Ivory Icon of St. Demetrius

Byzantine, 950-1000
Ivory
Metropolitan Museum of Art (1970.324.3)

Although St. Demetrius is remembered in the Roman Martyrology as a "proconsul" (governor of a province), the extant images mostly picture him as a soldier. In western images he is more likely to be identified by a spear, the instrument of his martyrdom.

In the upper left corner the Α in the circle abbreviates άγιος, "saint," and the rest of the Greek inscription spells out his name in Greek, ΔΗΜΗ ΤΡΗΟς, with the third and fourth and the fifth and sixth letters ligatured.

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Photographed at the museum by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.