To die; — to sleep; —
To sleep! perchance to dream! ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I, l. 64–68.
In June 2009, excavations at the courtyard of the late eleventh-/early twelfth-century-CE church of Aghios Ioannis Theologhos (Fig. 1) at the site of Palio Ligourio produced an important find, the first incubation relief from the renowned healing sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas and Asklepios in Epidauros. The small church is located c. 4 km to the north of the sanctuary, in a narrow valley at the foot of Mount Arachnaion. Although no spolia were used in the chapel’s construction, a significant number of antiquities from the Asklepieion, including inscriptions, is commonly found in the surrounding area usually used as building material in small churches.
The relief Epidauros Museum inv. no. 1305 (Figs. 2–4) served as the covering slab of a late byzantine cist-gra...