GAZA—A young fisherman claims to have pulled an intact bronze statue of the Greek god Apollo from the ocean last August. He says he then carried it in a donkey cart to the Gaza Strip, where two of its fingers were removed to try to determine the value of the metal, before the rare statue appeared for sale on the Internet. Police then seized the statue and are investigating its origins. Archaeologists who have seen photographs of the statue estimate it to be at least 2,000 years old, crafted sometime between the fifth and first centuries B.C. But they question the fisherman’s story. “This wasn’t found on the seashore or in the sea…it is very clean. No, it was [found] inland and dry,” Jean-Michel de Tarragon of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem told Reuters. “There is a feeling that they could find more and more [items] linked to the statue, more and more artifacts, so this is very sensitive,” he added.
