1,800 Yr Old Venus Statuette, Goddess of Love, Artifacts Discovered In Roman-Era Trash Site, France
- 'An 1,800-Year-Old Venus Statuette Was Discovered In a Roman-Era Garbage Dump in France,' Artnet News, April 6, 2023. Ed. The figure was found alongside other artifacts including coins & pottery fragments. -Brittany, NW France.
Out of the trash & into the museum. That’s the likely outcome for a Roman-era Venus statuette excavated in February from a former trash heap in Brittany, northwestern France. The well-preserved 4-inch tall terracotta figurine shows the Roman goddess of beauty holding a garment in her left hand & a braid of hair in her right. The depiction is known as Venus Anadyomene, Greek for “Venus rising from the sea,” a form portrayed in well-known paintings by Sandro Botticelli & Titian. The statuette is composed of Burgundy clay & dates from the end of the 1st cent. or the beginning of the 2nd cent., as suggested by the styling of Venus’s hair. There was a fragment of another Venus found onsite & experts speculate they might have been intentionally placed at the base of the site to bring good fortune.
“We regularly find this kind of statuette during excavations, but they are rarely as well-preserved & as special as this one,” the site’s manager Nicolas Ménez, told French newspaper Figaro. “We haven’t cleaned it yet & we want to preserve any traces of pigments. We’re still at the beginning of the story about this Venus.” The Venus statuette was part of a larger cache of artifacts dating back 1,800 years that was uncovered in a former Roman shale quarry on the site of modern-day Rennes. The city was founded as Condate in the 1st cent. & had been the main settlement of the Gallic Riedones tribe. The excavation, which occupies an area of roughly 10,000-sq.-feet, is led by a team from the Natl. Inst. for Archeological Research. It has also uncovered pottery fragments, plates, coins, clothes pins, shards of glass, crockery, & other terracotta statuettes on a site that reaches 6.5 ft in depth...https://news.artnet.com/art-world/venus-statue-garbage-dump-brittany-france-inrap-2278066
- 'Archaeologists Sifting Through A Roman Trash Heap Just Uncovered A Trove Of Artifacts Up To 1,800 Years Old,' Allthatsinteresting, March 29, 2023. Ed. In total, archaeologists recovered over 40 pounds of ancient Roman artifacts, including ceramic pottery fragments & terracotta statuettes. The excavation site is more than 6-and-a-half feet deep & laid out in stages. The quarry was used to extract Brioverian shale that served as the constructional foundation of many walls & streets throughout Rennes, but it was abandoned in the 2nd cent. After the quarry was used up, ancient locals used the site as a trash dump. Archaeologists unearthed roughly 44 pounds of broken ceramics from the site, as well as a 2,000-year-old pottery kiln, several ancient coins, glass beads, brooches, clothes pins, & terracotta statuettes.
Two of these statuettes depict Venus, the Roman goddess of love. One Venus statuette shows her with her torso draped in fabric. This interpretation is known as Venus genetrix, or “mother-goddess.” The other depicts Venus in the nude, wringing water out of her hair with her right hand. This depiction is known as Venus anadyomene, “rising from the sea.”...https://allthatsinteresting.com/ancient-roman-trash-dump
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- RENNES, FRANCE, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennes
- VENUS (Mythology) is a Roman goddess, whose functions encompass love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, & victory. In Roman mythology, she was the ancestor of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, who survived the fall of Troy & fled to Italy. Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to many religious festivals, & was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles. The Romans adapted the myths & iconography of her Greek counterpart Aphrodite for Roman art & Latin literature. In the later classical tradition of the West, Venus became one of the most widely referenced deities of Greco-Roman mythology as the embodiment of love & sexuality. She is usually depicted nude in paintings. Venus has been described as perhaps "the most original creation of the Roman pantheon", & "an ill-defined & assimilative" native goddess, combined "with a strange and exotic Aphrodite".
Her cults may represent the religiously legitimate charm & seduction of the divine by mortals, in contrast to the formal, contractual relations between most members of Rome's official pantheon & the state..Venus seems to have had no origin myth until her association with Greek Aphrodite. Venus-Aphrodite emerged, already in adult form, from the sea foam (Greek ???ό?, aphros) produced by the severed genitals of Caelus-Uranus. Roman theology presents Venus as the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation & balance of life. Her male counterparts in the Roman pantheon, Vulcan & Mars, are active & fiery. Venus absorbs & tempers the male essence, uniting the opposites of male & female in mutual affection. She is essentially assimilative & benign, & embraces several otherwise quite disparate functions. She can give military victory, sexual success, good fortune & prosperity...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_(mythology)
