Pagan Roman Ivory from AD 400

Now in the British Museum, this ivory panel shows the pagan deification of a dead Roman. He is in an elephant drawn carriage - note the food for the elephant as well as the goads! Immediately above is the funeral pyre, from which a god drives towards heaven in a chariot, accompanied by two eagles, one of which represents the soul of the dead man.

On the left of an arc with the signs of the Zodiac and the sun-god, the deceased is borne upwards by two genii and is greeted by five ancestors.

The dead man may be the ultra rich Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, who was Prefect of Rome 384-5, and who died in 402.

The monograph at the top says SYMMACHORUM of the Symmachi Family, who held onto their pagan aristocratic traditions as long as they could in a Rome that had long since ceased to be the Imperial Capital.

This is one of the last pagan commissions and is indeed a trace of past Empire - the pagan Empire of Rome.