Police said Wednesday that a marble statue of a woman believed to be more than 2,000 years old was found abandoned in a garbage bag near the Greek city of Thessaloniki.

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.

A statue dating more than 2,000 years was allegedly found in a black bag near garbage bins in a part of the Greek city of Thessaloniki.

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.

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.

A marble statue of a woman, believed to be more than 2,000 years old, was found abandoned in a garbage bag near the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police said Wednesday.

A historic marble statue of a woman has been found discarded in a rubbish bag by a local resident near Thessaloniki, Greece.

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.

Earlier this month, a 32-year-old Greek man brought something remarkable to his local police station: a statue of a woman draped in flowing cloth, missing its arms and head. He’d found it encased in a black plastic bag next to garbage cans on the street.

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.