The intermittent discoveries of spectacular ancient bronzes have a way of reminding us just how much we’re missing from antiquity and igniting the imagination… This head with assertively bushy beard, tousled hair and intense glare, was excavated by a Bulgarian team in 2004, and most likely represents Seuthes III.
The Thracian king ruled the the Odrysian Empire just about a generation after the death of Alexander the Great, in an important area roughly equivalent with parts of modern Bulgaria. And this portrait, made for a non-Greek ‘barbarian’ and likely cast in Thrace (based on analysis of the clay core), was almost certainly the work of an itinerant Greek sculptor. The long locks of hair are separately cast and welded on; the remarkable eyes are made of alabaster for the sclerae, and collared glass paste for the irises, pupils, and tear ducts; and the eyelashes are added in copper.
The head was found during excavations of a monumental tumulus in the valley of the Thracian kings, deposited and propped upright by stones at the entrance to Seuthes’ tomb (photo of discovery ). The torsion of the neck and slight asymmetries of the face seem to suggest that it was once part of a full-length statue, and its remarkable condition that it was only exposed to the elements for a few years.
And I have so many questions! Was the honorific statue decapitated upon the death of the ruler, and the head reused to celebrate his funeral? Was this a known practice in the region? What’s happening?!
Now in Sofia, National Institute of Archaeology.
