Antique Roman Empire Headstone Discovered in New Orleans Yard Deposited by US Soldier's Descendant

This ancient Roman grave marker newly found in a back yard in New Orleans was evidently inherited and abandoned there by the granddaughter of a US soldier who fought in Italy in the World War II.

Via declarations that all but solved an international historical mystery, the granddaughter told area journalists that her grandpa, her grandfather, displayed the 1,900-year-old item in a display case at his home in New Orleans’ Gentilly area before his death in 1986.

She explained she was uncertain the way Paddock came to possess something listed as lost from an museum in Italy near Rome that misplaced the majority of its artifacts during World War II attacks. However her grandfather was stationed in Italy with the American military during the war, wed his spouse Adele there, and came home to New Orleans to work as a vocal coach, the descendant explained.

It was fairly common for military personnel who served in Europe throughout the global conflict to bring back keepsakes.

“I assumed it was simply a decorative piece,” O’Brien said. “I had no idea it was a 2,000-year-old … relic.”

Anyway, what the heir originally assumed was a plain stone slab was eventually handed down to her after her grandfather’s passing, and she set it as a yard ornament in the garden of a residence she bought in the city’s Carrollton neighborhood in 2003. O’Brien forgot to take the stone with her when she moved out in 2018 to a pair who discovered the relic in March while clearing away undergrowth.

The pair – researcher the expert of the university and her husband, her spouse – understood the item had an writing in ancient Latin. They consulted researchers who concluded the artifact was a headstone honoring a circa ancient Roman mariner and serviceman named Sextus Congenius Verus.

Additionally, the group learned, the grave marker fit the details of one listed as lost from the local institution of Civitavecchia, Italy, near where it had initially uncovered, as a participating scholar – UNO archaeologist D Ryan Gray – wrote in a column shared online Monday.

Santoro and Lorenz have since handed over the artifact to the FBI’s art crime team, and efforts to send back the relic to the Italian museum are ongoing so that institution can properly display it.

She, now located in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie suburb, said she recalled her ancestor’s curious relic again after Gray’s column had gained attention from the global press. She said she got in touch with journalists after a conversation from her previous partner, who told her that he had come across a article about the object that her grandpa had once possessed – and that it in fact proved to be a artifact from one of the world’s great classical civilizations.

“It left us completely stunned,” the granddaughter expressed. “It’s astonishing how this all happened.”

Dr. Gray, for his part, said it was a relief to discover how the ancient soldier’s gravestone ended up in the yard of a residence more than thousands of miles away from its original location.

“I was really thinking we’d have our list of possible people through whom it could have ended up here,” the archaeologist stated. “I didn’t anticipate discovering the exact heir – making it exhilarating to uncover the truth.”