Archaeologists in Istanbul excavating the ruins of an early Christian church have unearthed a pagan statue of the Greek god Pan, who is depicted with goat horns and a naked torso as he plays a reed pipe.

It is unlikely that a Christian church would have kept a statue of such a pagan god. Rather, archaeologists think the statue’s location is the result of a modern mistake.

The ruins are from the sixth-century church of St. Polyeuctus, which was one of the largest in Constantinople — as Istanbul was called before its conquest by Ottoman Turks in 1453. In the 1960s, workers building a nearby road discovered the remains of the church by accident. After an excavation, archaeologists used backfill — earth used to fill holes and level ground — to cover up the ruins. It’s likely that the statue was part of that backfill, Mahir Polat, the deputy general secretary of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) told Live Science in an email.

more at livescience.com

(Image credit: Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality)

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