A new exhibition of bronze figurines recovered from the sea appears in the current issue of New Findings in Underwater Archaeology at the National Maritime Museum, Haifa
Bronze figurines were prevalent in the Greek and Roman world, together with artifacts made of other metals, of stone, and even of wood. Most Greek sculpture until the end of the 7th century BCE was of small dimensions, and made of bronze or clay. As of that time, stone was the usual material for large works, but bronze continued to be used both for large sculptures and for statuettes. Many of the bronze works were ultimately destroyed, and those that were saved from the furnace were buried, or sank beneath the sea together with the vessels that carried them. Among those retrieved from the sea-bed in Greece are the boy from Marathon, the Poseidon of Artemision, the youth from Antikythera, and the two male statues found near Riazzi in southern Italy. Two large bronze statues, one of Dionysus and the other of Eros, were found in the Mahadia shipwreck (Tunisia). However, many bronze figurines have survived in tombs and as tributes in temples, as well as in sunken ships that were transporting them as cargo. Statuettes of deities such as Aphrodite and Priapus that have been retrieved from the sea were almost certainly cult objects for protection of vessels and their crews.
Many of the bronze statuettes were created according to the "Lost Wax" process. The sculptor first made a wax model, which was then encased in clay. After the clay had dried out to 'leather-hardness' it was fired so that it solidified, and the melted wax ran out through ‘risers' - channels in the clay. Molten bronze was then poured into the empty space through the risers. When the metal had cooled and solidified, the clay mould was broken apart, and the sculpture emerged, to be polished and refined by the sculptor.