Headless Sphinx Unearthed

This just came in over the wire:

Archaeologists who have been digging for more than a year at the villa of Roman Emperor Hadrian in Tivoli have unearthed a monumental staircase, a statue of an athlete and what appears to be a headless sphinx.

Link (via Newsvine). . . . which begs the question, if it's headless, how do they know it's a sphinx and not just a lion?

Indexed by tags archaeology, Hadrian, Tivoli, headless sphinx.