“We have searched by land, sea and air, and we have not found anything like it,” explain CSIC archaeologists Esther Rodríguez and Sebastián Celestino about the bronze chariot that they have just unearthed in the Tartessian site of Turuñuelo de Guareña, in Badajoz, where an impressive monumental building from 2,500 years ago is being excavated. It is half of a votive chariot, that is, used for some type of ceremony or ritual, which preserves perfectly recognizable, on the sides, the figures of two griffins (mythological animals half lion, half eagle, whose origin can be traced back to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia); on the front, an Achelous (the river god of the same name, one of the oldest and most powerful water spirits in Greek mythology) and has two more figures, probably two Atlanteans, holding the whole.
Continue reading