Archaeologists have unearthed a 1,700-year-old statue of a woman from the Hellenistic period in Turkey. The discovery was made in the ancient city of Perge, which is now part of Turkey’s Mediterranean Antalya province.
1,700 years ago, what is now Turkey was under the Byzantine Empire, which itself was an eastern breakaway from the Roman Empire. Therefore, parts of Turkey hold a wealth of ancient Byzantine archeological treasures from the period just like this one.
The find is particularly significant as it represents a woman who, while her identity is unknown, may very well have been someone of importance. This is because at the time, many women held administrative highly-powerful roles within the city, which was certainly not the case in all ancient societies.
Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism said that it was the first statue find of 2020 in the city, which has been undergoing major excavational work.
The excavations site has been undergoing examination since 1946 and became part of the UNESCO Tentative Heritage List in 2019. The current work is being headed by Sedef Cokay Kepçe, an archeology professor at Istanbul University. The statue will now be placed in the Antalya Museum, where it will be preserved by experts in the field.
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