Almost 8,000 years old: Sensational find in Bavaria - Unique figure poses a mystery

Created: 07/14/2022, 07:37

By: Dirk Walter

Much attention to a small figure: restorer Clemens Köhler with the "water goddess".

© Marcus sleep

Archaeologists have found a unique figure made of baked clay near Schweinfurt.

She is almost 3000 years old.

They baptized her "the water goddess".

Schweinfurt/Munich – Wearing white gloves, Clemens Köhler, restorer at the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, takes a small clay figure from the display case and holds it out to the photographers.

"So much attention," he says.

"I'm really intimidated." What Köhler is holding in his hand is 19 centimeters tall, delicately worked out of clay: a statuette that still poses many mysteries.

Sensational find in Franconia: "We call her water goddess"

It was found by archaeologists in Mönchstockheim in the Schweinfurt district in March 2021.

A bypass is to be built there, the excavation took place beforehand as planned.

The figure lay in a kind of water hole that must have dried up a long time ago.

"We call her the water goddess," says the head of the Monuments Office, Matthias Pfeil.

"The condition is excellent," says restorer Köhler.

"The figure is intact" - meaning: it is preserved in one piece.

By the way: Our Bayern newsletter informs you about all the important stories from Bavaria.

Sign up here.

Only the legs and the front of the upper body are missing.

This actually leaves open whether it is a man or a woman.

A charred grain of grain and a piece of charcoal were found right next to it - organic material that could be analyzed using the radiocarbon method.

Therefore, the scientist Stefanie Berg assumes that the figure was created between the 8th and 6th centuries BC.

Nearly 8,000-year-old Iron Age figure found: "Museums will clamor for it"

It's her job now to screen the character.

Berg first thought of an origin from the Black Sea region in present-day Bulgaria, because similarly made figures were found there that are much older: almost 8000 years old.

However, radiocarbon dating corrected this assumption - it is now assumed that the water goddess came from the Hallstatt period.

So the Older Iron Age between 800 and 450 BC.

called.

In addition to the figure, the archaeologists also found shards, bone pottery tools and a very unusual inwardly curved clay stamp, which may have been used to stamp bread in the past.

Maybe - you don't know exactly.

What is also still unclear is the ownership situation: According to the current Bavarian rule, a find belongs 50 percent to the landowner and 50 percent to the finder.

The finder is the state office, but the land used to belong to a private individual.

The clarification is ongoing, but Bavaria wants to change the law so that excavation tourism is prevented.

However, the plan comes too late for the “water goddess”.

It is unclear where the figure will be exhibited.

It will probably remain in the region - the Franconians have recently been jealously guarding that their cultural assets stay where they are and do not end up in Munich.

Science Minister Markus Blume (CSU) avoids making a clear statement on this.

Just this much: "The museums will be keen on it."