Roman-Era Marble Busts Unearthed Near Binyamina Raise Questions About Caesarea’s Elite
A railway expansion in northern Israel has yielded an unexpectedly refined archaeological find: two well-preserved marble busts dating to roughly the 4th century CE. The Israeli Antiques Authority (IAA) announced the discovery on June 15 after completing an excavation near Binyamina, where the sculptures were found face down inside an empty Roman-Byzantine wine collection vat.
One of the busts bears the inscription “Lycurgus,” a name that immediately opens two historical possibilities. Dr. Peter Gendelman, the IAA’s specialist on the history of nearby Caesarea, said the inscription could refer either to the founder of Sparta or to a 4th-century BC orator. “It may be one of these figures, but the research is only beginning,” he said.
The context of the find may be as revealing as the sculptures themselves. According to the IAA, the busts appear to have been buried when the winepress went out of use, perhaps to protect them. Gendelman noted that in the Roman period, statues of this type were displayed in public buildings and in elite homes, where they signaled cultural sophistication and status. He added that a bathhouse previously uncovered nearby suggests the site may have belonged to a wealthy villa connected to Caesarea, which served for centuries as a Roman administrative center.
Eliran Oren, who directed the excavation with Avishag Reis, said the setting could also indicate a suburban estate associated with the port city, or that the sculptures were brought from Caesarea itself, about ten kilometers away. “These are not statues that would have stood in a local farmhouse,” he said.
Oren also emphasized that the busts depict real individuals rather than generic figures. If the Lycurgus inscription does refer to Sparta’s legendary lawgiver, the identification would be especially significant, since the sculpture was made hundreds of years after the historical figure lived.
For Israeli archaeologists, the condition of the works is part of what makes the discovery so unusual. Oren and Reis described the busts as extremely rare and said the final day of excavation produced the site’s most remarkable find. In a region where Roman remains are often fragmentary, the survival of two such complete sculptures offers a rare glimpse into the visual culture of Caesarea’s elite world.
