LONDON — Archaeologists in Bulgaria made a discovery in an ancient Roman sewer this month: a well-preserved marble statue taller than a man.
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“We found it by chance,” said Lyudmil Vagalinski, scientific director of the excavation. “It was incredible. An entire statue appeared in front of us.”
The discovery could shed light on how people in the area, modern-day Bulgaria, fought to preserve their religion as Christianity spread across the ancient world. The sewer may have been a hiding place used by pagans trying to protect the imposing statue from Christian fanatics, who sometimes destroyed the heads of pagan deities.
The face and head show no signs of destruction.
“It’s a miracle he survived,” Vagalinski said.
He and his colleagues were working on a routine excavation near the village of Rupite, near Bulgaria’s southwestern border with Greece, when they saw marble on the ground.
This wouldn’t be the first ancient statue to emerge from an unsightly ditch: construction workers in Rome found a marble figure in a drainage system last year.
The Bulgarian statue—which Vagalinski believes could represent the god Hermes—may have been buried in the late 4th century. He believes it was placed in the sewer a few years after 380 AD, the year Emperor Theodosius I declared Christianity the religion. official of the Roman Empire. It is possible that the pagans of the ancient city where the statue was found, then called Heraclea Sintica, wanted to protect their treasures.
“They tried to secretly preserve the memory of these deities,” Vagalinski said.
He also believes that the statue may have been buried after 388 AD, when a great earthquake hit the area and devastated the City. It appears to have destroyed infrastructure to the extent that drainage was no longer functioning, he said.
“Although we might think that a sewer is not the right place, at least it would not be damaged,” said Martin Henig, an expert at the University of Oxford not associated with the excavation. “No one was going to touch the drain,” he added.
The statue is missing part of its right arm, which almost appears as if it has been amputated, Vagalinski said. The left hand may also be damaged. But otherwise, the statue appears largely intact.
“It is rare and exciting to find an almost perfectly intact statue, particularly one of such apparently high quality,” said Elizabeth Marlowe, director of the museum studies program at Colgate University in upstate New York, who was not involved in the excavation.
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