On the night of Jan. 18, a 32-year-old Greek man went to the police with a strange object that he said he found in a plastic bag among garbage bins near the northern city of Thessaloniki.
It was a headless, armless statue of a woman in a flowing, flowing robe.
Police announced on Wednesday that the statue is believed to date from the Greek era, after the death of Alexander the Great, from 323 BC to about 31 BC.
This discovery led to an investigation between the Greek crime, human trafficking, antiquities and heritage protection units into its origin and how it could have been called trash.
Finding antiquities in amazing places is rare in a country as rich in history and archeology as Greece. The remains are often excavated during construction projects, such as those for the 2004 Olympics and the excavation of the subway system.
“This is not the first time” citizens have provided police stations with photos, said Vasilis Tempelis, a spokesman for the Ministry of Culture, in an email on Wednesday.
The Ministry of Culture has completed a preliminary examination of the statue and concluded that it falls under Greece’s laws protecting antiquities, police said. A three-person panel will try to determine its composition and dating.
The AP said the statue stands about 31 centimeters high.
Dr. Bert Smith, a professor of archeology at Oxford University and Bilkent University in Turkey, said that the statue appeared to be a small image of a goddess.
“The small size is typical of those marble votives placed for deities in sanctuaries or temples,” he said in an email, based on his comments on official photos of the statue.
“People prayed to the gods and dedicated themselves to them in thanks for their kindness,” said Dr. Smith. “Small pictures, like this one, can be an expensive dedication for a private person.”
The clothing of the figure, which shows a garment of heavy wool, is one part, called peplos by archaeologists, and it was the usual dress of the gods. But the arms and head of this image were gone in the past.
“The arms may tell us what this figure is doing and what qualities it may have,” he said. And the head? “It has been removed from the arms in the long recent history of the figure.”
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