IPSWICH Museum is today celebrating a new piece that has gone on display to the public.Funding from the Friends of Ipswich Museums enabled the museum to purchase the figurine of Roman Goddess Minerva to add to the archaeology collection.

IPSWICH Museum is today celebrating a new piece that has gone on display to the public.

Funding from the Friends of Ipswich Museums enabled the museum to purchase the figurine of Roman Goddess Minerva to add to the archaeology collection.

The four inch, 1st century, copper alloy figurine is probably a handle to a pen or knife but is missing the blade.

Sally Dummer, registrations and collections manager at the museum, said: "It is a wonderful item and a real achievement for the museum to be able to purchase.

"Minerva is the goddess of wisdom, healing and crafts. She was an important Roman Goddess and helps to paint a picture of what goods people in small Roman towns would have owned."

The figurine is fully draped, wearing a breastplate and a crested helmet.

Her left arm is by her side and would have rested on a shield, which is missing and her right arm is raised and would have held a spear.

The figurine was found during an East Coast Searchers metal detecting rally

at Hacheston, the site of a small Romano-British town with a market and

manufacturing centre, from the 1st to the 4th Century.

It was reported to the Finds Liaison Officer based at Colchester Museums before being purchased by Ipswich Museum.

The finder, Mr Paul Mullinger, of Colchester, said: "I have been a detector

for just over two years and was very pleased to have found this fine Minerva

figurine.

"I am glad that it has been possible for it to go to Ipswich Museum for everyone to be able to see it".

Minerva is now on exhibition in the Roman display in the Ipswich Story at

the High Street Museum.