The sculpture was first discovered in 1926 and further excavated in 1928, at the site of a shipwreck that occurred no earlier than the middle of the second century BC. Unfortunately, not much is known about the wreck, because exploration was abandoned when a diver died, in 1928, and was never resumed. Many such shipwrecks are of Roman date and were of vessels looting Greek art to Italy, but it is unclear whether the Artemision wreck is one of these. The Jockey of Artemision – a bronze statue of a racehorse and its jockey – was recovered from the same shipwreck, and Seán Hemingway has suggested that the jockey and horse may have been looted from Corinth in 146 BC by the Roman general Mummius in the Achaean War and was on its way to Pergamon when lost.