Votive Relief of Zeus from Near Starosel

This one’s interesting primarily because of the ‘omen’ involved in the different coverage and how it is dealt with by the journalists. First, here’s the coverage from Focus-Fen:

Archaeological team of Dr Ivan Hristov discovered a big votive relief of the ancient Father of Gods and men Zeus close to the archaeological excavations of Bulgaria’s National Museum of History at the Kozi Gramadi peak in Severna Gora, close to the village of Starosel.
Director of the National Museum of History, Dr Bozhidar Dimitrov, announced the news for FOCUS News Agency.
“It is bigger than the votive slabs found so far and probably it is the central icon of the ancient temple,” Dimitrov said.
A strange event took archaeologists by surprise while the votive relief was taken out. A big imperial eagle started flying over them.
In antiquity Zeus was often portrayed as an imperial eagle and the younger women archaeologists started commenting that Zeus had come to see what they were doing in his temple.
The Kozi Gramadi stronghold, built in VI-V century before Christ, was a capital of a Thracian tribe, which used to live in this part of Bulgaria during the antiquity. The popular tombs close to Starosel are in fact the necropolis of the Thracian aristocrats living in the city.

Here’s the same site, with the same coverage (and sadly, the same, uniformative photo) via Novinite/Sofia News Agency:

A team of Bulgarian archeologists led by Dr. Ivan Hristov has discovered an unusually large votive relief of the ancient Greek God Zeus near the Bulgarian village of Starosel.

The news was announced by the National History Museum for the Bulgarian News Agency Focus.

The archeological team uncovered the votive relief which was much bigger than the ordinary ones and thus it was allegedly the center part of an ancient temple.

A large rock eagle appeared flying round when the archeological team was about to uncover the artifact. As the ancient Greek god Zeus was commonly featured as a rock eagle, some of the archeologists jokingly concluded that god Zeus should have come to look over his sanctuary.

The votive relief was uncovered while the archeologists were excavating the Kozi Gramadi mount in the Sredna Gora mountain, in the village of Starosel, close to the resort town of Hissar in central Bulgaria.

The fortress, located on the Kozi Gramadi mount , was built VI-V century BC and it used to be the capital of ancient Thracian tribe living in central Bulgaria.

The archaeologists believe that the region was the power center of Ancient Thrace in the 4th century BC. It was destroyed during the rise of the Macedonian state of Philip II in 342-341 BC.

… it’s interesting the different tone one gets comparing the use of “commented” to “jokingly concluded”. Not sure if that’s just an aspect of translation or sensation (c. e.g., all the claims this past weekend about a ‘True Cross’ find presented with incredible credulity by quite a few outlets …). That said, it would have been nice to have a photo of the relief itself …