Marmi riscolpiti: da rilievo funerario tardo-classico a ritratto tolemaico

Preserved in the warehouses of the Regional Archaeological Museum “Paolo Orsi” Syracuse is a, very fragmentary, male head of white marble, probably Pentelic, showing clear signs of reworking. In the primary stage the head belonged to a gravestone of Attic type in a pseudo-architectural structure, datable to the middle decades of the fourth century B.C. The transformation from a funerary relief to a portrait-head occurred reworking parts and adding specific attributes (royal insignia): two small bull horns, the mitra on the forehead and a radiant diadem. The accumulation of the three attributes refers to the iconographic context of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and in particular recalls the portraits of Ptolemy III Euergetes, suggesting a chronology of reuse at the height of relations between Syracuse and Egypt: in the middle decades of the reign of Hiero II.