| Summary: | On the 4th of August of 1897 an Iberian period bust that is nowadays known as the Lady of Elche was discovered in Alcudia, site of the antique Illici, in the town of Elche (Alicante). Our goal here is not to examine its “first life”, the one that goes from the creation of the sculpture to its abandoning, but the changes in value and status that have affected it since its unearthing. For, if the Lady became a museum piece in 1897, like most archaeological objects, its qualification as such has not been enough to settle her identity neither her value, which have been defined along the time in a variety of ways, within the archaeologists’ world as well as outside of it. The artistic and archeological values were of the statue were actually recognized very early on. However, the “communities of response” (Richard H. Davis 1997) that she met along the way assigned to her a different and various symbolic and social functions. The article analyzes two of these communities: the community of archeologists at the turn of the century and of artists which have been inspired by their discourse as well as the community of scholarly elites of Elche which have contributed to convert the Lady into an icon of the identity of their locality.
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