A box-like funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. c. 1600, "type of stone used for coffins," from Latin sarcophagus, from Greek sarkophagos. The word also came to refer to a particular kind of limestone that was thought to decompose the flesh of corpses interred within. Literally the word means "flesh-eating," perhaps in reference to the supposed action of this type of limestone (quarried near Assos in Troas, hence the Latin lapis Assius) in quickly decomposing the body. From sarx (genitive sarkos) "flesh" + phagein "to eat". The "stone" sense was the earliest in English; meaning "stone coffin, often with inscriptions or decorative carvings" is recorded from 1705. It is not entirely clear whether the Romans truly believed that limestone from the region around Troy would dissolve flesh. That assertion came from Roman scholar Pliny the Elder (but he also reported such phenomena as dog-headed people and elephants who wrote Greek). It is more likely that was again a little joke.
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