Thematic articles

Funerary murals from the Roman hypogeum at Tomis-Constanta

Archaeological excavations in the Dobrogea area (Tomis, Durostorum, Callatis, Halmyris, Ostrov, etc.) have brought to light numerous necropolis that housed, in addition to other types of cremation or burial tombs, also hypogeum-type burial chambers. These Roman tombs and underground Roman constructions preserved ritual inventories confirming the culture of the western Pontic province - Scythia Minor - in the late Romano-Byzantine period.

Archaeological and historical examination, including the decorations of the hypogeum tombs of Tomis - Constanta, has provided a framework for their classification within the ensemble of Roman paintings. In this way, specific technical and artistic aspects are emphasized, as well as particularities that differentiate the type of construction and funerary painting in Tomis from the Roman ones in the Mediterranean area, highlighting technical and iconographic variants of the mural decorations.

Similar funerary spaces, which preserve valuable artistic components, are the Paleochristian cemeteries in Rome, the catacombs, from the early Roman Empire. With earlier examples from the pagan period of underground or above-ground burial chambers, Christians decorated burial spaces on the model of dwellings. Artists also painted Roman burial hypogeums, supplementing the decorative repertoire from a wide variety of sources, but retaining many symbols from earlier periods of syncretic salvage beliefs. Thus, the early Christian buildings avoided the representation of pagan mythological deities, which were adapted over time, however, because of their meaning, which was in line with the concepts of the new ^faith1.

These sepulchral constructions, made of mortar, stone and brick, have their typological origins in earlier tombs, which also appear in Dobrogea since the ^Hellenistic period2.

Roman funerary constructions

In the area of Tomis, in the areas of the ancient known necropolis, three such hypogea were discovered, dated according to the inventories found in situ as being from the 4th century^BC3 The differences in the architecture of these hypogeum-type burial chambers are not major, consisting in the dimensions of the plan and implicitly of the volume of the construction. All of them were found below the present level of the present level of the trampling and do not show a foundation of walls. They are built of stone and brick, with different mortar composition variants in the masonry and in the preparation of the paint supporting layer. There are traces of dromos access ways, more or less transformed over time. The names given to these hypogeums are intended to indicate the most striking typological or stylistic features preserved in their interior decoration: 'crypt of the basilica', 'with banquet', 'with orant'.