Archaeologists discovered rare 2,000-year-old makeup and jewelry products during excavations at the ancient Roman city of Aizanoi in Türkiye’s Kütahya province, reports said Saturday.
The excavations, which have been carried out in collaboration with the Kütahya Governorate and Dumlupınar University, were conducted east of the Temple of Zeus, Professor Gökhan Coşkun, the head of the Archaeology Department at DU, told Anadolu Agency (AA).
Noting that they reached 2,000-year-old shops at the marketplace in the ancient city during excavations, Coşkun said they found the remnants of a cosmetics and jewelry shop.
“We found out that the shop sold perfume, jewelry and makeup products,” he said, adding that they found many perfume bottles, pieces of jewelry and makeup.
“Women were always women,” the professor said, noting that they discovered blushes and eye shadows in the excavations.
“We know that ancient Romans stored their eyeshadows and blushes in oyster shells and we found numerous oyster shells in the shops we were carrying out excavations in,” Coşkun said.
The professor said that archaeologists discovered makeup products of 10 different colors and different sorts of hair accessories and jewelry.
Aizanoi, whose history dates back to 3,000 B.C., was the main settlement of the Aizanitis people living in ancient Phrygia. In the Hellenistic period, the region alternated between being subordinate to Pergamum and Bithynia but came under Roman rule in 133 B.C.
It has been said that Aizanoi’s magnificent buildings, starting with the construction of the Temple of Zeus, made the city famous.
Regular excavations have been carried out at the site since 1970.
Among the ruins stands the Temple of Zeus, which remains the best-preserved temple dedicated to Zeus in Anatolia, a theater with a capacity of 15,000 people and adjacent to it a stadium with a capacity of 13,500, two baths, the world’s first commercial stock market building, a columnaded street and five bridges, two of which still stand over Kocaçay creek.