Mystery head could be rare statue of Emperor Nero
A piece of a marble statue discovered at a Roman site in Sussex could be one of only three in existence depicting the Emperor Nero.
The chunk of stone, which is the right side of a boy's head and his lower face, is to be scanned using sophisticated technology and the remainder generated by computer to suggest what he may have looked like.
Archaeologists suspect the sculpture, which was found at Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex, is of Nero as a young boy.
The only other known statues of Nero are in the Italian National Museum of Antiquities in Parma and the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
The chunk of stone, which is the right side of a boy's head and his lower face, is to be scanned using sophisticated technology and the remainder generated by computer to suggest what he may have looked like.
Archaeologists suspect the sculpture, which was found at Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex, is of Nero as a young boy.
The only other known statues of Nero are in the Italian National Museum of Antiquities in Parma and the Louvre Museum in Paris.
One of the reasons that so few survive is because he was declared an enemy of the state after he was pushed from power in a military coup and images of him were ordered destroyed.
According to ancient historians, Nero was the emperor who "fiddled while Rome burned" during the city's Great Fire in 64AD and ordered the deaths of his mother, stepfather and pregnant wife, among others, to keep his grip on power.