Juno Regina standing on a Heifer (IMG 8708)

Date: 2nd to 3rd century AD
Material: Sandstone
Site: Chesters Fort

Here Juno Regina, one of the Capitoline Triad – the three deities who shared a temple on the Capitoline Hill in Rome – is standing on a heifer (a female cow). She is dressed in a long-sleeved tunic, mantle and apron, with a toothed necklace around her neck. The standard of craftsmanship is unusually high for work carved in the province of Britannia, and there have been suggestions that the statue was the work of an eastern sculptor based on Hadrian’s Wall.

This statue is thought to be the companion to a statue of Jupiter Dolichenus standing on a bull, trampling a serpent, of which only the serpent and the hooves of the bull remain.