Ancient Egyptian and Roman sculptures have been discovered in Kluczkowice, a small village in eastern Poland. Experts spent a year confirming their authenticity and figuring out how they got there. The Roman finds are unusual in the region, initially raising doubts about their authenticity, the curator of monuments in the Lubelskie Voivodeship said.
The pieces were attributed to the Kleniewski family from the village, according to Łukasz Miechowicz, from the Institute of Archeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. One of the villagers, Maria Kleniewski, planned to create a chamber of antiquities, as revealed by her diaries and her correspondence with the State Archaeological Museum in Warsaw, Miechowicz said. She probably acquired the Osiris sculpture when, in poor health, she spent part of 1904 at a fashionable resort in Heluan, near Cairo, and visited Alexandria.
Photo courtesy of Science in Poland.
But fate had other plans. The Kleniewskis rushed to Warsaw in 1942, fleeing the Nazis, who confiscated their property. Maria’s fate is unknown; his son, who inherited the estate, died during World War II.
In ancient Egypt, Osiris was the god of fertility, the afterlife, death and resurrection, usually depicted with green skin, a pharaoh’s beard and a distinctive crown, holding a crook and a plague. After his brother Set cut him into pieces, his wife, Isis, brought him back to life by wrapping him, making him the first to be associated with the mummy wrapping. Bacchus, on the other hand, is the Roman god of wine.
Photo courtesy of Science in Poland.
Experts from the National Museum in Lublin, as well as archaeologists from the University of Warsaw, have confirmed the authenticity of the bronze sculpture of Osiris, which dates from the first century BC, and the bust of Bacchus, which dates from the first century AD and, they think, is probably a fragment of a larger sculpture.
In April, Miechowicz was conducting research at the site when researcher Andrzej Kołodziej came across another Egyptian bronze figure of Osiris.
“Capturing the traces of a valuable collection that was lost years ago is of great importance for science, cultural heritage and tourism development,” Miechowicz said in a press release.
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