ABSTRACT
The popularity of the prothesis scene was disrupted when a new vase, the white-ground lekythos, was abruptly and broadly adopted as the favoured funerary vase in Athens, ca. 480 BCE, and brought with it a series of new scene types. A change in popular funerary imagery in Attic vase painting around the first quarter of the 5th century BCE, from focusing on the funeral to focusing on the indefinite upkeep of the grave and the cult of the dead, suggests a growing interest in the ongoing experience and well-being of the deceased. The anguish of being left unburied, and hence left in a liminal space between the Upper- and Underworlds, played a central role in a number of ancient Greek myths, which demonstrates the centrality of burial to achieving a happy afterlife. Towards the end of the 5th century BCE, there is a noticeable shift in the way that the deceased souls are portrayed.
