Specialists from the Institute of material culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences found antique terracotta statuettes and a relief while in an expedition in Anapa, a spokesperson for the institute told Saint-Petersburg TV Channel.

They discovered two absolutely intact terracotta semi-figures of Persephone made more than two thousand years ago on a swimming pool construction site in a sanatorium in Anapa, a resort town on the Black Sea coast.

They also found a statuette of Demeter, and a relief depicting Cybele sitting on a throne with a lion cub in her lap. The objects will be handed over to the Anapa museum.

The excavation was carried out on the territory of the ancient Greek colony of Gorgippia that was there in the 4th-2nd century B.C. Presumably, potters lived in that quarter of the town.

The expedition also found Turkish smoking pipes, coffee cups, old medicine vials, and a small collection of Russian silver coins dating back to 1818-1913.