Slipper Coffins and Funerary Practices in Parthia

Abstract

Funerary practices are well attested in some countries that belonged to the Arsakid Parthian Empire. One of them was Babylonia. The book by a German archaeologist, Christina Heike Richter, entitled Parthische Pantoffelsarkophage (“Parthian Slipper-Sarcophagi”) is devoted to one of the types of sarcophagi produced in the Parthian era, namely the Pantoffelsarkophag, and compares its origin and use against a broad background. Typical slipper coffins appeared at Seleukeia on the Tigris and Uruk in the first half of the 1st century A.D. These burials were connected with a greater involvement of the Parthians in Babylonia under Artabanos II (A.D. 8/9-39/40). It seems that slipper coffins were introduced in Babylonia together with eastern Parthians arriving there as soldiers, governors with their retinues, and other officials under Artabanos II and his successors. Vologases I (A.D. 50-79) and Pakoros II (A.D. 79-110) continued an intense policy in Babylonia related to the inflow of the Parthians to cities such as Nippur, Babylon, Meshkan-shapir, and Uruk.