The archaeological museum in Syracusa, Sicily, is chock-full of riches, most of them from the city’s greatest period in the 4th century BCE. But one of the true masterpieces in the collection comes from the 4th century CE, the early Christian period. It’s the Adelphi sarcophagus, decorated not only with the husband and wife who were interred in it (such ‘family’ tombs and sarcophagi were common in the Roman period) but with an eclectic and unconventional collection of Christian stories. They’re ‘unconventional’ because the sarcophagus was made so early in the Christian period that the traditions for the depiction of New Testament stories had not been established yet. So the sculptures show scenes from the life of Christ in ways that one rarely sees anywhere else. Everything is also out of order. Below the portraits of the deceased in the middle roundel you see the three kings bringing gifts to the infant Christ; just to the right we find Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and to the right of that Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem. The Nativity of Christ is found, inexplicably, in the upper right section. Above Adam and Eve is Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac, and to the right of that Christ healing the blind man. One can imagine the list of scenes given to the sculptor, but the sculptor not knowing that there was any sequence to them.