These monuments, taking analogous forms of ceramic vases, had an identical function to that of the steles. In the majority of cases, these present funerary scenes in relief, staging the deceased whose name is

engraved above the composition. The scene depicted is very often the 'Dexiosis' or farewell scene symbolized by a handshake. It is engraved with an inscription in Greek characters on a line above the characters.

The function of these external monuments easily explains their state of conservation. Indeed, these often reach us broken and worn by wind erosion. The high collar that overcame them like their clay counterparts have unfortunately often disappeared.

Comparable lekythoi can be seen at the National Museum of Athens, the Ceramics Cemetery, the Louvre Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Getty Museum and in the main museums of Greek archaeology. This specimen is rare in more than one respect: it is still surmounted by its elegant collar and still presents important traces of the secondary vegetal decoration on the shoulder and ovals at the top of the body, like two lekythoi from the Getty. In 1905, Etienne Michon wrote: «There are few ancient monuments more gracious, by their eminently decorative silhouette, than the funerary vases of two varieties, loutrophoroi and lekythoi, which the Athenians liked to erect on the tombs. Of marble or terracotta, one and the others, unfortunately, were, by their very form, singularly fragile. The collar, the handles, and the foot have very rarely resisted the impacts that various accidents have brought on them and, in our museums, they almost always present themselves only in the form of private unformed trunks of their members and which hardly recall their primitive elegance. »