Tomb 30Isola Sacra Menu

Tomb 30 is bounded in the south on the wall of the original burial chamber of tomb 29 and has probably been built in the same period (about 160 AD). The entrance overlooked the Via Severiana until the construction of tomb 32 in later times.
In front of the entrance two klinai have been built. The left one against the wall of the enclosure of tomb 29.
On the floor between these benches was a polychrome mosaic (now vertically attached to the wall next to tomb 31).
Above the entrance, flanked by two slit-windows, the cornice of a disappeared inscription is still visible. Next to the inscription two tufa amphorae were depicted. The left one is still in situ.
Next to the place where the right amphora was attached we see a relief of a man in a short tunic as an aquatarius, a water-carrier. In his left hand he is carrying an amphora. Together with the other amphorae we can perhaps tell something about the profession of the tomb owner.

 

 

The mosaic looks like an imitation of a carpet. Three circles are depicted. The outer two have flower decorations, the middle one a pigeon with olive branches.
In the upper part we see a rectangle with the following inscription:

D(is) M(anibus)
ANTONIE
ACHAICE

("To the Di Manes of Antonia Achaice").
Although we presume that the mosaic once covered the floor near the biclinium, we cannot exclude that it was the cover of a burial place.

 The burial chamber is, just like the original burial chamber of tomb 29, equipped with three arcosolia for inhumation alongside the lower parts of the walls, and with niches for urns in the upper parts.
In the middle of the walls is a semicircular niche with a triangular tympanum, flanked by smaller rectangular niches.
Beneath the floor, originally with a black-and-white mosaic, burial places have been found as well.

The paintings in this tomb have partly survived. Both the right niche in the back wall and the right one in the left wall have a painting of a heroic figure with a sacrificial bowl.
In the left niche on the right wall the head of Serapis¹ was visible. In the central niches of both lateral walls mythological scenes were depicted, which are now in the museum of Ostia. One represented Zeus and Hera, the other Mars and Venus.

 

 

 

• Sources
• Russel Meigs - Roman Ostia, At the Clarendon Press 1973
• Guido Calza - Necropoli nell'Isola Sacra'(1940)
• Dr. Jan Theo Bakker.
• Hilding Thylander - Inscriptions du port d'Ostie (Lund C W K Gleerup 1952).
• Ida Baldassarre, Irene Bragantini, Chiara Morselli and Franc Taglietti - Necropoli di Porto, Isola Sacra (Roma 1996).
• 
  notes
• 1:Serapis was a god from the ancient Egyptians. The existence of his cult in Ostia and Portus is confirmed by the discovery of a temple dedicated to this god- I, Baldassarre, I. Bragantini, Ch. Morselli and F. Taglietti: “Necropoli di Porto” 1996.