation; other bodies, although skeletons, were still held together by their ligaments. How were the bodies preserved? The experts disagreed. Some attributed the mummification to the climate, others to some unknown process of embalming, probably of Moorish or perhaps even Egyptian origin. The nuns had a simpler explanation. Said Sister Blanca: "They were all saints. Their bodies could not decay...
There were other revelations, said the enthusiastic Spaniards. Bobbin lace, formerly thought to have been unknown before the 16th Century, was found in the tombs, as was cloth from China. Until the opening of the Las Huelgas sarcophagi, Spanish historians had not been absolutely sure whether Enrique I of Castile died from a blow on the head at Palencia in 1217, or from natural causes. Enrique's skull, found in the tomb, confirmed the theory of violent death; it also showed what archeologists interpreted as advanced techniques of trepanation, demonstrating a medieval knowledge of surgery hitherto unsuspected...