It is possible to reconstruct the Zeus-like appearance. Position of nostrils, nose, and inner corners of the mouth suggests that the mouth was open, breathing. A wide moustache descended toward the sides to join the wide, fluffy beard. Three locks come down in a triangle from lower lip. Below it, the beard is largely battered away, the tip broken. Nostrils (inner) and part of outline of nose are visible. L. ear partly chiseled off. Moustache was parted in the middle of lower lip, not quite symmetrically. The mouth was a thin straight line, inner corners preserved. A plain mass of hair swells toward the back behind the ear on l. side. The head was turned to l., the neck muscle being tensed, well-rounded for the entire preserved height.

The technique is in classical Greek tradition. Raised, sculpted locks of hair and beard are subdivided by shallow chisel strokes. The moustache is outlined by deep chisel work, not drill. The beautiful, opaque effect of skin (due to smashed crystals?) and the sculptural building up of hair and beard as large rounded masses show that this is early Hellenistic work. One or two short passages done with drill are quite subsidiary.

[According to Hanfmann:] This may be part of the colossal image of Zeus, which stood in the E cella of the Artemis Temple. The image may have been conceived as mythological portrait of Achaeus, the only bearded Seleucid of that time, who held Sardis from 220-214 B.C. The image was an acrolith, built of several pieces, possibly seated like Zeus Olympios, protector of kings. It may have been begun under Achaeus and finished after his death (213-200 B.C.?). Such an assumption would be in keeping with the data from the coin hoard found within the base on which the statue would have stood. The quality of workmanship is superb.

That the head survived in part may indicate that the statue was broken up by Christians (a possible fragment, Cat. 103 Fig. 226, was built into Church M at the AT) and had stood until the 4th C. A.D. either in the cella, or, as Butler had suggested, outside the temple. Cf. supra, under Antoninus Pius (Cat. 79).

Large-grained white marble, originally golden yellow on buried side but subsequently weathered gray. Possibly local, according to D. Monna, and similar to that of the head of Antoninus Pius (Cat. 79 Figs. 196-197). Whitmore: compares to Sardis MD quarry group A.

Preserved from mid-nose to base of neck. Hollowed on the back for attachment. In front, the original surface survives only in two areas of cheeks near the nose, curls between mouth and beard on chin, and on both sides of neck.

At back of head (Fig. 225) the foot-shaped depression, D (L. 0.21; W. 0.10), has a central cutting (W. 0.5; H. 0.02; D. 0.04) for clamp. The clamp hole is cut on a slant. On his l. are two dowel holes, A and B (A: W. 0.035; L. 0.03 top, 0.04 bottom; D. 0.04 B: W. 0.035; L. 0.03-0.04; D. 0.04). A hole, C, for a circular pin from above is ca. 0.035 by 0.02; D 0.03. At the bottom of back, part of a rough-chiseled (picked) back pillar, roughened for cohesion by large point strokes, is for attachment of another vertical piece: W. 0.36-0.40; H. 0.45.

For a discussion and literature on Hellenistic and Roman colossi, see Hanfmann, Croesus, 72-74, esp. n. 54.

Note: Members of the Butler Expedition (Buckler and Robinson, Sardis 7.1, 72) and more recent studies by R.R.R. Smith and others have concluded that this is not a Hellenistic statue of Achaeus as Zeus, as Prof. Hanfmann believed, but is the head of one of the Antonine emperors, most likely Marcus Aurelius, and belongs with the other colossal statues, of Antoninus Pius (Cat. 79), Faustina the Elder (Cat. 251), Commodus (found in 1996: Greenewalt and Rautman 2000, 675-676; see also Yegül, Temple of Artemis; About the Temple of Artemis), perhaps the head in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum (Cat. 252) and other pieces. Prof. Hanfmann also believed that the temple of Artemis was divided into two cellas during the Hellenistic period (Hanfmann and Waldbaum 1975, 74-87); this has been shown to be a later, Roman feature (Yegül, Temple of Artemis; About the Temple of Artemis; Cahill and Greenewalt 2016; Yegül 2020). [NDC, 2015].