sarcophagus
n. countablen. a large stone box used for burying people in ancient times. It is often found in tombs and is usually made of marble or granite.
n. a stone coffin, typically rectangular in shape and made of marble or granite, used for burial in ancient Egypt and other Mediterranean cultures.
The archaeologists discovered a gold sarcophagus in the tomb.
The museum's most famous exhibit is a massive sarcophagus carved from a single block of limestone.
While the outer sarcophagus was heavily damaged by centuries of erosion, the inner wooden coffin remained remarkably preserved, allowing researchers to study the mummification process in detail.
The noun is borrowed from Latin sarcophagus (“grave; sarcophagus; flesh-eating, carnivorous”), from Ancient Greek σᾰρκοφᾰ́γος (sărkophắgos, “sarcophagus; flesh-eating, carnivorous”) (so named from λῐ́θος σᾰρκοφᾰ́γος (lĭ́thos sărkophắgos, literally “flesh-eating stone”) a type of limestone found at Assos in Troas (now Behramkale, Turkey) thought to consume the flesh of corpses, and thus used to make coffins), from σαρκός (sarkós) (the genitive form of σάρξ (sárx, “flesh; body”), from Proto-Indo-European twerḱ- (“to carve; to cut off, trim”)) + -φάγος (-phágos, suffix meaning ‘eater (of); eating’) (from ἔφαγον (éphagon, “to devour, eat”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European bʰeh₂g- (“to allot, distribute; to divide”)). The plural form sarcophagi is borrowed from Latin sarcophagī. The verb is derived from the noun.