Bronze figurines of the Egyptian and Roman deities Osiris and Bacchus that were discovered in eastern Poland last year, and which were initially believed to be from the 19th century, have now been dated back to ancient Egypt and Rome.
The heritage conservator for Lublin province has confirmed that the figure of Osiris is an original from the 1st millennium BC, while the depiction of Bacchus is from the 1st century AD.
The finds were made in May 2022 in the grounds of a stately home that belonged to the Kleniewski family, local landowners. That led to initial speculation that the figures were part of their interior decoration from when the home was built in the 19th century.
However, the unprecedented nature of the discovery meant there were always doubts about this theory and now experts from the National Museum in Lublin and the University of Warsaw’s archaeology department have confirmed that the objects are in fact originals from antiquity.
Łukasz Miechowicz of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that the pieces were part of the wealthy Kleniewski family’s private collection of antiquities that were stored at their residence in Kluczkowice.
The Kleniewskis were forced to quickly leave their home in 1942, when the Nazi German occupiers seized the property and used it for the treatment of wounded Wehrmacht soldiers.
That has led Miechowicz to speculate that the figurines were either hidden by the family during the war to safeguard them from the Germans or after the war when the palace was plundered. A local resident recently also found a 17th-century sword buried nearby that also was likely part of the family’s collection. ...
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