[Web : Vesti] Rare statue of Hercules discovered in Northern Israel

A rare statue depicting the Roman god Hercules has been discovered during an excavation in the Jezeel Valley in the north of Israel. 

By Phoebe Greenwood in Tel Aviv

16 August 2011

The white marble figure stands at 0.5 metres and is thought to have originally decorated an alcove in a Roman bathhouse. It has been dated to the second century AD and is said to be of exceptional quality.

Dr Walid Atrash of the Israel Antiquities Authority said: "This statue is unusual because it is small. Most statues of gods from this period were life-size. This is something special."

The demigod is depicted leaning on a club, draped with the skin of the Nemean lion that he slew in the first of his twelve labours.

The son of Zeus and the mortal Alcemene, Hercules was ordered to undertake twelve superhuman feats, known as 'The Labours of Hercules', by the Mycenaean King Eurystheus to atone for the murder of his wife and three children in a fit of mad rage.

The statue was discovered in Hovrat Tarbenet during work on the new Valley Rail line, which will run through the Jezreel Valley connecting the northern port of Haifa with Bet She'an on the Jordan border. Excavations have only recently begun on this site and Dr Atrash believes this may be the first of many archaeological discoveries.

The Jezreel valley was an important stop along the Roman Via Maris, an ancient trade route connecting Egypt to Mesopotamia, or modern day Iraq.

 

[Web : Vesti] Caligula Statue Seized From Looters Is Unveiled

A statue believed to depict the Roman emperor Caligula was officially unveiled in Rome on Tuesday, six months after police seized it from looters. Archaeologists are currently excavating the spot where it was found, which may prove to be the site of a long-lost imperial villa.

Yesterday, Italian authorities unveiled a giant statue thought to represent the ancient Roman emperor Caligula. Police confiscated the 8-foot-tall marble figure in January after spotting a man loading it into a truck near Lake Nemi, located south of Rome. Two men were later arrested for unlawfully excavating a nearby site. It is believed that they planned to smuggle the statue and other archaeological finds out of the country and sell them on the black market.

In the months since the seizure, experts have cleaned the 2,000-year-old statue, which was already in a dilapidated state and had been broken into pieces by the plunderers. Its subject, who is cloaked in a robe and seated on a throne, was identified as Caligula because his foot is encased in a “caliga”—a type of boot worn by Roman legionary soldiers that gave the emperor his nickname. According to Suetonius, who chronicled the history of Rome in the first century, Caligula, born Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus in 12 A.D., accompanied his father on military campaigns as a small child. His miniature uniform inspired soldiers to dub him Caligula, meaning “little boots.”

His unintimidating pet name notwithstanding, Caligula grew up to earn a reputation as a tyrannical ruler, characterized by ancient historians as violent, narcissistic, sex-crazed, incestuous and completely insane. (Some contemporary scholars have questioned the neutrality of these assessments, while others have attributed Caligula’s alleged madness to medical conditions or lead poisoning.) He died at the hands of his own personal guard in 41 A.D., less than four years into his reign.

Thanks to the statue’s recovery, we may soon gain a deeper understanding of one of ancient Rome’s most infamous emperors. In April, Italian archaeologists began excavating the site where the smugglers had conducted their illegal dig. So far, they have unearthed the ruins of what was initially thought to be a mausoleum but now appears to be a thermal bathing complex. They have also found more than 250 artifacts, including additional pieces of the broken statue.

The project has generated significant interest among historians because Caligula is known to have spent time in the Lake Nemi region and may have had an imperial villa there. He also kept two ships, described by Suetonius as lavish pleasure boats used for merrymaking, anchored on the lake; their remains were recovered in the 1930s. Perhaps further excavation will reveal whether a botched robbery led archaeologists to Caligula’s long-lost palace.

[Web : Vesti] Caligula statue discovered by 'tomb raiders' unveiled in Rome

 

A massive statue believed to be a rare image of Roman emperor Caligula sitting on a throne has been unveiled in Rome.

Officials said that it came from an illegal dig south of the Italian capital, and that may have been the site of one of his palaces.

The statue, which had been broken in several large pieces and a head, was first found last January when finance police stopped it from being smuggled out of the country by boat at a port near Rome.

The operation led to the arrest of two so-called "tomb raiders" – those who dig up the countryside looking for archaeological treasures to sell on the black market.

But more importantly, the arrests led police to the site near Lake Nemi, just south of Rome, where Caligula was believed to have had one of his imperial residences.

The statue, now cleaned of the earth that had covered it for 2,000 years, shows parts of a robed man sitting on an elaborate throne like the Greek god Zeus.

Significantly, it shows a man wearing a "caliga," shoes worn by Roman legionaries and from where the emperor got his nickname. His real name was Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.

Caligula, who reigned from 37 to 41AD, has gone down in history as a crazed and power-hungry sex maniac who demanded that his horse, Incitatus, be made a consul.

The Telegraph

[Vesti] The Telegraph : Otmica Persefone na aukciji

A Marble Persephone From the Marques

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: May 26, 2011

Several months ago Florent Heintz, head of Sotheby’s antiquities department, consigned a Roman marble sarcophagus panel from about A.D. 190-200 for his June 8 auction in New York. There were no good photographs of it, but the panel was known to scholars even if its whereabouts were unknown for more than 30 years.
The panel, which depicts the rape of Persephone, comes with an interesting provenance. Beginning in 1776 it belonged to William Petty Fitzmaurice, the second earl of Shelburne, later first marquess of Lansdowne, who displayed it in the ballroom of Lansdowne House. The panel is being sold by an unidentified California collector who inherited the antiquity from his father.
Lansdowne House, designed by Robert Adam for the earl of Bute in the early 1760s, is particularly meaningful as a provenance to anyone in the fields of antiquities, neo-Classical architecture or furniture. The building still stands in the Mayfair section of London, although in 1930 it was converted into a club. Two wings were demolished, and in 1931 the drawing room was sold to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the dining room to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Other museums in the United States and in Europe have sculptures from the house as well.)
When he began researching the panel, Mr. Heintz saw a picture of it in a book about 18th- and early-19th-century English antiquities. The photograph, taken before 1930, showed the ballroom at Lansdowne House; the panel was inset like a relief high on the wall and in the company of other panels. “That’s when I thought it would be fun to see where the others were,” he said.
The more he started digging, the more he learned. There had been, for instance, two auctions of property from the collection of the marquess of Lansdowne, one at Christie’s in 1930 and another at Sotheby’s in 1972. Other sales included furniture, art and objects from the house. Looking at the past auctions Mr. Heintz realized that another relief panel from a sarcophagus — depicting muses and dating from the third century A.D. — belonged to a well-known Sotheby’s client who had bought it at Christie’s in New York in 1998.
Mr. Heintz persuaded the unidentified owner of this panel to sell his on June 8 too. The two panels are very different. The first, a mythological scene, is large for a sarcophagus — it measures about 3 feet by 6 feet — and its composition is quite dramatic. It is estimated to sell for $400,000 to $600,000. The second panel is a long frieze of muses surrounding a full-length depiction of the entombed, who is flanked by Hermes and Athena. This one is estimated to fetch $300,000 to $500,000. The panels have not been seen together since 1930.
“There are other reliefs from Lansdowne House too,” Mr. Heintz said, “that are now in the Getty Villa in Malibu.”