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.
The police announced on Wednesday that the statue was believed to date from the Hellenistic period, after the death of Alexander the Great, from 323 B.C. to about 31 B.C.
The find has prompted an investigation among Greek crime, trafficking, antiquities and heritage protection units into its origins and how it could have wound up in the garbage.
The discovery of ancient artifacts in surprising places is not uncommon in a country as rich in history and archaeology as Greece. Relics are often unearthed during construction projects, such as those to prepare for the 2004 Olympics and subway system excavations.
“This is not the first time” civilians have handed over statues to police stations, said Vasilis Tempelis, a culture ministry spokesman, in an email on Wednesday.
The Ministry of Culture has completed a preliminary examination of the statue and concluded that it falls under Greek laws protecting antiquities, the police said. A three-person panel will try to to determine its composition and dating.
The A.P. said the statue stands about 31 inches high.
Dr. Bert Smith, a professor of classical archaeology at the universities of Oxford University and Bilkent University in Turkey, said that the statue appeared to be a small-scale figure of a goddess.
“The small size is typical for such marble votives set up to divinities in sanctuaries or temples,” he said in an email, basing his observations on official photographs of the statue.
“People prayed to divinities and made dedications to them in thanks for their favor,” Dr. Smith said. “Small statue figures, like this one, would be the expensive dedication of a private person.”
The figure’s clothing, depicting a heavy wool one-piece garment, is called a peplos by archaeologists, and was the common garb of divinities. But the statue’s arms and head were lost to the past.
“The arms might tell us what the figure was doing and what attributes it may have carried,” he said. And the head? “It got knocked off with the arms in the long later history of the figure.”
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