Two remarkably preserved marble statues from the Roman period have been unearthed near the town of Binyamina, just south of Haifa, during excavations carried out ahead of a major expansion of Israel’s coastal railway. The Israel Antiquities Authority and the MUZA – Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv announced the find on Monday, June 15.
The two sculptures, known as protomes, depict the heads and upper torsos of figures from the Greco-Roman world, and were discovered face down inside the wine-collection pit of a Roman-Byzantine winepress. “Mysteriously, they were found neatly laid, face down, inside a wine-collection pit, meaning they were buried when it went out of use. At present, it is not known why the statues were hidden here – perhaps to preserve them,” said excavation directors Eliran Oren and Avishag Reiss, who called it “a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”
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