Like other posters on this thread, I don't have access to literature on the
topic, but the deliberate burial of the "Mercury" head at once recalls to me
the burial of the heads of the defaced statues of the "kings of France"
(equally interpretable as kings of Israel) that were torn from the facade of
Notre-Dame in Paris during the French Revolution. The heads were discovered,
neatly buried in a trench and all facing in the same direction, either in the
late '60s or early '70s and are now impressively exhibited in the Musee de
Cluny. There are undoubtedly published accounts of the discovery, but I do
not, alas, enjoy immediate access to such literature.
John Parsons
On Tue, 29 Dec 1998 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> This may be too early for your purposes, but a large (and therefore interpreted
> as titular) statue of Mercury at the Romano-British temple at Uley, in
> Gloucestershire, England, was broken up and its torso and limbs used as rubble
> in the walling of what the excavators interpreted as a Christian church. The
> head, however, appeared to have been deliberately separated and buried
> alongside the south wall towards its east end. If this was not 'burial' in your
> sense and a demonstration of carefulness by the builders, it is hard to think
> what else they may have intended.
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