A Late-Antique Ivory Pyxis

The cylindrical box (pyxis) illustrated in the plates, now in private possession, belongs to a small class carved with pagan subjects; the majority of pyxides are Christian. When Graeven issued his series of photographs of antique carvings in ivory and bone about twenty years ago, the number of pagan examples only amounted to a dozen, with a few fragments, and two among them, those with Orpheus and the beasts, at Bobbio and Florence respectively (see below), are claimed by some authorities as Christian. Since that time the remains of another pagan box with Bacchic scenes have come to light, discovered in the chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum at the Lateran in 1903, and now preserved in the Vatican. There may have been further discoveries not brought to general notice; otherwise the present example is the first addition to the list since the third year of the present century.