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

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.

Police in Greece say a marble statue of a woman believed to be more than 2,000 years old has been found abandoned in a garbage bag and handed to archaeologists.

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 man found the headless statue of a woman just outside Greece's second biggest city before handing it over to local authorities. | ITV National News

A 2,000-year-old headless marble statue has been discovered in a rubbish bag near Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city. The 31-inch sculpture, depicting a woman in a robe, was found abandoned beside a bin in the area of Neoi Epivates on the outskirts of Thessaloniki.

Police in Greece are investigating the discovery of a 2,000-year-old statue in a black bag near some trash cans in a suburban municipality in the Thessaloniki region on Saturday.