In the center of this gravestone, a bearded man sits on a backless chair. He raises his right arm to hold a staff as the god Zeus does in Greek art; the resemblance to the god makes him look as though he has attained a stature larger than life. Behind him stands a woman, perhaps his wife, staring straight ahead. She holds a little girl by the hand. The child has the proportions of a miniature adult; she holds an object, perhaps a rattle, quiet at her side.

The figures do not look at one another, but face in rigid square directions—the little girl straight out at us and her parents in profile. The poses of the figures respond to one another where their gazes do not. The lower arm of the woman on the right is parallel to the man’s upper arm, and the pattern of all their arms together connects them physically. There was also a fourth figure in the composition; she is mostly broken off, but you can see her head in the upper left corner. The other figures do not appear to see her, but she seems to touch the man's arm with her own. One gets the sense that this young woman and the other figures belong to separate worlds. Either she is dead, or they are; and yet they all are present in one space.

The name of the deceased would have appeared on an architectural frame that surrounded this work in its original state. Without the inscription, we cannot say who this was. The image captures only a serene and wishful vision of a place where the dead and the living are together.