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The skeleton of a former sports fan was discovered next to an 1800-year-old jar shaped like a wrestler's or boxer's head that would have had a broken nose, archaeologists reported.
The "spectacular" balsamarium – a jar used to store liquids such as balm or perfumes – was discovered in a tomb located in the south-east of Bulgaria (ancient Thrace).
This goes back to a time when the Roman Empire Thrace controlled – an ancient region that encompassed parts of Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.
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Made of brass, the balsamarium represents a man with a goatee and a nose that looks crooked or curved as if it had been broken and not completely healed. The man wearing a feline skin cap, probably a panther or leopard, wrote the archaeologists in an article published in the October issue of the American Journal of Archeology.
The back of the balsamarium has a brownish green patina. The jar can hold about 670 ml of liquid.
(Image credit: Daniela Agre)
Examples of balsamariums with similar characteristics, such as a crooked or curved nose, have been found elsewhere in the Roman Empire and are often interpreted as depicting boxers or wrestlers.
The feline cap worn by the man could be an allusion to a Nemean lion, a creature that the Greek god Hercules fought and defeated, according to ancient mythology.
"It is likely that the representation of the athlete's cap as the skin of a wild feline was supposed to suggest the similarity of the athlete to Hercules and, in this way, indicate the heroic power and the courage of the athlete, "wrote the archaeologists their paper.
Sports fan
The balsamarium was found next to the burial of a man who died between 35 and 40 years ago.
(Image credit: Daniela Agre)
The skeleton that was also found in the grave belonged to a man who died around the age of 35 to 40 years. Also buried with the remains, the team found a blade used to scrape sweat and dirt from the skin.
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"In our opinion, the grave belongs to a Thracian aristocrat, who practiced the sport in his daily life, rather than to a professional sportsman," said Daniela Agre, archaeologist at the National Institute of Science and Technology. archeology and has a museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. directed archaeological work on the site, said Live Science.
The tomb of the man is part of a larger funerary complex that was discovered in a tumulus 3 meters (9.8 feet) tall, called tumulus.
"We believe that the tumulus was used as a family necropolis and that the deceased was part of this family," said Agre. Excavations were carried out at the tumulus in 2015.
Originally published on Science live.
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