3-021-351 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sculptured marble found in the Forum of Constantine at Constantinople, 1869. 'Some workmen were lately employed in knocking down and rebuilding a new thoroughfare...and in digging a foundation there a large block of marble was discovered. It is 9 ft. or 10 ft. long, and about 7 ft. high; on each end of it female heads have been sculptured; but they are not of a very high order of art, and the upper portion of them has been cut away. The Illustration we give represents the one which is least destroyed. From the faces looking out like the head of the Sphinx, that name has been given to them, but the sloping sides of the block and its smooth surface below are very strong proofs that it has been the keystone of an arch, and one head has looked inward while the other has looked outward. A scaly end of what might be a serpent in the hair suggests the possibility of one having been a head of Medusa; but the mouth wants the terrible expression which ought to belong to such a head...It was found about twenty or thirty yards, in a westerly direction, from "the Burnt Column"...[which] was erected by Constantine, in a.d. 330; and adjoining it was an ancient Forum named after Constantine, so this old fragment may possibly have belonged to it'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.