Stele from the Kerameikos Cemetery, Athens 1880 - 1885

William James Stillman captured this photograph of a stele from the Kerameikos Cemetery in Athens. The image resonates with the themes of memory, history, and the role of classical antiquity in shaping modern identity. Made sometime in the 19th century, it highlights the fascination with ancient Greece, and its cultural and political revival after centuries under Ottoman rule. Stillman's choice to photograph this funerary monument speaks to the 19th-century desire to connect with the past, especially in a newly independent Greek state eager to assert its cultural heritage. The Kerameikos Cemetery, as a site of ancient burial and ritual, becomes a stage upon which modern viewers could imagine and construct their own relationship to antiquity. Historians use photographs, archaeological records, and travel accounts to better understand the context in which the stele was found, and its place in both ancient Athenian society and the 19th-century imagination. By considering these contexts, we gain insight into how cultural institutions shape our understanding of the past.