In the Instagram post, Chan, seen sipping from a mug that matches the statue’s color, playfully commented, “The more of me the better?” The statue’s design, with its flowing silver garment, looks like a mashup of ancient Roman Sculpture and the T-1000 from Terminator 2. According to Zuckerberg, the inspiration came from the former: he captioned the photo “bringing back the Roman tradition of making sculptures of your wife.”

The sculpture features a reflective silver robe wrapped around a blueish green figure that brings to mind a photoshop-smooth version of the weathered and oxidized copper of the Statue of Liberty in New York. The statue’s striking color and size led to a flurry of online comparisons to characters from “Avatar” and jokes about Zuckerberg being the ultimate “wife guy.”

Zuckerberg and Chan met in 2003 while both were students at Harvard. They have been married since 2012 and share three daughters.

Arsham has worked across sculpture, architecture, drawing and film to explore his concept of “fictional archaeology” He most recently opened the exhibition “Phases” at Fotografiska New York earlier this year and he has long been represented by Perrotin. Last month, Arsham was accused of violating national labor laws by employees of his studio, according to a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

According to NBC News, the investigation involves artifacts looted from Bubon in southwestern Turkey that were subsequently trafficked through Manhattan. 

Portrait of a Lady, which dates to the around 160–180 CE, is believed to depict the daughter of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, though it’s possible that her father was the later emperor of Rome, Septimius Severus. The bust was acquired in 1966, but according to museum officials told NBC, that there is “limited information” about the artifact’s provenance.

“We are very thankful for the new information provided to us,” Matthias Waschek, the museum’s director, told NBC. “The ethical standards applicable to museums are much changed since the 1960s, and the Museum is committed to managing its collection consistent with modern ethical standards.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which is led by Alvin Bragg, has been active in investigating and returning looted artifacts to their home countries.

In February, the District Attorneys’ Office returned a bust of the emperor Hadrian dating back to 200 CE that was smuggled out of Italy and sold in New York in 1992. In April, an alabaster female figure dating to 2nd century BCE was repatriated to Yemen, and the following month saw the return of a Mesopotamian limestone elephant to Iraq. 

More recently, the office returned two antiquities to Libya that had been smuggled and held by the British art dealer Robin Symes. They were worth a combined $1.26 million.

The video, taken on July 18 by fellow tourist Lex Jones, shows a woman in a blue shirt, blue cap, and white capri pants standing on the stones roughly five feet into the fountain. The woman is holding on to one of the large stones at the rear of the fountain to hold her balance, and she can be seen filling up a bottle with water trickling down from the apex of the fountain. 

Suddenly, from off camera, a whistle is heard. A yellow vested security guard walks toward the woman, who has made her way back across the rocks and hopped back tiled ground around the fountain. The guard again blows her whistle, and at first the tourist doesn’t seem to understand she’s done anything wrong. 

The two being to speak, and the tourist appears to be confused. The video ends with the woman following the guard up the stairs, away from the fountain. Interestingly, the whole situation could have been avoided had the thirsty tourist looked on the opposite side of the Trevi Fountain, where there is a rectangular water basin known as the “fountain of lovers,” which is continuously filled by two spouts.  

“There were signs all over saying that’s not allowed,” Jones wrote on the Storyful website. “I was just like, wow, this is crazy so I started videoing it.” She added that the tourist “kept trying to explain her side and didn’t really understand why she was in trouble.” 

It’s unclear if the tourist was fined or in some other way reprimanded.

The fountain’s water comes directly from the Aqua Virgo, an aqueduct that dates back to 19 BCE and is the only ancient Roman aqueduct still in use today. 

While ancient once Romans enjoyed clean spring water from Aqua Virgo, drinking from the fountain may not be the best idea. According to Rome Experience, 80,000 cubic meters of water produced by the fountain each day “is recycled and just for show, so don’t be tempted to drink it.”

The fountain, which was built in the architect Nicola Salvi and completed after Salvi’s death in 1762, is one of Rome’s most recognizable landmarks. The 1954 rom-com Three Coins in the Fountain is said to have started the tradition of throwing coins in the fountain for luck, but it’s possible that La Dolce Vita, the famed Federico Fellini film 1960 in which Anita Ekberg takes a walk in the fountain, may have spurred this stunt.

Since 2006, the coins, which often add up to €3,000 per day, are taken by a Roman Catholic charity and used to fund food and social programs. The wealth under the water has often been targeted by thieves, one of whom, who goes by the nickname “D’Artagnan,” was arrested in 2002 and reportedly took up to €1,000 a day from the fountain for over 34 years, according to the BBC.

While on stage, Sgarbi, who serves in the government of right-wing populist prime minister Giorgia Meloni, answered a phone call from an unidentified man whom he called a “nobody” and a “cuckold.” Later on the call, which according to a video posted to Twitter could be heard through Sgarbi’s microphone on stage, the junior minister gloated about his promiscuous past, saying he’d had sex with “nine [women] a month.”

Sgarbi also commented on the sex life of recently deceased Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, which he described as “tragic” because Berlusconi, who’d garnered a lascivious reputation both in and out of office, had slept with “fewer than 100 women in his life.”

Though the event was held on June 21, the 70-year-old minister’s comments only recently garnered press after a letter castigating Sgarbi —signed by 44 of the MAXXI’s 49 employees, most of whom were women— was published by Italian newspaper La Republica Monday.

In response, opposition politician Carlo Calenda called Sgarbi a “disgrace,” leading Italian culture minister Gennaro Sanguiliano —Sgarbi’s superior— to write a letter to MAXXI’s president firmly stating that sexually crude language was “inadmissible in all contexts,” particularly “in a cultural space and from someone who represents institutions.”

According to Euronews, Sgarbi’s loose lips have often lead to headlines. On Father’s Day this year while a guest on the Italian talk show Domenica In Sgarbi “joked” that “”girls born in 2000 [are] whores,” despite the fact that his own daughter was born in 2000.

Sgarbi, who has often been at odds with the public throughout his career and who late last year butt heads with Sangiuliano over cultural policy, doesn’t seem worried about his detractors. 

“It’s freedom of speech,” he said of the comments, accoring to Euronews.

The murals were found in the Villa of the Antonines, a site named after the dynasty of emperors that include Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Veras, and the emperor Commodus who was most famous for taking part in gladiator battles in the Colosseum.

At a presentation held during the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America this January in New Orleans, researchers said the mosaics likely date from the 2nd century C.E. 

The mosaics show Medusa, who famously had hair made of venomous snakes and whose stare could turn a person into stone, looking off into the distance. During the presentation, Timothy Renner, a professor of classics and general humanities at Montclair State University in New Jersey and the co-director of the team excavating the site, pondered whether the contemporaneous visitors to the villa were curious about what was going through Medusa’s mind in the murals. 

The mosaics were found in two niches that had been cut into the walls of a 69-foot circular room in the villa, one in the northwestern section and the other in the southeastern. “Finding those mosaics [was] a pleasant surprise,” Chatr Aryamontri, also a professor at Montclair State and co-director of the archeological team, told Live Science. Aryamontri added that noting that most of the villa’s decorations were removed during the 18th and 19th centuries.

According to the two directors, the circular room was possibly a reception area for those who lived at the villa, and while Medusa heads were often used for decoration in the 2nd century it’s unclear if the “villa’s owners ordered [the mosaics] specifically or whether they were created on the whim of the artist who worked on the room.”

Live Science reports that the area around the villa saw a great deal of looting and “troop movement” during World War II and that artifacts are often found during excavations, which began in 2014. Among the researchers’ goals is to create an archaeological park in the site sometime in the future.

The ruins of a 2nd century Roman bathhouse were discovered after plans to build a single-family home required an archaeological assessment of the planned location around two miles northeast of Yenne, a village alongside the Rhône river in Southern France.

According to the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap), the ruins were originally thought to have been a shrine or religious building. However, once excavation began, archaeologists realized they had found an elaborate bath complex that was fed from a nearby waterfall. 

The 1,800-year-old bathhouse had a large basin that was likely used as a swimming pool, a garden, and three rooms that were connected to a heating system. Experts believe these rooms may have been similar to modern steam rooms or saunas, each with a different temperature.

Another building with smooth concrete floors and walls decorated with “a white background marked with red frames” and what could have been “black panels separated by red stripes decorated with floral motif” was uncovered. While the purpose of the room in not immediately clear archaeologists believe it could have been a changing room, but have not ruled out possibilities of there being a gift shop, grocer, or library in the building.

The buildings, Inrap says, had been abandoned since the 4th century and was likely situated near a shrine or temple in the area. Experts say the site is close to an ancient crossing point of the Rhône that could have been connected to “Etanna”, a stop on Peutinger’s Map, the only known copy of a map that shows the road system active during Roman antiquity.

The discovery was made by a team from the Ain Shams University led by Dr. Mamdouh Al-Damati, former minister of archaeology and a professor of archaeology at the university.

The Sphinx, which was found along with a limestone shrine, date back to the Roman era in the Qena Governorate of Egypt, according to a post by Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The shrine consists of a platform with two levels and features a basin for storing water made of red brick covered with slate. The mini-Sphinx was discovered while archaeologists were cleaning the basin according to the Ministry.

Al-Damati described the statue as “magnificent” with meticulously depicted “royal features,” including a light smile across the lips framed with two dimples. A slab of stone inscribed with hieroglyphics and demotic script was found below the statue.

The archaeological team began excavation work in mid-February, starting with a radar scanning of the ministerial halls at the Temple of Dendera in southern Egypt. They also performed a magnetic scan and radar scan of the area located east of the Sur surrounding the temple in front of the Isis Gate.

The team worked in collaboration with a team from the National Institute for Astronomical and Geophysical Research.

The mission will continue excavation work in the area of the Temple of Horus east of the Temple of Dendera and in front of the Isis Gate to reveal the road that connects them, the Ministry said.

Basso’s death has also raised questions about the Euphronios Krater, a 2,500-year-old vase Etruscan vase that was once the property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was later repatriated to Italy in 2008. The Monsignor had a copy of the krater in his collection that, according to Il Messaggero, may give the Met an opportunity to demand the vase be returned. 

The Met purchased the vase in 1972 from the antiquities dealer Robert E. Hecht for $1.3 million. Shortly the acquisition, the Italian government, suspecting that the vase had been looted from the Greppe Sant’Angelo area in December 1971 by “a gang of tomb robbers,” angled for it to come back, according to the New York Times.

However, the copy in Basso’s collection has been dated to the 19th century, which suggests the vase may have been excavated before 1909, the year Italy banned the export important cultural items. Some have even speculated that the vase in Basso’s collection could be the original krater. The Met did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether they plan to request the vase be returned.

Regardless of whether the museum will jockey for ownership of the vase, how Basso came to gather such an impressive collection of art is still in question, especially given the investigation into the supposed attempt to sell forgeries, of which he was cleared.

“He was not a rich industrialist, a prince or count. He was a man of extremely humble origins whose mother worked as a caretaker,” Franca Giansoldati, a journalist for Il Messaggero, told the Art Newspaper. Giansoldati added that during a 2021 interview, Basso claimed to have been given the works by “generous people.” According to an interview published in Corriere della Sera, Basso’s lawyer, Lorenzo Contrada, claimed the Monsignor had been “offered as gifts by other prelates who had received them in turn from worshippers without heirs.”

The fraud investigation was closed, and Basso was not charged with any crimes. In 2020, he donated his entire collection, which is said to comprise of around 70 pieces ranging from paintings to sculpture to antiquities, to the organization responsible for restoring St. Peter’s Basilica, the Fabbrica di San Pietro. 

In 2021, when asked by an Il Messaggero journalist how he came to gather such an impressive collection, Basso reportedly said, “It’s like having a lot of shoes in your closet. Some of them were bought, others were gifts.”

According to Ill Messaggero, Pope Frances ordered an investigation into the management of Fabbrica di San Pietro two years ago, but it is unclear whether Basso’s donations would fall into the investigation’s purview.

Around 30 intricately carved semiprecious stones were found. Known as intaglios, the stones had slipped down the drains of the pools and saunas two millennia ago.

The vegetable glue that secured the stones in ring settings likely deteriorated in the steamy air, leaving the gems to their watery fate, Frank Giecco, an expert on Roman Britain who is leading the bathhouse excavation, told the Guardian.

The tradition of carving intaglios began in Mesopotamia around 5,000 years ago. Often, they were used to “sign” documents by pressing the engraving into soft clay. Across the millennia, intaglios spread throughout the ancient world, eventually becoming fashion pieces for the wealthy. The Roman statesman and author Cicero wrote that some Romans wore portraits of their favorite philosophers on their rings.

Among the gems was one made of amethyst that was decorated with an image of the goddess Venus. Another in red-brown jasper was engraved with an image of a satyr seated on rocks next to a sacred column.

“Some of the intaglios are minuscule, around 5mm; 16mm is the largest intaglio. The craftsmanship to engrave such tiny things is incredible,” Geicco told the Guardian. Similar stones recently sold at a Christie’s London auction of antiquities for between £7,560 and £30,000. 

The bathhouse in which the stones were found was just behind the most important fort at Hadrian’s Wall. The fort housed an elite cavalry unit and was decorated with imperial stamped tiles, which suggests the complex was once “monumental and complex,” according to the Guardian.

The team, which hailed from Oxford Archaeology, found 17 skeletons dating back to the third century C.E.. 11 of the skeletons had their skulls positioned at their feet. The skeletons were also buried with pottery, a customary burial practice of the time.

“These results add greatly to our understanding of the local landscape’s history which we can now share with local communities,” Patrick Moan, an Oxford professor of archaeology and the project manager, told the BBC.

However, so far the significance of the decapitations is unclear.

Archaeologists also discovered a number of interesting artifacts from both Roman and Iron Age times at the site. An Iron Age settlement included 40 houses and structures related to farming, while the Roman settlement included a cache of coins, pottery, and jewelry, as well as agricultural tools like millstones.

This is not the first time a mass burial of decapitated individuals has been found in England.

In June 2021, English archaeologists discovered 18 decapitated Roman-era skeletons, with several buried with their skulls at their feet, reported the New York Times. Researchers on the site postulated that this was a typical capital punishment in Roman times, which increased as the Roman hold over England waned. Romans had also used decapitation in the killing of enslaved people, human sacrifices, fertility rituals, and trophy taking, experts said.

Last year, 40 decapitated skeletons were found just 50 miles away from London, Smithsonian Magazine reported in February.