Wicker Basket Urn and Pseudo-Urns from Emona (Ljubljana, Slovenia)

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The cemeteries of the Roman colony Iulia Emona (modern Ljubljana) have revealed three cinerary urns in the form of a wicker basket, two of them pseudo-urns and one a cinerary urn proper. All belong to the ‘Aquileian’ cluster of wicker basket urns dated to the 1st century, though not without certain reservations. On the top, some have a pinecone used as a grave marker – sema, similarly to the three pseudo-urns from Ptuj. Such pseudo-urns in the form of a wicker basket (and sometimes capsa) also occur on the horizontal lion tops of tombstones as the central element representing the grave. Some of these bear a mask of an elderly bearded man usually (and wrongly) interpreted as the god Serapis. A more reasonable interpretation of this central motif on all lion tops in Noricum and Pannonia is that of a grave with a sema on top, while the applied mask can be seen as old Dionysus.