The Black Vault - Albania dig yields statue of goddess

BUTRINTI, Albania--Archeologists excavating part of this ancient town found what they said may be a 2,000-year-old statue of the Roman goddess Minerva.

The statue is the first major find since the site, 180 miles south of the capital of Tirana, was opened to researchers about 75 years ago. It was found last weekend.

''We have no other sculpture so big and powerful as this,'' chief archeologist Dhimiter Condi said Tuesday.

Condi said he thinks the statue is Minerva because of a Latin inscription on a marble slab found near the statue 10 years ago.

Others were skeptical that the statue depicts Minerva, the Roman goddess of war and wisdom.

''It's definitely a male figure, and it looks like it is a statue that is being remade out of an earlier, larger statue,'' said Sally Martin of the Institute of World Archaeology in London.

Martin said the group awaits official confirmation from an archeologist of the statue's identity.

Auron Tare, manager of Butrinti National Park, called the discovery a combination of painstaking research and pure luck.

The heavy marble statue, thought to date to the time of the Roman emperor Octavian Augustus, is slightly taller than 7 feet and stands more than 2 feet wide. It is on a solid base. Most of its body was heavily scratched, probably in the 4th and 5th centuries by people opposed to praying at temples they saw as pagan, Tare said.

Butrinti has been inhabited since prehistoric times. Located on a small peninsula between the Strait of Corfu and Lake Butrinti, it has been the site of a Greek colony and a Roman city. Excavation of the site began in 1928, led by Italian archeologist Luigi Maria Ugolini.

The site was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992 by the United Nations. In 2000, Albania's government declared Butrinti's 11.2 square miles a national park, which draws thousands of visitors annually.

Many cultural activities--including the Miss Albania contest, concerts and festivals--regularly take place at an ancient theater on the site that seats 1,500.

AP

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