It's a common yet delightful pleasure to find a sand dollar or an especially striking seashell while walking along the beach, but a person taking a stroll by the waves's edge yesterday in the Israeli town of Ashkelon made a far more astounding discovery: an ancient Roman statue of a woman that had been unearthed hours before, when a violent storm caused a cliff on the coast to collapse.

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Made of white marble, the headless figure is four feet tall and weighs 440 pounds, according to Reuters. The drapery of her toga and the details of her sandals are beautifully rendered, and she leans against a column. Officials at the Israeli Antiquities Authority have already removed the statue — estimated to be between 1,800 and 2,000 years old — for study. The authority's Yigal Israel told Haaretz that the statue "was apparently imported from Italy, Greece, or Asia Minor, and may have represented the goddess Aphrodite."

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The storm's rain, snow, and winds were not purely beneficial, however, as they caused heavy damage to other archaeological sites in Israel, including the Roman port city of Caesarea, which was exposed when the levees protecting it fell. In fact, an official from the antiquities authority who declined to be named told Reuters that even the discovery of the statue was not good news, saying "better that relics remained hidden and protected, than that they be exposed and damaged." The marble woman, remarkably, was not harmed — archaeologists believe that the head and hands had been missing since Roman times. But remnants of Roman baths and mosaics were also discovered nearby after having broken loose from the site, and some are thought to have washed out to sea.