Bath's temple worshipped a goddess with a merged identity, and a bronze head of her, buried for over a thousand years, resurfaced only when eighteenth century workmen happened to dig in the right spot.
One goddess, two names combined
The temple complex venerated Sulis Minerva, a deliberate fusion of the Roman goddess Minerva with Sulis, a pre-existing local Celtic deity associated with the hot spring itself, a common Romano-British pattern of pairing an imported Roman god with an established local one rather than replacing local worship outright.
A head found by accident
In 1727, workmen digging in Bath uncovered a gilt bronze head, generally identified as part of a cult statue of Sulis Minerva, a rare survival of a large-scale Romano-British religious sculpture that gives a direct physical sense of how the goddess was represented at the temple, found well before the main bathing and temple complex itself was more fully excavated in later centuries.
As this entry's companion article covers
The curse tablets recovered from the sacred spring, recording ordinary petitioners' requests for justice against thieves rather than lofty devotional prayer, are addressed directly in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.