BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Statues of Mysterious Classical Figures Found Near Caesarea

Marble statues found face down in wine pit

The two marble protomes unearthed near Binyamina, Israel. Courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority.

A spectacular discovery has emerged near the town of Binyamina along the coast of Israel. Archaeologists uncovered two marble statues, known as protomes, depicting the head and upper torso of Greco-Roman figures. The statues date to around 1,700 years ago and were found in an unusual context: buried face down inside the wine pit of a Roman-Byzantine winepress. Oddly, the statues were deliberately placed there, face down, when the winepress went out of use.

One of the protomes preserves a Greek inscription reading “Lycurgus.” Two prominent historical figures share this name, and the excavators have not determined whether one of them is the figure depicted. One is Lycurgus of Sparta, the legendary lawgiver and founder of the Spartan constitution, and the other is Lycurgus of Athens, a celebrated fourth-century BCE statesman and orator.

According to Peter Gendelman of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the discovery joins a series of similar historical figure portraits found at nearby Caesarea, the last of which was discovered in the 1990s. Statues of this kind were typically displayed in public buildings or in the homes of wealthy individuals. Remains of a bathhouse found near the site raise the possibility that the statues once decorated a luxurious villa belonging to a resident of Roman Caesarea.

One of the protomes before it was removed from the ground, found face down in the wine pit (at top, see hair on the back of the head). Courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority.

Why the statues ended up buried in a wine pit remains a mystery. The excavation directors, Eliran Oren and Avishag Reiss, note that the statues were not found where they originally stood, but were instead carefully laid face down and buried—perhaps, they suggest, in an effort to preserve them.

The winepress was a loaded symbol in the Bible, and trampled grapes gave biblical writers across centuries a visceral and recurring way to speak of both the sweetness of blessing and the violence of judgment. In Genesis 49:11, the winepress is an image of abundance and blessing, signaling prosperity so great that wine flows freely. However, far more often, it is a symbol of judgment. Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard (Isaiah 5) describes a winepress built in expectation of a harvest that never comes, while Isaiah 63 and Joel 3 picture God himself treading nations underfoot like grapes. Jesus’s parable of the wicked tenants in Matthew 21 echoes Isaiah’s vineyard imagery directly, casting the winepress as a sign of provision that has been squandered. In Revelation 14, it becomes apocalyptic: The wicked are gathered like grapes into “the great winepress of God’s wrath,” crushed in a final, cosmic reckoning.

Caesarea, for its part, is one of the most important sites in the New Testament. It was built by Herod the Great and named in honor of Augustus. Peter baptizes the Roman centurion Cornelius there in Acts 10 (a turning point in the early church’s expansion beyond a purely Jewish movement), and it is also where Paul is held prisoner for two years before his journey to Rome in Acts 23–26. A villa decorated with portrait busts of Greek statesmen near Caesarea provides a glimpse into the cultural world that shaped the city Paul knew—a world where wealthy residents performed their cultural sophistication through classical statuary.

The Binyamina winepress appears to have gone out of use at the same time the statues were buried, sometime in the Roman-Byzantine transition. This is the period when Christianity rose to dominance across the empire and the display of pagan statuary became increasingly fraught. While speculative, one can imagine the statues being buried out of religious caution or for safekeeping so they would not be defaced.

The statues will be publicly unveiled at the “In Centro” archaeological conference at the MUZA – Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, before going on summer display, and will subsequently undergo cleaning, conservation, and further research.

Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.

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