Vintage Roman Tombstone Found in NOLA Yard Deposited by American Serviceman's Heir

The old Roman memorial stone just uncovered in a lawn in New Orleans seems to have been passed down and placed there by the female descendant of a military man who fought in Italy in the World War II.

In statements that nearly unraveled an worldwide ancient riddle, the granddaughter informed area journalists that her grandfather, her grandfather, stored the 1,900-year-old item in a cabinet at his dwelling in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood prior to his passing in 1986.

The granddaughter recounted she was not sure the way the soldier ended up with an object reported missing from an museum in Italy near Rome that misplaced a large part of its holdings during wartime air raids. However her grandfather was stationed in Italy with the American military throughout the conflict, married his wife Adele there, and returned to New Orleans to build a profession as a singing instructor, the descendant explained.

It was fairly common for military personnel who were in Europe throughout the global conflict to come home with souvenirs.

“I just thought it was a piece of art,” O’Brien said. “I was unaware it was a millennia-old … historical object.”

Regardless, what O’Brien initially thought was a unremarkable marble piece turned out to be passed down to her after the veteran’s demise, and she put it as a yard ornament in the garden of a house she bought in the city’s Carrollton area in 2003. The heir overlooked to retrieve the item with her when she sold the house in 2018 to a couple who uncovered the stone in March while removing overgrowth.

The pair – scholar the anthropologist of Tulane University and her husband, Aaron Lorenz – recognized the artifact had an inscription in Latin. They sought advice from scholars who determined the item was a grave marker dedicated to a approximately ancient Roman seafarer and serviceman named Sextus Congenius Verus.

Moreover, the team found out, the headstone corresponded to the description of one reported missing from the city museum of Civitavecchia, Italy, near where it had initially uncovered, as one of the consulting academics – University of New Orleans archaeologist D Ryan Gray – wrote in a publication published online earlier this week.

The couple have since turned the headstone over to the FBI’s art crime team, and plans to repatriate the item to the institution are ongoing so that institution can exhibit correctly it.

O’Brien, who resides in the New Orleans area of Metairie suburb, said she thought about her ancestor’s curious relic again after the publication had been reported from the worldwide outlets. She said she contacted local media after a discussion from her ex-husband, who informed her that he had read a news story about the object that her grandfather had once had – and that it truly was to be a artifact from one of the planet’s ancient cultures.

“We were in shock about it,” the granddaughter expressed. “It’s astonishing how this all happened.”

The archaeologist, however, said it was a comfort to learn how the Roman sailor’s tombstone ended up near a house more than 5,400 miles away from Civitavecchia.

“I expected we would compile a list of potential individuals connected to its journey,” Dr. Gray commented. “I didn’t anticipate discovering the exact heir – making it exhilarating to uncover the truth.”