Art historians and archaeologists describe male-female pairs of figures as “marriage pairs.” Often both figures are smiling, seeming to commemorate either the act of marriage or the existence of a happy union. They are typically very similar in size, construction, and decoration, differing mainly in clothing worn and objects held. Some marriage pairs are joined together, with one person having an arm affectionately around the shoulders or waist of the other. Physical anthropologist Robert Pickering suggests that the figures not physically joined actually represent the separate statuses of different people buried in the same tomb rather than marriage, since male figures lie near male skeletons and female figures are adjacent to female skeletons in tombs.

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