Archaeologists excavating an ancient Roman sewer last week made a spectacular discovery—a nearly complete marble statue of a Greek god.
The statue stands about 6 feet 8 inches tall, and the archaeologists believe a master carved it from a whole block of marble, likely in the 2nd century. The team thinks the statue depicts the Olympian deity Hermes, considered the herald of the gods.
Excavators came upon the statue on July 3 at the site of Heraclea Sintica, an ancient city in southwestern Bulgaria near the Greek border. They found it during a routine dig of one of the world’s earliest sewage systems, the Cloaca Maxima, which largely functioned as a massive storm drain diverting rainwater from city streets into the Tiber river.
“A small piece of marble caught our attention,” team leader Lyudmil Vagalinski of the National Archaeological Museum said in an interview. As the archaeologists brushed away more earth, the contours of a statue resting on its side facing the sewer wall began to emerge. First a foot, then legs, a torso and a head.
Vagalinski suggests the city’s inhabitants placed the statue in the sewer and covered it with dirt to preserve it following devastating earthquakes in the 4th and 5th centuries. Or they might have wanted to hide it from religious zealots who might decapitate the statue at a time of tension between pagans and Christians. The soil layer allowed the marble structure to survive in such remarkable shape, he said.
“I can say that this ancient statue is not only the best preserved among those discovered here, but also in Bulgaria in general,” Vagalinski said in a statement provided by the scientific journal Archaeologia Bulgarica, which he co-edits.
Vagalinski immediately noticed iconographic parallels with other images that depict Hermes, one of the most popular deities in the area. A video posted to Facebook by the scientific journal Archaeologia Bulgarica shows a member of the archaeological team uncovering the statue just as it begins to reveal itself. The statue remains partially encased in soil and the work to excavate it continues.
Heraclea Sintica, located on the site of what’s now the Bulgarian village of Rupite, was founded in the 4th century BC by colonists from the ancient Macedonian kingdom. The Romans conquered the city in the mid 2nd century BC. A major earthquake hit Heraclea Sintica in the 4th century, around the year 388, followed by another quake in 425 that desstroyed much of the city’s infrastructure. By the year 500, the city had been abandoned.
Vagalinski has overseen excavations of the city since 2007 together with the Petrich History Museum. The work has uncovered evidence of a major hub with elegant architecture and a layout that followed the principles of one of the earliest urban plans, the Hippodamian plan, also known as a gridiron system.
Once the newly discovered statue has been fully extracted from the soil, it will be carefully moved to the museum using a custom-built contraption. After the marble deity has undergone restorations, it will go on display, a thing of beauty rescued from the sewers of time.