Ancient Roman Tombstone Uncovered in New Orleans Yard Placed by US Soldier's Descendant

This historic Roman memorial stone recently discovered in a back yard in New Orleans was evidently inherited and left there by the heir of a US soldier who was deployed in Italy during the World War II.

In statements that practically resolved an international historical mystery, Erin Scott O’Brien informed area journalists that her grandfather, her grandfather, stored the 1,900-year-old relic in a display case at his dwelling in New Orleans’ Gentilly district until he died in 1986.

O’Brien said she was not sure precisely how the soldier ended up with an object reported missing from an Italian museum near Rome that misplaced most of its collection because of wartime air raids. However the soldier fought in Italy with the American military throughout the conflict, married his wife Adele there, and went back to New Orleans to work as a singing instructor, she recalled.

It was also not uncommon for military personnel who were in Europe throughout the global conflict to return with mementos.

“I just thought it was a piece of art,” she stated. “I didn’t realize it was an ancient … artifact.”

In any event, what O’Brien initially thought was a nondescript marble piece was eventually handed down to her after her grandfather’s passing, and she put it as a yard ornament in the garden of a residence she acquired in the city’s Carrollton neighborhood in 2003. O’Brien forgot to remove the artifact with her when she sold the house in 2018 to a pair who found the object in March while clearing away brush.

The pair – scholar Daniella Santoro of the university and her husband, her spouse – understood the artifact had an writing in Latin. They consulted researchers who determined the object was a tombstone dedicated to a approximately ancient Roman seafarer and serviceman named Sextus Congenius Verus.

Moreover, the researchers learned, the grave marker fit the details of one documented as absent from the municipal museum of the Italian city, near where it had originally been found, as an involved researcher – UNO expert the archaeologist – explained in a column released online Monday.

Santoro and Lorenz have since handed over the artifact to the FBI’s art crime team, and plans to return the relic to the Civitavecchia museum are under way so that museum can properly display it.

She, now located in the New Orleans area of Metairie, said she recalled her ancestor’s curious relic again after Gray’s column had been reported from the worldwide outlets. She said she contacted a news outlet after a discussion from her ex-husband, who shared that he had read a article about the artifact that her ancestor had once possessed – and that it in fact proved to be a item from one of the world’s great classical civilizations.

“We were utterly amazed,” the granddaughter expressed. “The way this unfolded is simply incredible.”

The archaeologist, however, said it was a satisfaction to learn how the ancient soldier’s tombstone ended up near a house more than 5,400 miles away from its original location.

“I assumed we would identify several possible carriers of the artifact,” the archaeologist stated. “I didn’t really expect to actually find the actual person – so it’s pretty exciting to know how it ended up here.”