In 1887, on the occasion of the celebration of the International Maritime Exhibition in Cádiz (Spain), the dismantling of the grounds where it would be located took place at the so-called Punta de la Vaca. In the excavations, a necropolis with several Phoenician-Punic burials was discovered, about five meters deep, whose grave goods disappeared at the hands of the workers, who sold them to private individuals.

But also, a male anthropoid marble sarcophagus appeared, buried in the rock and sealed with carved blocks, all terraced with clay. It consists of two pieces of white marble, the box and the lid, on which the figure of a reclining man with an Egyptian headdress, curly and symmetrical beard, the left arm folded over the chest, and something that looks like a heart in his hand is carved.

The right arm could have held a painted laurel crown that has completely disappeared. The feet are bare, resting on a pedestal, with the big toe separated from the others indicating the use of sandals.

The male sarcophagus at the time of its discovery / photo dominio público

He has open eyes and is dressed in a tight-sleeved tunic. It was probably created in the city of Sidon or in southern Italy, hundreds of kilometers from where it was found, by artists of Greek or highly Hellenized Phoenician origin, around the year 450-401 BC.

The entire necropolis was destroyed on August 18, 1947, in the explosion of the Navy’s powder magazine that razed several neighborhoods in the city. The sarcophagus, along with other objects found in the necropolis, led to the creation of the Archaeological Museum of Cádiz.

But before that, around 1904, archaeologist Pelayo Quintero Atauri arrived in Cádiz, born in Uclés (Cuenca, Spain) in 1867, and had been the director of the excavations at the Celtic and Roman site of Segobriga.

Bust of Pelayo Quintero in Uclés / photo Millars on Wikimedia Commons

In the capital of Cadiz, he worked as a drawing teacher at the School of Arts and Crafts, director of excavations for the province, director of the Provincial Museum of Fine Arts, member of the monuments commission, and other prominent positions.

At the same time, he dedicated his archaeological efforts to the excavation of the Phoenician and Roman necropolises, recovering a large number of objects from both, such as jewelry, urns, amphorae, ointment jars, and lamps that are now kept in the city’s archaeological museum.

But Quintero was especially interested in the Phoenician sarcophagi. Since a male one was found in 1887, he thought that a female one would soon appear as well.

He searched for it tirelessly until he left the city in 1939, which is widely reported in the press of the time, and it is said that he even became so obsessed that he dreamed of his desired Lady of Cádiz at night. Unfortunately, he never found her. Pelayo Quintero died in Tetuan on October 27, 1946.

The Lady’s sarcophagus at the time of discovery / photo Órbita Gadita

Interestingly, in a twist of fate worthy of a Frank Capra movie, on September 26, 1980, while excavating for the foundations of a new building on Ruiz de Alda street in Cádiz, a Phoenician female sarcophagus dating back to around 470 BC was discovered. Not only that, but the building that previously occupied the site had been the villa of the archaeologist Pelayo Quintero himself.

The local writer Felipe Benitez Reyes echoed this astonishing coincidence in his novel “Mercado de espejismos” published in 2007:

Quintero y Atauri had, in short, a dream, but he never knew he slept on that dream…. it never occurs to us to look at the land we step on every day of our existence, although most of the time that trampled land is the only accessible treasure: an insignificant place in the universe

Of course, like any good story, the discovery of the Lady of Cadiz has its dose of conspiracies and theories. There are, as a simple search on the internet shows, those who see too many coincidences in the matter: from those who believe that Quintero himself hid the sarcophagus in his garden (the purpose of which is unknown) to those who claim to have seen documents from the archaeologist where he mentioned its content and belongings before 1939. As is often the case, there is no evidence of this beyond words.

Another image of the two sarcophagi in the Museum of Cádiz / photo Fernando López on Flickr

The Lady of Cadiz, like her male counterpart, is a marble sarcophagus consisting of a lid and a box, this time representing a female figure. At the time of its discovery, it still retained traces of color pigments. Her right hand is extended, and the left hand holds an alabastron with a lid.

Inside, a funerary set was found consisting of two pairs of bronze eyelashes, five hanging amulets in the form of uraeus (representation of the goddess Uadyet in the form of an upright cobra), a scarab (a beetle-shaped amulet), and four bronze nails.

Both sarcophagi, which can be seen together today in the Museum of Cádiz, constitute the best representation of Phoenician presence in Spain. As for Pelayo Quintero, since 2011, he has a bust in the square that bears his name in Uclés, his hometown, while the Cadiz press remembers him as “the man who never received thanks”.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on July 9, 2019. Puedes leer la versión en español en La historia de los sarcófagos fenicios de Cádiz y el hombre al que nunca dieron las gracias

Sources

Museo de Cádiz en Google Arts&Culture | Real Academia de la Historia | Diario de Cádiz | Wikipedia

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