Monday, Aug. 01, 1949

Thanks to the Junkman

Many of the finest things that archeologists dig up were once junk thrown away by the owners. Recently unearthed was a beautiful Greek relief of an Ethiopian slave and a horse saddled with a panther skin (see cut). Carved about 125 B.C., it would probably have been destroyed long ago by weathering if it had stayed in its original place. But when Greek civilization degenerated into barbarism, the two marble slabs were used as secondhand building stones to line a rough, crude tomb in the suburbs of Athens. This insult to the carving saved it. When Greek archeologists dug them up, the two slabs could be fitted together almost as good as new. Even some of the brown paint on the slave's face and arms is still in place.

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