Ancient Roman Headstone Found in NOLA Backyard Placed by US Soldier's Descendant
This ancient Roman grave marker just uncovered in a garden in New Orleans appears to have been passed down and placed there by the female descendant of a military man who served in Italy in the World War II.
Via declarations that all but solved an worldwide ancient riddle, Erin Scott O’Brien told regional news sources that her ancestor, her grandfather, kept the historic item in a showcase at his residence in New Orleans’ Gentilly area until he died in 1986.
O’Brien said she was not sure exactly how the soldier ended up with an item reported missing from an Rome-area institution near Rome that misplaced a large part of its holdings because of second world war bombing. However the soldier fought in Italy with the armed forces during the war, wed his spouse Adele there, and came home to New Orleans to build a profession as a singing instructor, she recalled.
It was also not uncommon for military personnel who served in Europe during the second world war to bring back mementos.
“I just thought it was a piece of art,” the granddaughter remarked. “I didn’t realize it was an ancient … artifact.”
Anyway, what the heir originally assumed was a plain stone slab was eventually passed down to her after Paddock’s death, and she set it as a lawn accent in the rear area of a house she bought in the city’s Carrollton district in 2003. O’Brien forgot to take the stone with her when she sold the property in 2018 to a husband and wife who discovered the relic in March while cleaning up brush.
The couple – scholar the anthropologist of the university and her husband, the co-owner – realized the object had an inscription in the Latin language. They consulted researchers who established the artifact was a grave marker memorializing a circa ancient Roman sailor and serviceman named Sextus Congenius Verus.
Furthermore, the team discovered, the grave marker matched the account of one documented as absent from the city museum of the Rome-area town, near where it had originally been found, as a participating scholar – University of New Orleans expert the archaeologist – explained in a column shared online Monday.
Santoro and Lorenz have since turned the headstone over to the authorities, and plans to repatriate the relic to the institution are ongoing so that museum can show appropriately it.
The granddaughter, living in the New Orleans community of Metairie, said she recalled her grandfather’s strange stone again after the publication had received coverage from the international news media. She said she reached out to local media after a discussion from her previous partner, who informed her that he had read a news story about the item that her grandfather had once owned – and that it actually turned out to be a piece from one of the world’s great classical civilizations.
“We were in shock about it,” O’Brien said. “It’s just unbelievable how this came about.”
The archaeologist, however, said it was a comfort to discover how the Roman sailor’s headstone made its way near a house more than a great distance away from its original location.
“I assumed we would identify several possible carriers of the artifact,” Gray said. “I didn’t really expect to actually find the actual person – so it’s pretty exciting to know how it ended up here.”