An extraordinary artefact recently discovered among a cache of burial treasures at the 3,500 year old tomb of a Bronze Age warrior in southwest Greece: the Pylos Combat Agate – a carved sealstone less than 4cm wide featuring an astonishingly detailed depiction of two fighters clashing over the slain body of a third.
Professor Jack Davis of the University of Cincinnati (whose researchers originally unearthed the tomb) sez of it:
What is fascinating is that the representation of the human body is at a level of detail and musculature that one doesn’t find again until the classical period of Greek art 1,000 years later.
MORE: Unearthing A Masterpiece (UC magazine)
