The discovery of a 2000-year-old headless statue from the Hellenistic period has prompted Greek police to investigate.

Authorities say the statue dates back to the Hellenistic period and are investigating how it ended up among garbage. It was worse for the wear, lacking a head and arms.

On the evening of Jan. 18, a 32-year-old Greek man went to the police with an unusual object that he said he had found in a plastic bag among trash bins near the northern city of Thessaloniki. It was a headless, armless statue depicting a female form in a flowing, draped garment.

Ancient statues have also been found in trash before in other parts of Europe. In 2023, a Roman-era statuette of Venus was discovered in a trash dump in Rennes, France. That same year, ancient bronze statues were found in a garbage dump in Tuscany, Italy.

On January 18, a man walked into a police station in northern Greece with a black plastic bag he'd just found among garbage bins in the beachside town of Neoi Epivates — and inside was a 2,000-year-old statue that had been inexplicably thrown away.

A more than 2,000-year-old marble statue of a woman has been found discarded in a rubbish bag near Thessaloniki, Greece.A local resident stumbled upon the 31-inch statue next to a bin in Neoi Epivates and promptly alerted authorities.