A ROMAN bust of the goddess Venus dating back as much 2,000 years has been found during regeneration work at Alicante’s La Almadraba beach.
The bust is 22.22 centimetres tall and 19.78 centimetres wide and is typical of those placed on bases in Roman patrician houses.
Alicante’s Culture councillor, Nayma Beldjilali, described it as a find of ‘incalculable value’.
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Beldjilali said: “It is a Roman head of great artistic quality and in an excellent state of conservation that, according to experts probably represented Venus.”
“This could be one of the most important-ever discoveries of a Roman sculpture in Alicante province.”
The councillor explained that prior to regeneration work at Almadraba beach, an excavation was carried out ‘as it is an archaeological area, where a Roman villa has already been found’.
Beldjilali continued: “In the course excavations in a nearby area, this bust of white marble of great value was found, which must have been in the house of some prominent Roman citizen.”
Alicante’s head of Integral Heritage, Jose Manuel Perez Burgos, said: “The bust has a hairstyle of Hellenistic influence, with wavy hair gathered back with a parting in the middle following the model of representations of divinities such as the Greek Aphrodite or the Roman Venus”.
“In the absence of a more exhaustive report, both in style and context, the time frame would be the first and second centuries AD,” he continued.
The rule of Emperor Caesar Augustus saw a strong expansion of the borders of the Roman Empire which also brought about the Pax Romana and a period of great cultural interest.
The goddess Venus, and her Greek equivalent Aphrodite, was considered in the Empire as the mother of the Roman people and represented love, beauty and fertility.
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