Israeli archaeologists have discovered four “unique” bronze artifacts decorated with elaborate 3D lion heads from around 1,900 years ago.
Researchers discovered a rare bronze disk during salvage excavation at a site named Khirbat Ibreika (Khirbat Ibreika, in the heart of the railway), according to a survey published in the latest issue of the official IAA journal “Atiqot.”
Excavations that occurred in 2018 revealed eight Roman stone tombs. Archaeologists have discovered bronze discs in an ordered mountain at the southern tip of a tomb dating back to ads from the first or second century
You might like it
Along the disc, archaeologists found four bronze ring-shaped handles that were likely once attached to the top of the lion’s head. This discovery is rare. Because similar bronze discs were found throughout the Roman world with salvation of the lion’s head, but the ring handle is usually attached through the mouth.
“This is a unique and unusual set of discoveries,” Elie Haddad and Elisheva Zwiebel said in a statement that they were archaeologists who oversaw the excavation of Khirbat Ibreika on behalf of the IAA and the author of the study.
According to the report, researchers also identified large iron claws with wood traces, indicating the presence of non-surviving wooden ffin.
Related: Israel’s 2,300-year-old tomb contains the remains of Greek troops who may have accompanied Alexander the Great’s army
The disc may play a decorative role, but researchers suggest that bronze objects and attached rings also act as handles, allowing people to carry cos or lower them to the grave. They also facilitate the task of carrying the co-transporting, suggesting that it was possible to insert two long wooden rods into the ring.
However, the authors acknowledge that one aspect of this hypothesis is confusing. “If the disc was a handle for a ffin, why was it stacked on one side of the tomb on what appears to have been a deliberate mountain? It may be allegedly fallen from a wooden ffin during the burial ceremony, but it seems unreasonable that all four discs fell on the same side,” the researchers wrote in their study.
This increases the possibility that artifacts may have special symbolic or ritual importance that has not yet been revealed.
Lions are important symbols throughout ancient times of various cultures and civilizations, and animals frequently appear in ancient art. It represented strength, courage and nobility, among other traits.
In the world of Greco-Roman, the Lions were known as guardians of fountains, gates, palaces, cemeteries and temples. In some cases, these animals were also considered guardians of the dead, but according to a 2022 paper, the Roman lionhead co-handle discusses a ffin handle similar to the killbutt that Ibreika discovered.
Given this symbolism, the researchers suggest that the lion motif found in the tomb of Kilbat Ibreika may imply the class or social status of the deceased.
They also pointed out that treating the ring above the Lions’ head could represent the “constellations ring, ring of life” they wrote in their research.
This interpretation was based on a specific potential portrayal of Aion, the Hellenistic God, related to the existence and the cyclical nature of constellations in ancient art. Some scholars have linked the naked, human-body lionhead figures with tangled snakes (or snakes). However, this expression is not his classic portrayal, but mainly appears in the ancient syncretic tradition, but is the subject of debate.
Source link
