An 1800-year-old marble statue of a nymph was discovered during excavations in Spain (photo)

During the excavations of an ancient Roman bathhouse in Spain, archaeologists found a marble statuette dating back 1800 years. The sculpture depicts a water nymph.

The site, called La Alcudia, is located near the city of Elche in the southeast of the country. The baths date back to the second century AD and were part of ancient Ilicius, one of the most important Roman cities in southeastern Spain, Newsweek reports.

"This Roman city was founded in the second half of the first century BC by Emperor Augustus. We don't know much about the urbanism and buildings of this Roman city, but we do know that it had at least two public baths," said archaeologist Jaime Molina Vidal.

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The baths boast one of the largest surviving Roman pools in Spain, and the floors are paved with rich mosaics that are being restored. However, this fragile figure ended up in an unusual place.

The sculpture was found in a trash bin from a later phase after the destruction of the thermae. The figure was quite clean, and it was made of good quality marble.

What kind of deity was depicted was less obvious. It is a nude woman, which could make one think of Venus, but she has a horn of plenty in her left hand.

As a reminder, a 16th-century Mayan canoe surrounded by animal and human bones was found in Mexico.

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