This series of marble pieces unearthed at Ascoli Satriano are from a wealthy chamber tomb built for members of the Daunian elite in Northern Puglia, dating from the second half of the Fourth Century BCE. Unfortunately, the monument was pillaged in the 1970s. Thanks to a painstaking investigation carried out by the Carabinieri unit for the protection of stolen art, it has been possible to reassemble part of the sumptuous furnishings created for the tomb. These are a banqueting table (trapeza) supported by a remarkable sculpture group representing a hind being devoured by two griffons. The surface of the table was arranged with marble reproductions of wine-serving vessels used during the symposium (craters, amphorae, jugs). The large, double-handled basin on a stand is an imitation of a podanipter, the ablutions vase used to perform the hospitality rituals at the beginning of a banquet.
The fine quality painted decorations on the inside of the basin show a procession of Nereids, sisters of Thetis, bearing the shining armour forged by Hephaestus for her son Achilles during the Trojan War.
The exceptional quality of these objects, clearly commissioned by a wealthy and strongly-Hellenised local family, renders them comparable with the finest Greek production in Macedon under Philip II or Alexander the Great.