Police said experts determined the piece dates to the Hellenistic era, a period roughly between 320 and 30 B.C. that was marked by a flourishing of art and culture following the conquests of Alexander the Great.

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.

An ancient statue dating to the Hellenistic era was found in a black bag next to garbage bins in Greece's northern city of Thessaloniki.

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.

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

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.