seems she always has a mouthful
Heavy Rains Reveal Limestone Funerary Busts Near Beth Shean, Israel
Following a particularly torrential rain this past December, a local resident was taking a stroll around the northern cemetery of the old city of Beth Shean in Israel’s Northern District. Looking down, the hiker noticed the top of a curious marble-white head peeking through the soil. Upon realizing her chance discovery, the woman and her husband immediately called the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) Theft Prevention Unit, which then dispatched archaeologists to the site.
Beth Shean has served as a critical crossroads city at the junction of the Jezreel Valley and the Jordan River Valley since the settlement was first founded in the Early Bronze Age I (approximately 3200–3000 B.C.E.). Excavations at the site under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania in the 1920s and ’30s first revealed the cemetery on the northern mound of the settlement with interments from the earliest occupation of the site through Byzantine times.
Palestine boasted a diverse population during the Roman era. Especially as a critical hub along major thoroughfares, Beth Shean would have been home to Jews, Samaritans, Romans, and Christians originating from across the Mediterranean and Near East. Protomae are often inscribed with Greek, Latin, and Semitic names, although the ones recently discovered are not. These inscriptions are thought to name the deceased but offer little in the way of identifying the dead, as most adopted some form of Greek or Latin moniker. Klein proposes that the protomae likely did not mark the interments of Jews or Samaritans because of the restriction on graven images in the Ten Commandments.