A fragment of an idol of the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor was found at a Spanish settlement dating back 2,700 years in Salamanca. Hathor was worshiped as a consort of several male Egyptian deities and the mother of their sons. She is also symbolically the mother of the Egyptian pharaohs who were the earthly representatives of the gods.

The archaeologists who discovered the fragment are Antonio Blanco and Juan Jesús Padilla, researchers from the University of Salamanca. The excavation took place on the Cerro de San Vicente, a settlement that archaeologists have been studying for 30 years.

It remains a mystery how the Egyptian artifact ended up in Spain. The Egypt’s Sunken Cities exhibit that was featured at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2019 demonstrated that religious objects from Italy, Persia and other distant places were found in Egypt. This proves that there was a lot of cross-cultural travel in the ancient world so it’s not that surprising to find an Egyptian artifact in Spain. The exhibit also pointed out that there was a lot of deity-sharing among the ancient peoples. The same god could go by several different names depending on which county you were in.