Busts of "Lycurgus" and his shaggy friend found in salvage excavation

ANCIENT STATUARY: 'Once-in-a-lifetime Discovery': Intact 1,700-year-old Roman Busts Found in Israel. Buried in a disused Roman-Byzantine winepress near Binyamina, one of the marble busts may depict Sparta's legendary founder, Lycurgus. 'There was a feeling we were about to discover something that was not supposed to be there,' an archaeologist said (Nir Hasson, Haaretz).

The statues were carefully concealed inside a wine-collection pit of a Roman-Byzantine winepress long after it had gone out of use, where they remained buried for nearly 1,700 years. "They were buried when the winepress went out of use. At this stage, it is not known why the statues were hidden here, perhaps to protect them," the Israel Antiquities Authority, which carried out the excavation, said in a statement.

Cross-file under Salvage Archaeology.

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