Return to Libya: the Recovery of a Marble Female Portrait Head at the Apollonia Museum / Ritorno in Libia: il recupero di una testa-ritratto femminile al Museo di Apollonia

The first part of this contribution, by the President of the Department of Antiquities of Libya (DoA), presents the important recovery of a female portrait head, found at Apollonia during excavations conducted between 1921 and 1923 by the then Superintendent of Antiquities of Cyrenaica, Ettore Ghislanzoni. The piece was conserved in the local museum and mysteriously disappeared in 1942, during the Second World War. It was then re-discovered in 1967 near Kaiserwaldsiedlung, in Austria, and held in the Universalmuseum Joanneum of Graz. Thanks to the commitment of the DoA and the Libyan authorities, the head was returned to Libya during an official ceremony on the 4 March 1921 in the Libyan Embassy in Vienna and today is once more in the Museum of Apollonia. The second part concentrates on a detailed analysis of the portrait head. The hairstyle, formal characteristics and comparable examples enable the work to be placed chronologically in the middle Antonine period (160-180 AD). Since a copy of this head, found at the same site (which the excavators interpreted as a stonecutter’s workshop) is held in the Museum of Cyrene, it is presumed that the woman depicted was a renowned member of the élite of Apollonia, if not of nearby Cyrene, honoured with two portraits in recognition of her benefactions to the community. We do not know where they would originally have been displayed although one possibility is the Agora and its related buildings, which would have stretched as far as the area where the East Church was later erected.