Ancient sarcophagi were often reused in later ages, particularly the medieval period. The crypts of the churches of Europe are filled with medieval and renaissance period ecclesiastics entombed in Greco-Roman sarcophagi from which the original pagan occupants had long been evicted. This huge sepulcher originally had on its lid a face of the Gorgon Medusa with her wild hair. It was meant to ward off evil from the tomb. But the Norman adventurer Roger I, who with Robert Guiscard conquered the island of Sicily in the 1170s and began consolidating the Kingdom of the Two Sicilys, took the coffin for himself, but removed the face of the Gorgon and replaced the pagan image with a cross. Strangely, they kept the unruly hair, I suppose because it had been reduced to a merely decorative frame.