A rare six foot bronze statue of the Greek God Apollo has been found by a fisherman in the Gaza Strip.
A local fisherman “caught” the 500kg statue on the seabed last August and brought it home apparently unaware of its value. It soon appeared on the auction site eBay with a $500,000 (£300,000) price tag, but was seized by Hamas officials before it could be inspected by historians and archaeologists.
From the few blurred photos that appeared online, archaeologists say that the statue was probably around 2,000 years old, cast between 500 and 100 BC.
Jean-Michel de Tarragon, a historian with the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem told Reuters:
“It’s unique. In some ways I would say it is priceless. It’s like people asking what is the price of the painting La Gioconda (the Mona Lisa) in the Louvre museum. There is no price…It’s unique.”
Hamas have said that they are “investigating the affair”, and the statue will not be shown to the public until the investigation is complete.