Reuters Published
Feb 14, 2017 06:53am
ATHENS: A bird-like statuette
dating back 7,000 years has mystified archaeologists in Greece who still do not
know exactly what it is, or where it came from.
The “7,000-year-old enigma,” as
it has been dubbed by the National Archaeological Museum, has been put on
display until March 26 after being brought from the museum’s storerooms.
It is the latest item to be
presented under the title “The Unseen Museum” - a reference to the roughly
200,000 antiquities from statues to gold jewellry and every-day objects in
store and not on daily display.
Carved out of granite, the 36 cm
(14 inches) “enigma” statuette of the late Neolithic era has a pointed nose and
long neck leading to a markedly round belly, flat back and cylindrical stumpy
legs.
“It could depict a human-like
figure with a bird-like face, or a bird-like entity which has nothing to do
with man but with the ideology and symbolism of the Neolithic society,” Katya
Manteli, an archaeologist with the museum, said.
