The sculpture was embedded in the wall of the Hamza Bey mosque and transferred to the Museum in 1930.

It is made of white, fine-grained Pentelic marble and bares fairly extensive damage and traces of mortar.

The surviving decoration comprises the body of a bull being attacked by a griffon.

The subject of a griffonthat devours animals, known from Archaic and Classical art, has been held by some to symbolise the contest between life and death. In Attic sarcophagi, like this one, it is relatively rare.

The marble was embedded in the wall of the Hamza Bey mosque, the largest Islamic temple in Greece and the first Ottoman house of prayer in Thessaloniki. It was built in 1467/68 by Hafsa Hatun, daughter of Sarabdar Hamza Bey, initially as a mesçid (small neighbourhood temple without a minaret) on a site previously occupied by the small Byzantine monastery of the Forty Martyrs. In the 16th century it was expanded, acquiring a colonnaded courtyard in which were placed columns and architectural sculptures from buildings of the Late Roman and Early Christian periods. It continued to serve as a mosque until 1923 and in 1926 was proclaimed a historic monument by royal decree. That did not prevent it from being used for decades for commercial purposes, housing shops and a cinema (the familiar Alcazar), resulting in damage to its architectural and structural integrity.

One episode in the life of the monument is suggested by the official correspondence of the Ephor of Antiquities of Macedonia, N. Kotzias, who in 1930 tried in vain to prevent the new owners from carrying out unauthorized interventions. Perhaps that is when our marble was transferred to the Museum’s collection.

Late 2nd - early 3rd c. AD

The object is displayed in the temporary exhibition “For a flame that burns on [1821-2021]. Antiquities and Memory, Thessaloniki - Macedonia”