From about the middle of the first century until the third quarter of the third century A.D., the city of Palmyra in the Roman province of Syria produced a distinctive body of funerary art. Limestone portrait reliefs, a specialty of Palmyrene sculptors, were used to seal off burial compartments set into the walls of subterranean and aboveground tombs. Palmyra's lavish funerary monuments were financed largely by wealth amassed through the caravan trade that carried goods inland from the Mediterranean Sea across the Syrian desert.

The bulk of the surviving reliefs feature the bust of a single male or female in one of several standardized formats. In this example, a woman dons the customary short-sleeved tunic and cloak, which is pulled up over her headdress to form a veil. She wears an impressive assortment of jewelry, including an engraved diadem, strings of jewels in her hair, pendant earrings, two necklaces, two bracelets, three rings, and a large circular brooch with three pendants. As on most Palmyrene funerary sculpture, an inscription above one shoulder records the name and lineage of the deceased, as well as a salutation: "Aththaia, daughter of Malchos, happy one, farewell." Although the names are clearly of local origin, the use of Greek script, rather than the usual Aramaic, reveals a desire to connect with the Hellenic cultural heritage of the eastern Mediterranean. The style of the relief similarly combines indigenous Near Eastern traits, such as the thinly incised eyebrows, with a heightened attention to naturalistic bodily forms more in line with the Classical artistic tradition. The sculptor of this deeply carved relief provided his provincial clientele with work that balanced the city's venerable funerary customs with an awareness of the prevailing fashion in the urban centers of the Roman Empire.

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