Tuesday, May 30, 2017

JIYEH, LEBANON—Live Science reports that four ceramic sculptures have been partially reassembled from fragments found in a trash dump in the ancient town of Porphyreon by a team of researchers from the Polish Center of Mediterranean Archaeology. The sculptures are all in the shape of female heads, and are thought to be about 2,400 years old. The most complete figure stands about nine inches tall and six inches wide, bears traces of red paint, and depicts a woman wearing a Greek headdress known as a stephane. Three small holes near the top of the head suggest it may have been hung as a wall decoration. One of the heads wore an Egyptian wadjet amulet, and another had Phoenician traits. Pottery specialist Urszula Wicenciak determined that the clay came from the area around Tyre, another ancient city in Lebanon. The dump also contained other pieces of pottery, burned animal bones, and traces of grapes, olives, and chickpeas. For more on archaeology in Lebanon, go to “History's Largest Megalith.”