Shortly after major pieces of an extraordinary bronze statue had been dug up illegally by an American tourist, Gideon Foerster of the Israel Department of Antiquities received an urgent call from a former student describing the find. The tourist, an American named Morton Leventhal, had been wandering around with a metal detector looking for ancient coins. When the metal detector indicated that metal lay beneath 037the ground, Leventhal took a spade and discovered two feet below the ground the head, torso, and other portions of a larger than life bronze statue of an armored emperor. Leventhal left the pieces […]
