1,700-year-old Roman statues unveiled in Tel Aviv
Two remarkably preserved marble busts, found in an ancient winepress near Binyamina in northern Israel, were shown publicly for the first time on June 18 at the Moza museum.
- Two Roman marble busts, each about 55 cm tall and weighing roughly 60 kg, were shown to the public for the first time on June 18 at the Moza museum in Tel Aviv.
- The busts are dated to the 2nd or 3rd century AD and were found during a salvage excavation at the entrance to the town of Binyamina in northern Israel.
- One bears a Greek inscription with the name Lycurgus, while the other shows a bearded figure, probably a thinker.
- The statues had been deliberately buried face down, and the reason remains unknown.
Two remarkably well-preserved Roman marble busts, recovered from the collecting pit of an ancient winepress near the town of Binyamina in northern Israel, were presented to the public for the first time on June 18 at an archaeology conference held at the Moza museum in Tel Aviv. After the conference, the two pieces remain on display through the summer, giving a wider audience its first chance to see them up close.
The objects are protomes, sculptures that include the head and upper part of the torso. Each stands about 55 centimeters tall and weighs roughly 60 kilograms, carved from marble. According to the current dating, they belong to the 2nd or 3rd century AD, the period when this part of the Levant formed a Roman province. They were uncovered during a salvage excavation that preceded construction work at the entrance to Binyamina.
What do the busts tell us about their owners?
One of the two busts carries a Greek inscription bearing the name Lycurgus, while the other depicts a bearded male figure read, on iconographic grounds, as a thinker or philosopher. The Greek of the inscription is not surprising. Across the Roman provinces of the eastern Mediterranean, Greek remained the language of education and public life for centuries after Roman rule was established. Portraits of notable figures, whether real or idealized, were a common decoration on estates and in public spaces of the era.
A detail that particularly intrigues researchers is the find spot. The busts were not recovered from a temple, a villa, or a public square, as one might expect, but inside a wine-collecting pit. The winepress itself, however, was built centuries later, probably in the Byzantine period, between the 5th and 7th centuries. In other words, objects from the Roman era ended up in a structure raised long after they were made, which raises the question of how and why they got there.
Why were the statues buried face down?
The most striking circumstance of the discovery is the way the busts were placed in the ground. Both had been deliberately buried, side by side, with their heads turned downward. Such an arrangement is unlikely to be accidental. For now, researchers point to several possible explanations, ranging from the concealment of valuable objects during war or looting, to the hiding of stolen goods, to a possible clash between the Christian and pagan worlds in late antiquity, when pagan images were sometimes removed from public view.
It is worth stressing what this find does not yet prove. The dating of the busts to the 2nd or 3rd century refers to when they were made, not necessarily when they were buried, which are two separate questions. The reason for the deliberate burial remains in the realm of hypothesis until further analysis of the find context and the surrounding layer provides more data. The conference presentation and the summer exhibition in Tel Aviv are a first step toward a broader scholarly discussion, not its conclusion.
What do you think, will further work at the Binyamina winepress manage to explain why two Roman busts ended up buried face down?
