A man found a mysterious statue in a garbage bag on the street. It turned out to be a 2000 year old Greek Artifact

Earlier this month, a 32-year-old Greek man brought something remarkable to his local police station: a statue of a woman draped in running canvas, missed his arms and head. He had found it in a black plastic bag next to garbage bins on the street.

Authorities called on experts to investigate the piece. By one rack From the Greek police, they have determined that the statue dates from that of Greece Hellenistic Period – It lasted from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Up to about 31 BC.

“This is not the first time,” a citizen has handed over a statue to the police, such as Vasilis Tempelis, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Culture, says New York Times“Christine Hauser. Plans to investigate the circumstances and to analyze the statue are already in motion.

Local police have transferred the statue to researchers from the Cultural Heritage Protection Office of Greece. For analysis, the piece is sent to a forensic laboratory before he finds his way to the local antiquatory authority, as the Associated Press‘Costas Kantouris reports. The police have interrogated a man about the scored statue and released him without a charge.

The Artefact was found in Neoi Epivates, a suburb of Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece, according to the AP. It is just over 31 centimeters long – over the length of one bat bat. When Bert Smithtells a classic archaeologist at the University of Oxford TimeThe marble statue is probably made for religious purposes.

“The small size is typical of such a marble votives Set up on deeds of shrines or temples, “he says. In ancient Greece, “people prayed to diviniencies and dedicated to them thanks to their advantage.”

The three-century long Hellenistic era of Greece was characterized by cultural expansion and exchange. Alexander the Great died without a successor and left the enormous empire that he had conquered to be distributed Three big kingdomsThat Greek influence in the middle -east and in South Asia secured. Greece became more cosmopolitan and the philosophy and art scenes flourished.

In contrast to ‘detached idealism’ found in the sculptures of Greece Classic Period – the fifth and fourth century BC. – Hellenistic sculptures “reflected a new consciousness of personality and introspection by showing realism and human emotion”, written art historian Summer Trentin and classicist Debby cut in 2018. Hellenistic sculptors paid special attention to draped fabric, such as the dress worn in the famous Winged victory of Samothraceand the female body, as seen in Aphrodite from Knidos.

When Estelle StrazdinsA classist at the Australian National Universitytells the Washington Post‘s Rachel Pannett, the loose, loose, draping clothing of the recently discovered statue – as well as the marble composition – the piece suggests a goddess. Contemporary sculptures of earthly Greek women were usually made of terra-cotta and depicted them dressed in tight coats.

Strazdins also thinks that the statue was dedicated in a temple. However, the small size suggests that it was not “the most important statue in the sanctuary,” she says. “It can be a gift that someone has given the God to thank them for something or hoping to get a kind of subsidy.”

The garment of the statue seems like one peplosa woolen item of clothing, according to the Time. Yet the missing limbs of the statue make his identity difficult. As Smith says the publication: “The poor can tell us what the figure did and what attributes it may have worn.”

This more than 2,000 year old Artefact has been found in and around Thessaloniki in recent years. The two decades-long construction of the city of a new metro system-which was opened last month in view of more than 300,000 archaeological finds to illustrate the ancient history of Greece.