New discovery: marble heads from Hellenistic and Roman time were unearthed during excavations in the ancient city of Knidos, Turkey. One of them shows Tyche.
Tyche (Ancient Greek: Τύχη Túkhē, 'Luck', Roman equivalent: Fortuna) was the presiding tutelary deity who governed the fortune and prosperity of a city, its destiny. Increasingly during the Hellenistic period, cities venerated their own Tychai, specific iconic versions of the original Tyche. This practice was continued in the iconography of Roman art, even into the Christian period, often as sets of the greatest cities of the empire.
Knidos or Cnidus was a Greek city in ancient Caria and part of the Dorian Hexapolis, in south-western Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. It was situated on the Datça peninsula, which forms the southern side of the Sinus Ceramicus, now known as Gulf of Gökova. By the 4th century BC, Knidos was located at the site of modern Tekir, opposite Triopion Island. But earlier, it was probably at the site of modern Datça (at the half-way point of the peninsula).
