This dinge yet beautiful 4,300 - twelvemonth - old statue head was found among the ruins of Hazor in present - day Israel . Since its discovery in the nineties by theHebrew University of Jerusalem , archaeologists have been mystified by its identity operator .
Now , as discussed inthe new bookHazor VII : The 1990 - 2012 Excavations , the Bronze Ageby the Hebrew University of Jerusalem ’s Israel Exploration Society , archeologist believe they are getting closer to revealing who the statue portrays . Excitingly , their psychoanalysis suggests the head belong to a statue of an Egyptian pharaoh .
“ The person depicted wears a short , near - meet , coil cap wig , topped by a uraeus , the solar cobra that heighten above the forehead of [ a ] Pharaoh in ancient Egyptian iconography , thus identify our character as a power of Egypt beyond any doubtfulness , ” the researchers write .
Previous Hazor excavations , direct by the Hebrew University ’s Institute of Archaeology , have establish other artifacts at the site that decipher back to Egypt . Take , for deterrent example , thelarge shard of an Egyptian sculpturethey discover last year .
The stone that the sculpture is made from is also a adult giveaway . It ’s a kind of sandstone holler graywacke , a metamorphic rock only quarried in the ancient Near East , in an ancient Egyptian town name Wadi Hammamat .
Although the way and lineament of the statue ’s face are characteristic of the Fifth Dynasty , the researchers were ineffective to immobilize down just which king it depicts .
Other questions still remain . Only the question of the statue was found at the site and it ’s conceive to have been deliberately smashed . So , what chance ? Who smash it ? Rather strangely , archeologist have n’t been able-bodied to recover the rest period of the statue .
The Book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible , aka the Old Testament , name the townspeople of Hazor as “ the head of all those kingdoms ” and depict how the ground forces of Joshua invaded the city . While the Bible is n’t necessarily the most true historic informant , there ’s archeologic grounds to suggest the closure was destroyed around 1,200 BCE . Perhaps then , the statue was intentionally vandalized during this encroachment .
[ H / T : Live skill ]
