Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

IX] Mound and Gone 405
commemorative stele stands on a high stepped basis
behind it is a large egg-shaped grave-mound.
Apparently
It is tempting to see in the stele a survival or transformation
of the surmounting cone, but the vase-painting in Fig. 117 1 forbids
Fig. 117.
this supposition. When a vase-painter wanted to draw a cone he
was well able to do so. It is not clear from the drawing whether
the cone stood by the side of the mound or passed through it
emerging into sight at the top, but in any case we have a well-
defined cone not a stele. The intent is therefore magical not
commemorative, though as we saw in considering the Intichiuma
ceremonies the two are to the primitive mind not wholly sundered 2 .
The sceptical reader will probably by this time demand a plain
answer to a long-suppressed question. By collecting and com-
bining scattered evidence, literary and monumental, it has been
made possible and indeed practically certain that the omphalos
was a cone surmounting a grave. We have further had abundant
evidence that cones did surmount graves. Well and good. But
such monuments, we found, were called the ' Tomb of Tantalos
or ' Finger's Tomb.' Can we point to any grave-mound surmounted
by a cone which we can fairly associate with an omphalos ? Happily
1 From an Athenian white lekythos in the possession of Mr Cook, by whose
most kind permission it is figured here. The drawing was made for me by
Mrs Hugh Stewart.
2 Supra, p. 124.
'