The colossal head (it is twice life size) is a mystery wrapped in a riddle. For many years scholars believed it depicted Dionysus, the god of wine and drama. It was only after an exhaustive study of archaeological records, a 19th-century photograph, and the presence of the remnants of an earring that the archaeologist George Despinis was able to determine that this head of Parian marble depicts the goddess Artemis. The large size indicates that the head belonged to a cult statue; Pausanias noted that the sanctuary of Artemis on the Acropolis contained both a wooden statue (xoanon) and a stone statue carved by Praxiteles in 330 BCE. The nose, mouth, and eyes were probably smashed by the Christians.