One of the reasons for the paucity of posts over the past while was that I was in a very low/expensive bandwidth situation which didn’t give me the luxury of checking stories which landed in my mailbox. This excerpt from some sort of travel site is a prime example:
This in itself would be reason enough to visit Perge, and the many other ancient discoveries in Turkey but the added intrigue of Perge’s “Statue of Liberty” makes a trip there irresistible. Carved into a tall column, the three-dimensional figure bears an uncanny resemblance to New York’s own, including a crown and a torch held high and, as same as the American “lady,” a sword instead of a tablet of law. And, the similarities make sense because it turns out that Frederic Bartholdi’s inspiration for American Statue of Liberty was none other than the Roman deity, Libertas, the goddess of freedom. Could it be that Perge’s figure, with her distinctive pose and characteristics, became the model all the “Lady Liberties” down through the ages?
The vagueness of the date of the ‘discovery’ is what I wanted to check and I really can’t go much better than “recent”. The ‘official’ Turkish tourism site includes similarly undated info:
The roots of the famous ‘Statue of Liberty’ emerged from the ancient site Perge in Antalya. A statue that was realised on one of the columns turned out to be very similar to the ‘Statue of Liberty’.The roots of the ‘Statue of Liberty’ go back to an ancient statue that was excavated in the ancient site Perge. It was found out that a statue on one of the columns decorating the ancient site is very similar to the ‘Statue of Liberty’. This column which was discovered after the excavations have started, has gained a lot of interest.The statue holding a torch in his hand and with its nine bars resemble the ‘Statue of Liberty’ incredibly. During a visit to Perge by the Minister of Culture and Tourism Ertuğrul Günay, got a promise for lifting the columns. When the columns have been lifted, the figure of the ‘Statue of Liberty’ came out clearly.
… and a photo:
Judging from other finds mentioned on the page, the find was made in the past year, so it seems unlikely that the Perge depiction of Libertas was the direct influence for the thing in New York’s harbour. Other than that, the Wikipedia article on the various influences that came together in the modern sculpture are interesting (especially the detail that it was originally designed to be sporting a pileus, which was shot down as ‘abolitionist’).
rogueclassicism 