Zebedee wrote:
Amphipolis is just unique in so many ways.
.....as is every tomb find!
We have caryatids where you wonder whether we're looking to Athens or, say, Lycia (Tomb of Perikles) for some sort of reference. They're very obviously not the female figures of Sveshtari, which have more in common with depictions of a nature goddess.
A caryatid [ Greek: Καρυάτις, plural: Καρυάτιδες] is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting a building etc and became a common architectural feature right through the middle eastern and Mediterranean worlds. They originate in the Peloponnese, according to Greek lore, but are also found in Phoenicia, and the term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", which had a famous temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis in her aspect of Artemis Karyatis: "
As Karyatis she rejoiced in the dances of the nut-tree village of Karyai, ( one of the six villages originally making up Sparta)
those Karyatides, who in their ecstatic round-dance carried on their heads baskets of live reeds, as if they were dancing plants". [Kerenyi: Gods of the Greeks]
Some of the earliest known examples were found dating to around the 6th century BC at Delphi, but their use as supports in the form of women can be traced back even earlier, to ritual basins, ivory mirror handles from Phoenicia, and on tripods and draped figures from archaic Greece.
In a tomb context, they served the same function as either real or figurative supports of the 'canopy'/ceiling above. At the time Amphipolis was constructed, they are seen in tombs all over the 'Oikomene', even as far west as Etruria, (e.g. the tomb of Typhon, which has winged ‘vegetal’ type caryatids, and caryatids are common enough too in Thracian tombs. Interestingly, they are not generally found in Macedonian tombs, and the only Macedonian example I know of is a small caryatid which decorates the throne found in the ‘Tomb of Eurydike’ at Vergina. It is perhaps a little unfair to compare the Kasta examples with those of Sveshtari, a tomb likely built in this era for a King of the Getai, Dromichartes. The idea is the same, but Sveshtari is in the far North East of Thrace, just 30 km from the Danube and over 400 km north of Amphipolis as the crow flies. Naturally, despite its Greek origins, the Caryatids here on the fringe of the ‘Oikomene’ are subject to local influences.
It is hardly surprising either that those at Kasta should be in an Athenian style, given that in 437 BC Hagnon with several thousand Athenian colonists had founded Amphipolis, and that the population had a majority of mixed Athenian/Thracian race [Thuc IV.106].
If more of the city had survived I have no doubt that we would find 'Athenian' art and sculpture everywhere.
This blending of culture is what makes Kasta unique as a tomb - this particular combination of cultural influences could only occur at Amphipolis.
The sphinxes and monumental lion are also things we look towards places like Athens to understand, with Thracian tombs occasionally having carved lions (in relief rather than monumental!) believed to also reflect that Greek influence (eg Zhaba Mogila). Amphipolis has few things in common with a tomb like Mal Tepe (c.280 BC for initial form, based on the vases found), so it's a struggle to push towards those which are being diagnostic of much of anything. Especially when one is pushing against cultural transmission being seen as from Macedonia to Thrace (eg use of klinai as funeral beds in many Hellenistic period Thracian tombs).
I don’t think it is either fair or correct to suggest that cultural transmission is ‘one way’, and so agree with you e.g. the use of ‘klinai’ beds/banquet couches was originally a Middle Eastern custom, and reclined dining spread to Greece via Anatolia, and again throughout the ‘Oikomene’.
Tombs like Zhaba Mogila and Mal Tepe simply illustrate the variety in tomb building, and again that each tomb is unique, with unique local factors.... there is not going to be a parallel or ‘prototype’ for a tomb like Kasta, merely a variety of influences, and at Kasta it is Thracian rituals etc which govern the architecture and use of the Heroon/tomb, even if the decoration is in Greek/Athenian style, and likely carried out by Athenian, or Athenian influenced artisans. This combination of factors is what makes Kasta unique.
Agree absolutely that looking to function behind the form is important. But cults for the dead, even multi-generational ones, are in no way restricted to Thrace. So something more is needed to try and establish a stronger link. If it can be reasonably established beyond the generic expectations. You'd expect 'Thracian' ritual to be seen in the decoration of the tomb - but I'm not sure whether that case can be even made (yet - I think it could come up eventually*)? Arguments from silence are rather rubbish, I know, but Amphipolis is mute on Rhesos in many ways so far. But then it also laughs at many other hypotheses, and certainly pokes fun at a couple which have been loudly touted too.
Yes, Thrace is not unique in having cults for the dead – they are world wide even to this day. But the Thracian form, with the deceased ancestor transformed into a God, becoming an anthropodaimon, and being worshipped in the tomb/heroon for years or generations after, until ultimate sealing, fits the known data about Kasta like a glove, even if there are several unanswerable mysteries attached to it ( such as who the original occupant was for certain ). Nor is ‘Athenian’ with a touch of ‘Macedonian’ decoration, rather than Thracian, surprising in the slightest (see above).
And like you I don’t think the idea of a prominent Macedonian noble being deliberately buried in an ancient Thracian cemetery amongst barbarian ghosts, far away from friends and family in Macedon is terribly credible. ( different of course for those who died thousands of miles from Home, and who of necessity had to be buried locally).......
On the other hand we know that Rhesos, a Homeric mythological character, honoured as the ultimate 'anthropodaimon' ancestor of Amphipolis was worshipped as divine founder in that city by Athenians and Thracians alike - a unifying factor. ( An oracle told Hagnon :
"Do you desire to found anew the place trodden by many feet, O youth of Athens? It will be difficult for you without the gods. It is not allowed, until you seek and bring from Troy the remains of Rhesus and piously conceal them in your territory. Then might you obtain renown". (The presumed bones were originally buried on the Thracian side of the Strymon river) And see also e.g. Euripides play 'Rhesos' probably written some time after the planting of the colony had been successful.)
Whilst we will likely never know for certain, the city of Amphipolis is far more likely to honour its divine founder, using its wealth to create an undoubtedly expensive tomb dug into the Kasta mound, and subsequently carry out cult rituals there, than for any Macedonian...... at all events this seems much more plausible to me, or else some important local unknown to history. Consider the tomb of the Spartan General Brasidas [422 BC], honoured as a 'founder' of the city, having liberated it from Athenian control and made Amphipolis independent, and given the highly unusual honour of a burial within the precincts of the city, near its 'agora'/market, another example of 'local connections'.