A Palestinian farmer working on his land in Gaza has discovered the head of a 4,500-year-old statue of the Canaanite goddess Anat.
The head, which was revealed to the public on Tuesday, was found on Sheikh Hamouda in Khan Younis, Jamal Abu Rida, director of the Gaza Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, told a news conference.
“At first I was hoping to sell it to someone to make some money,” Nidal Abu Eid, the farmer, told The New Arab, “but an archaeologist told me it was of great archaeological value.”
Ministry staff concluded that the head belonged to a statue of Anat, the goddess of love, beauty and war in Canaanite mythology, Rida said.
The Canaanites were an ancient pagan people that the Bible says inhabited Jerusalem and other parts of the Middle East before the advent of monotheism.
Rida called the statue “a symbol of the oldest human civilization that lived in Gaza City”.
The statue will be displayed at the Pasha Palace Museum in Gaza in the coming days, said ministry official Nariman Khaleh.
The museum, one of the few in Gaza, served as a girls’ school before being turned into a museum thanks to a German donation.
The palace’s earliest history dates back to the Mamluks, a Muslim dynasty that ruled Egypt and much of the Cairo Levant between the 13th and 15th centuries.
The second story is a largely Ottoman building, according to the United Nations Development Program.
Gaza receives virtually no foreign tourists, as movement in and out of the territory is heavily restricted.
*With information from CNN’s Mohammed Abdelbary
Source: CNN Brasil
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