According to the museum inventory, the heads with Inv. Nos 1, 2, 3 “received from Mehmet Tefik Bey. Found probably in the Yeni-Kapou.”

In the same inventory there is also an additional note on Inv. No 3: “as we were informed by the Ottoman possessor of the head, it was found in Spartis Street”, which does not agree with the origin Yeni-Kapou. The Yeni-Kapou (in Turkish New Gate) cited as the probable find-spot is the area of the Lete Gate in the city wall, where present-day Haghiou Dimitriou St. begins. This was the district to the west of the Government House, in the west part of the city.

The portrait headof a girl presented here is of a height 25 cm, including the part of the neck, and is constructed of white, coarse-grained marble, probably Thasian. Nose and earlobes are broken in part. Face is polished. Traces of colour in the hair. Portrait head with oval face, high forehead and large eyes, head inclined slightly to the right. Hair in long ringlets divided in two by a centre parting from the middle of the forehead and gathered into a loose knot at the nape. Once thought to be a portrait of Sabina as a young girl, it is actually a private portrait that in hairstyle closely follows one of the types of Empress Sabina, wife of Hadrian. It was probably a funerary portrait, since it was found at the eastern edge of the ancient city in the general area of the cemetery. It is about a work of very high quality dated to 128-138 AD.

The object is displayed in the exhibition, Thessaloniki, the Metropolis of Macedonia, Hall 1