Now just what archaeologists were doing mucking around in a sewer in Bulgaria is anyone's guess. The more important thing is, they found something! And not just an ungodly clump of cooking oil, toilet paper and human hair, no, something cool!
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.
See, sometimes good things can come out of crawling around in the collective refuse of the municipality. Mom was wrong. Plus, inhaling all that goop essence will strengthen your immune system.
The marble statue of the god was unearthed relatively intact, though it was probably unearthed smelling a little less than dignified. Pristine preservation in human detritus merely cost the diety an arm.
Artifacts this well preserved are extremely unusual. The conditions of the sewer and layers of soil surrounding the statue made the sculpture look great for its age. But how did it end up down there in the city's nether regions?
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.
Leslie Katz, Forbes
Previously:
• This 'restoration' of a 16th century statue at a Spanish church is really… something
• Ancient statue of extraterrestrial was unfortunately neither
• How to safely topple a statue using science
