The body was prepared for burial by the women of the family, who anointed it with oil and perfumes, and clothed it in the dress of common life, usually of white. A wreath of flowers, or of laurel, olive, or ivy was placed on the head, or in its stead a wreath of gold leaves. Before the funeral the dead was laid on a couch in the central hall of the house, with his feet toward the house door. His relatives and friends came to pay their last respects, and the funeral dirge was sung. An interesting terracotta relief from Attica on the north wall of the Second Room represents such an occasion. The women standing by the bier are tearing their hair as they raise their voices in the lament (fig. 146). The same scene is frequent on certain kinds of Greek pottery, notably the great Dipylon vases of the eighth century B.C., which were used as grave monuments. There are two Dipylon vases in the Second Room in Cases G and L (fig. 148). On the upper band of each is a scene showing a dead man on a bier surrounded by his family (see head-band, p. 121). An interesting plate in Case K in the same room is decorated with a scene which seems to represent a poet on a funeral couch with a wreath about his head and his lyre hanging on the wall above (fig. 147). [Illustration: FIG. 148. DIPYLON VASE] [Illustration: FIG. 149. ATHENIAN TOMB LEKYTHOI] The greatest number of funeral scenes are found on the white Athenian lekythoi of the fifth century and later, which were made to be placed about the bier, in the tomb, or around the monument. One of those in Case L in the Fifth Room is painted in colors with a scene of mourners beside a funeral couch, treated in a later style. Other typical scenes are the farewell of the dead to his family as if for a long journey, and the care of the tomb by surviving relatives. Most of the vases in Cases L and F in the Fifth Room are decorated with variations of these two themes (fig. 149). Early in the morning of the second or third day after death the body was carried on the couch out of the city gates for burial or cremation. The funeral procession is represented on the lower bands of the Dipylon vases, or it may be that the horses and chariots are intended to suggest the funeral games, which were celebrated in early times after the death of a man of rank. [Illustration: FIG. 150. MARBLE LEKYTHOS] [Illustration: FIG. 151. ETRUSCAN FOCOLARE]