GAZA CITY: The discovery in Gaza of a life-size bronze statue of a naked ancient Greek god has presented the Palestinian territory’s Islamist rulers with a dilemma: should there be a cover-up?

Religious sensitivities about nudity and pagan idolatry aside, mystery also surrounds the circumstances of how the statue of Apollo turned up.

A fisherman says he found it by the seashore, but the green patina on the impressive 2,500-year-old artefact suggests it was discovered on land.

The statue, weighing 450 kilograms and 1.7 metres in height, is being kept by police at an undisclosed location as they investigate, although the Hamas government has distributed photographs.

Fisherman Jawdat Ghorab, 26, from the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah told AFP he found the figure among rocks on the seashore last August.

He said that with great effort he and his family loaded the statue onto a donkey cart and brought it home where it was placed on a mattress until its confiscation by the police. Ghorab admits to breaking off one of the figure’s fingers, thinking that it might be made of gold.

“I’m asking the government for a reward of 10 per cent of (the statue’s) value,” he said, hoping to be officially recognised as the finder.

But experts who had heard rumours of such a discovery for months contend that Ghorab’s version is pure fiction.

“The find had to be made public to save it from destruction by vandals,” an archaeologist who has excavated widely in the region said on condition of anonymity.

“It is the lure of profit which guarantees its conservation,” he added, estimating the statue’s value at around $20 million.

“But immediately, politics becomes involved,” with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) — forced out of the Gaza Strip by Hamas in 2007 — wanting to have its say. The PA’s deputy tourism minister, Hamdan Taha, said his concern was the statue’s restoration and its possible sale.

“This is a very important and exciting scientific discovery and we’re trying — with several parties — to follow developments,” he said. “What gets in our way is Hamas’s control of Gaza.”

Young Gaza archaeologist Fadel al-Utol said the statue, with its green patina, was unlikely to have come from beneath the waves.

“It is 90 per cent intact and was probably found on land,” he told AFP. “If it had spent time underwater, the bronze would be blackened.”

“It’s more likely that the statue was found in an ancient temple in the Gaza area. We need to search and find out,” he said.

Utol said statues of such a size are rare, although a smaller example is held by the Louvre in Paris.

He has suggested to the Hamas government’s tourism and antiquities ministry that a Franco-Palestinian team help restore the Gaza Apollo and put it on display in a local museum.

Hamas deputy prime minister Ziad al-Zaza said his organisation “wanted to preserve antiquities and the history of mankind”.

“The statue could perhaps be loaned to a famous French or British museum, which could bring about contacts between the Gaza government and foreign governments,” said Mohammed Khalla, Hamas’s deputy tourism minister.

But it is a long way from Gaza to the British Museum or the Louvre.

The European Union shuns formal contact with Hamas, which both Brussels and Washington have classified as a “terrorist organisation”.—AFP