How About That of the Day: A particularly strong storm that struck the Middle East this week unearthed an ancient marble statue presumed to be of the goddess Aphrodite.
From MSNBC’s Photoblog:
The figure was found half-buried in the sand by a resident walking near the shore in the southern [Israeli] city of Ashkelon. In addition to the statue, experts identified pieces of a mosaic floor from what’s thought to have been a Roman bathhouse. The artifacts are part of a cliffside archaeological site that collapsed when high winds and waves hit the shore.
“The sea gave us this amazing statue,” Yigal Israel, an archaeologist with the Israeli Antiquities Authority, told Reuters. The statue stands about 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and weighs about 440 pounds (200 kilograms). It’s thought to date back to the Roman occupation of what was western Judea, between 1,700 and 2,000 years ago.
[thanks samit!]