Archaeologists excavating the necropolis of ancient Satala in Türkiye’s northeastern Gümüşhane province uncovered a 20-centimeter bronze bust of the Egyptian goddess Isis, reported HeritageDaily. The discovery emerged in the cemetery just north of the Roman walls at a site that once housed the headquarters of Legio XV Apollinaris on the empire’s eastern frontier.
Satala functioned as both a fortified camp and a civilian settlement that linked Anatolia to the Caucasus. Large bronzes from the area are rare; the last such piece was the well-known Satala Aphrodite head found in the 1870s and now held by the British Museum. Researchers said the newly uncovered Isis bust is the first bronze portrait recovered there since that find.
The sculpture was broken from a circular pedestal formed by three leaf-shaped calyx motifs resting on three feet. Isis appears in a shawl knotted at the chest, with two ears of corn rising from the left side of her headdress—symbols long tied to fertility and abundance. Fine tooling marks remained visible despite centuries underground, and conservators judged the metal stable enough for restoration.
“The restoration works are ongoing; upon completion, it will be exhibited in the Gümüşhane City Museum,” said lead archaeologist Elif Yavuz Çakmur of Karadeniz Technical University, according to HeritageDaily. She added that laboratories in Gümüşhane and Trabzon are conducting metallurgical tests to refine the dating. Preliminary stylistic analysis pointed to the high imperial period, when Egyptian cults held broad appeal across the Roman world.
“This finding is important in terms of showing the religious diversity of legion soldiers,” said Çakmur, according to CNN Türk. She noted that earlier work at Satala had produced Mithraic seals and Greco-Roman votive objects, but no comparable evidence for an eastern goddess. “The Isis statue reflects the interest of Roman legions in Eastern cultures and goddess beliefs,” she told Aydınlık.
Scholars believe a bust of this scale most likely stood on an altar inside a barracks shrine or a small domestic oratory belonging to an officer. Such portable images of Isis spread widely after the first century BCE as merchants, sailors, and soldiers carried the cult from Alexandria to frontier garrisons across the Mediterranean.
Conservation teams are now performing mechanical cleaning and chemical stabilization. Once completed, the bronze bust will join regional Hellenistic and Roman artifacts in the newly established Gümüşhane City Museum, where researchers hope it will stimulate further academic study and cultural tourism.
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.