The Metrological Relief is an

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

relief Relief is a sculpture, sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''wikt:relief, relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give ...

of a man with arms outstretched, cut with hammer and chisel on a triangular,

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock consisting of carbonate minerals (most commonly calcite (CaCO3) or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) that have recrystallized under the influence of heat and pressure. It has a crystalline texture, and is ty ...

slab between 460 and 430 BC. It was found in

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or the

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in 1625–26 by a

chaplain A chaplain is, traditionally, a cleric (such as a minister, priest, pastor, rabbi, purohit, or imam), or a lay representative of a religious tradition, attached to a secular institution (such as a hospital, prison, military unit, intellige ...

called William Petty collecting

sculptures Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

for Thomas Howard,

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. It was sold to Sir William Fermor in 1691 and then presented to

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in 1755. It is now on display at the

Ashmolean Museum The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology () on Beaumont Street in Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University ...

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. It was the only known metrological relief until 1988 when another was found on

Salamis Island Salamis ( ; ) or Salamina () is the largest Greece, Greek island in the Saronic Gulf, about from the coast of Athens' port of Piraeus and about west of Athens center. The chief city, Salamina (city), Salamina, lies in the west-facing core of ...

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Measurements

The relief measures 2.09 m long, 62 cm high, 10 cm thick and is broken over the figure's left forearm but when complete it measured one

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

fathom or orguia. There is also an image of a foot above the right forearm which measures 29.7 cm, an imprint of a clenched fist over the right forearm of 11 cm and fingers, which measure between 1.85 and 2 cm. Eric Fernie studied the relief and noted its ancient measurement of the Greek fathom.

References

External links

Ashmolean exhibit including images and English translation.
5th-century BC artifacts Collection of the Ashmolean Museum 5th-century BC sculptures 1st-millennium BC steles Historiography of Greece Hellenistic Greece Reliefs in the United Kingdom 1620s archaeological discoveries {{AncientGreece-stub