Ancient sports fan found in Bulgaria unearthed alongside bizarre 1,800-year-old jar showing a wrestler with a broken nose

An ancient sports fan has been found buried alongside a brass jar depicting the face of a wrestler with a crooked, broken nose, archaeologists have reported.

The remains and the artefact — which dates back to 1,800 years ago — were unearthed in modern-day Bulgaria, in what was once the Roman province of Thrace.

According to the Daily Mail, they were excavated from a brick grave in a large burial mound that experts think belonged to an aristocratic Thracian family. 

The wrestler is depicted with a goatee and — unlike previous, similar finds — sports a cap made of a panther or leopard skin, complete with nostrils, ears and teeth.

Archaeologist Daniela Agre of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and colleagues unearthed the skeleton in the Kral Mezar tumulus, or burial mound, located near the village of Boyanovo, in the southeast of Bulgaria.

At the time the remains were buried, around 1,800 years ago, the site was located within the Roman province of Thrace. 

The tumulus itself was have been around 98 feet (30 metres) in diameter and 10 feet (3 metres) high before it was excavated and contained three individual burial constructions — a sarcophagus, a tomb and a grave made of bricks.

The man in the brick grave — the owner of the jug — would have been around 35–40 years old at the time of his death, archaeologists estimate.

'In our opinion, the grave belongs to a Thracian aristocrat, who practised sport in his everyday life, rather than to a professional athlete,' Dr Agre told Live Science. 

″We think that the tumulus was used as a family necropolis and the deceased was a part of this family.″

Alongside the sports-themed jar, the Thracian was also buried with various objects including a coin of the emperor Caracalla, two pairs of shoes and a glass flask.

According to the researchers, the the jar is likely a so-called balsamarium.