Archaeologists excavating near the ancient city of Aspendos in southern Turkey have uncovered a 2,400-year-old grave that may belong to a professional athlete, quite possibly a wrestler. The tomb, a box-style sarcophagus built from stone slabs, was found in a previously unknown cemetery outside the city and is believed to date to between 475 and 300 BCE, placing it firmly within Aspendos's Classical period. Alongside the skeleton, archaeologists recovered several silver coins bearing the image of two wrestlers locked in combat, a design closely tied to the city's identity in antiquity. Turkey's minister of culture and tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, said the coins and other grave goods suggest the person buried there was connected to sport, and possibly competed as a wrestler himself, though experts caution the evidence remains far from conclusive.
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