The Phoenician bronze figure of Melqart, representing a deity whose origins date back to the period between the 13th and 11th centuries BC. C., will soon be exhibited in the Italian Sciacca (Agrigento). This was reported by ANSA on May 10.
The statuette is still preserved in the Antonino Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum in Palermo.
The regional advisor of Cultural Heritage, Francesco Scarpinato, and the director of the Salinas Museum, Giuseppe Parello, accepted in Salinas the request of the leaders of the Fratelli d’Italia party, Calogero Bono and Ignazio Gallo, to hold a temporary exhibition of the discovery in the center of Agrigento.
This specimen, of inestimable historical value, was found on the seabed of Shakka in 1955 by a local fishing boat. He was caught in a fishing net. Upon finding it, the owner immediately handed it over to the authorities. And today, almost seventy years after this extraordinary discovery, the statuette can be shown directly to the population of Sacco.
The location chosen for the exhibition is the Fasello Gallery, inaugurated in 2020 by the then superintendent of Agrigento Michele Benfari and located on the territory of the monumental complex of the same name, which also houses the Sciacca Maritime Museum.
“The city has long been confident in the definitive appropriation of Melqart, which could have been exhibited within the framework of the “Sciacca Regional Museum”, created in accordance with the Ars Law in 1991, but which has not yet been created due to the material inaccessibility of the museum,” said one of the organizers of the event.
According to him, the monumental complex of Santa Margherita, built in the 14th century, is the subject of a dispute over ownership, since the site was previously a hospital and is currently part of the heritage of the ASP of Agrigento.
Let us remember that the Phoenician Melqart is an analogue of the Greek Hercules.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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