Each statue weighs about 60 kilograms and is 55 centimeters tall.

By TPS

Two intact marble busts dating back roughly 1,700 years have been uncovered in what Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists described as a rare and unexpected discovery from the Roman period.

The statues, known as protomes, show a human bearded head and upper torso and appear to depict historical figures from the Greco-Roman world.

One of them bears a Greek inscription of the name “Lycurgus,” according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime find, very rare, insanely exciting. All the young and veteran staff members were excited,” excavation director Avishag Reiss told The Press Service of Israel.

“In the last 30 years, nothing on this scale, at this level of preservation, has been found. The excitement is tremendous. It is rare. For 1,700 years they were preserved in the ground and no one found them,” she added.

The discovery was unusual not only because of the condition of the statues but also because of where they were found.

According to Reiss, the statues were not uncovered where they originally stood.

Instead, they had been carefully placed face down inside a Roman-Byzantine winepress pit near the coastal town of Binyamina.

The pit appears to have been used for hiding or storing the statues after the winepress was no longer in use, though the reason remains unclear, Reiss said.

“It is strange that it was found in a winepress, and the way they were buried is strange. Perhaps they were hidden,” Reiss said, explaining that marble was sometimes stolen to be used for other purposes.

Each statue weighs about 60 kilograms and is 55 centimeters tall.

Reiss said they may have been placed at a luxurious Roman villa, as the site is located on what was once a main Roman road leading to Caesarea, the region’s ancient port.

During the Roman period, statues of this type appeared in both public buildings and elite private homes, Reiss said.

They reflected an effort by wealthy patrons to connect themselves to the cultural and intellectual world of classical antiquity.

The statues were found during an archaeological excavation carried out before construction work for a railway project.

“The workers noticed something unusual and shiny protruding from the soil during the excavation,” Reiss said.

“Suddenly, we saw that this was marble. Then, slowly, slowly, the two statues were revealed. I can’t describe the excitement.”

The statues will be presented to the public at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv.

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The Statue of Liberty was hit several times during a severe lightning storm in New York City on Wednesday.

The post WATCH: No statue is safe as lightning lashes Lady Liberty appeared first on World Israel News.

Trump has often shown his admiration for Andrew Jackson.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday night to condemn the protesters who attempted to topple a statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square and defaced the exterior of St. John’s Church in Washington.

“Numerous people arrested in D.C. for the disgraceful vandalism, in Lafayette Park, of the magnificent Statue of Andrew Jackson, in addition to the exterior defacing of St. John’s Church across the street,” Trump tweeted. “10 years in prison under the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act. Beware!”

On Monday, protesters attempted to square off Lafayette Square in an act of defiance, similar to CHAZ set up in Seattle, and spray painted “BHAZ,” an acronym for “Black House Autonomous Zone.”

The protesters also broke past a 6-foot-tall metal fence surrounding the statue of Jackson, doused its base with yellow paint, and attached ropes and cords around the statue.

Police quickly intervened to disperse the crowd before they could manage to take down the statue of the seventh president.

Trump has often shown his admiration for Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845).

Jackson was responsible for removing Native Americans from the southeast in order to clear the land for plantations run on slave labor. The forced re-locations, known as the “Trail of Tears,” violently uprooted thousands of Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Native Americans from their ancestral homes.

Shortly after taking office, Trump placed a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office. On May 15, 2017,  Trump visited Jackson’s Tennessee plantation to commemorate the 250th birthday of the former president.

“From poverty and obscurity, Jackson rose to glory and greatness first as a military leader, and then as the seventh President of the United States with courage,” Trump said at the time.

“He did it with courage, with grit, and with a patriotic heart. And by the way, he was one of our great presidents.”

“We must all remember Jackson’s words: that in ‘the planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer,’ we will find muscle and bone of our country. So true. So true,” he said.

Trump has made it one of his goals to bring back manufacturing to the U.S. that has gone overseas.

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 During colonization, the native population declined dramatically through slavery and frontier wars.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

The targeting of historical statues and place names in the wake of the George Floyd shooting has become a global phenomenon.

On Wednesday, Australian MP Lidia Thorpe suggested the territories of Victoria and Queensland be renamed because of their links to British colonialism.

“Given we’re all talking about the colonial past and how everything’s named as a result of the invasion of this country, why wouldn’t we negotiate?” Thorpe told news.com.au.

“It may be that it stays the same. But why wouldn’t we put that on the table? Maybe we need to be making decisions, changing place names, state names, and anything else that causes harm.”

In 1851, Queen Victoria was honored by having a territory named after her, and similarly in 1859 Queensland was named in her honor after she gave the territory permission to separate itself from New South Wales.

The colonization of Australia began 18 years after British naval captain James Cook discovered the continent and claimed it for the monarchy in 1770. During colonization, the native population declined dramatically through slavery and frontier wars. Bounties were offered for dead aborigines.

Meanwhile, statues of Cook and other historical figures with alleged links to slavery are being defaced and toppled throughout the country, such as of John Batman, a bounty hunter in the 1820s who led massacres against aboriginals.

However, Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended Cook’s legacy by saying he had no links to slavery.

“When you’re talking about someone like Captain James Cook, in his time he was one of the most enlightened persons on these issues,” Morrison told Sydney’s 2GB radio station on Thursday.

“Australia when it was founded as a settlement, as New South Wales, was on the basis that there be no slavery. While slave ships continued to travel around the world when Australia was established, yes sure, it was a pretty brutal settlement… but there was no slavery in Australia,” he said.

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A church in Alexandria, Virginia is taking down a plaque marking the pew where the first president of the United States sat because it makes some people “feel unsafe.”

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