Found another one from Hurriyet lurking in the depths of my mailbox (it’s a few weeks old):
During the excavations carried out in the ancient city of Laodicea in the Aegean province of Denizli, a temple dedicated to the weaver goddess Athena from the second century A.D. was found in the largest divine area.
The head of the excavations, Professor Celal Şimşek said the pieces found during excavations showed that the history of weaving dated back 4,000 years in Denizli, an area identified with the textile sector in modern Turkey.
“As far as we have learned from Laodicea, there are three temples in this 250-by-100 meter divine area. One was dedicated to Zeus and to Athena. There is a bust of Athena on a column in the temple. We are still searching for the god of the third temple.”
I’ll join Dorothy King in marvelling at the bust of Athena on the column of the temple from Laodicea. You can visit the original article for a small photo thereof, or check out this Turkish coverage, which includes a rather long video interview with Simsek and plenty of shots of the site (including an inscription/graffito I’m trying to wrap my head around). The video is in Turkish and I suspect he’s saying plenty of interesting things. On the ‘bust’, I suspect this would have been on the drum immediately under the capital, and so might almost be a Karyatid …
rogueclassicism 