Palestinian farmer finds 4,500-year-old goddess statue while working his land

From CNN. More archeological news, this time from Gaza.

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/gaza-canaanite-goddess-statue-scli-intl-scn/index.html

 

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Thanks for your weblink, @robinjojo

A large size figurine head. Interesting design as well.

 

@robinjojo I don't have a link yet but was listening to radio about a possible new find of a temple dedicated to Zeus.

 

Well... very bizarre. I had better curb my enthusiasm.
This head doesn't look like any Bronze age artistic style known in the region. It looks more like a contemporary sculpture by a Gaza amateur more or less imitating some Khmer medieval sculpture. I'm serious.
And the neck is cut straight, this is not the broken head of a statue, and it is too short to be a head inserted in a body or a support of any kind.
I hate to be positive about it, but this head is no more than a tourist fake.

 

I know that one factor in determining the authenticity of an object such as the one unearthed in Gaza is weathering of the surface. When an object is buried for millennia, the surface is altered through abrasion and chemical reaction with the surrounding soil. I know that one common feature of tourist objects is that the surfaces are fresh and the edges of the carved features, such as eyes, ears and mouth, tend to have relatively sharp, well defined edges. I supposed this can be faked, but I am not sure if it can be done in a convincing way.

When a stone surface weathers, it tends to weather unevenly, due to variations hardness between the minerals comprising the rock. The material used for this object appears to be a sandstone, which over time can become very grainy as the softer material surrounding the harder quartz dissolves, leaving a rough, porous surface after many centuries of burial.

That's my observation about the surfaces. I am not an expert, obviously, and I certainly know nothing about Bronze Age sculptural styles.

 

We just have to compare this stone head with the already known Middle-East sculptures from the Neolithic to the Iron Age: there is absolutely no parallel. Genuine sculptures show Sumerian, Mesopotamian, Egyptian influences. This one has no parallel of any kind (or maybe vaguely resembles Indian or Khmer sculptures). The technique of the sculptor is childish: he (or she) just dug the stone around eyes, mouth, ears (but he or she could do nothing to make a nose because the initial stone shape did not make it possible). Seriously, this is typical of tourist fakes.
I know them, in the Gaza ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, and the Qasr el-Pasha Museum. They are full of good will, and sincerely committed to protect historical heritage. But they have no experts. Studying archaeology and art history in a good university is a luxury nobody can afford in Gaza. Sometimes, when foreign archaeologists are there, they ask for advice, but I am sure no one was there when a peasant came to the Ministry with this stone head allegedly found in his field (with no archaeological context at all).
A few years before they were very excited about what they said to be a Greek bust. A foreign archaeologist was there and when he saw the object, he told them it was a miniature resin reproduction of Michelangelo's David, the kind you find by the dozens in Italian souvenir shops. What did they do? They put it in a display in the Qasr el-Pasha archaeological museum, among genuine ancient pottery and stone objects, with a tag saying it was a statue of King David by Michelangelo !!!