"Focusing on funerary sculpture, one of the best-known categories of late antique Egyptian art, Thelma K. Thomas demonstrates how skilled artisans created a varied repertory of works for a diverse body of commissioners.

Some of these sculptures were made for grand monumental tombs and commissioned by an urban, land-owning class with strong Hellenistic roots; others were made for smaller and less imposing monuments and commissioned by distinctly different clienteles from monasteries and towns, as well as by different socio-economic classes within the cities.".

"Thomas balances keen analysis of the surviving sculptures with close attention to primary written sources and archaeological evidence. The approach yields original interpretations of regional implications for attribution groups, and provocatively atmospheric reconstructions of the works as they would have appeared in their original settings."--BOOK JACKET.