Harvard Team Unearths 2,500-Year-Old Statue at Ancient Sardis in Turkiye

Researchers with the Harvard–Cornell Archaeological Exploration of Sardis (AES) have unearthed a larger-than-life statue nearly 2,500 years old at Sardis, Turkiye. "It is very rare to find such monumental sculptures of this period anywhere in the Mediterranean, and this exceptionally well-preserved, unique monument casts important new light on the major arts of Lydia and on the Lydians’ ties to their own past," said Nicholas Cahill, AES field director and professor of Greek and Roman art and archaeology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Turkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Harvard Art Museums sponsor the dig; Sardis was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site last year.

Researchers made the discovery in late May while examining a Roman colonnaded avenue, where the statue had been broken in two and reused, face down, as paving stones. "Is this archaic? Maybe not, it looks a little later. Is it a guy? Is it a girl?" recalled Susanne Ebbinghaus, the George M.A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art at Harvard Art Museums. "When they started cleaning the soil around the head, we saw he had sideburns, so that question was settled," she said.

The Lydian Empire ruled western Turkiye from about the mid-7th to mid-6th century B.C., leaving little written record; its capital, Sardis, was a center for luxury and culture. James McCurley, a Harvard Classics and Physics student on the dig, called it the highlight of his summer: "Discovering that the statue was not only well-preserved but almost intact and 2,500 years old was a wonderful surprise." Conservators lifted the two pieces from the ground on July 13 for lab analysis.

The statue stands over 7 feet (2.1 meters) tall, wearing a chiton, or tunic, a diagonally wrapped mantle and a distinctive garment with fine horizontal folds. "The surprising thing about this piece is that it has some features that haven’t been seen on sculpture like that... the drapery underneath, the distinctive horizontal patterning," said Bahadir Yildirim, Sardis expedition administrator at Harvard Art Museums. Its stance, hairstyle and dress resemble archaic Greek sculpture from the 6th century B.C., but prominent veins point to a later date, likely 470s-450s B.C., when Sardis was a provincial center under Achaemenid Persian rule — though it shows no Persian influence.

One possibility is that it stood at the sanctuary of Cybele, the native mother goddess — never found archaeologically but described in ancient sources as one of Sardis’s most important sanctuaries. Wealthy citizens or political leaders commonly placed a likeness of themselves near a deity to worship in perpetuity and draw legitimacy from the association.