Bulgarian Customs Capture Roman Statue at Turkish Border

The Roman statue of a goddess or a female aristocrat was captured on the Bulgarian-Turkish border. Photo by Customs Agency

The Bulgarian Customs Agency has bestowed upon the Regional History Museum in Burgas a statue of a Roman goddess or a female aristocrat that they captured at the Bulgaria-Turkey border.

The Roman statue is dated to the 2nd century AD; it was seized during a customs check at the Lesovo border crossing point from a Volvo truck with Turkish license plates transporting clothes from Turkey to Belgium via Bulgaria.

The statue was formally received as a donation Wednesday by Tsonya Drazheva, head of the Burgas Regional History Museum in connection with the European Cultural Heritage Days.

Under the Bulgarian legislation, the Roman statue will be kept in the Black Sea city of Burgas until the respective authorities figure out its origin and whether it has been stolen and searched for by Interpol.

The ancient statue seized from the international treasure hunters and antique trafficking mafia bears no marks from any museum, which means that the valuable archaeological find will probably be kept permanently by the Burgas museum.

The Roman statue in question probably used to decorate the forum of a large city in the Roman Empire, according to Drazheva. It is made of Mediterranean marble.

The head of the statue from the late Antiquity period was probably removed during the age of early Christianity, which was a common practice at the time.

Thanks to the Burgas Customs, the local history museum is the only one in Bulgaria outside of Sofia, which has an entire collection of ancient artifacts and finds captured from traffickers of antiques.

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