Antique Roman Grave Marker Discovered in NOLA Backyard Left by American Serviceman's Granddaughter

The old Roman tombstone newly found in a garden in New Orleans was evidently passed down and abandoned there by the granddaughter of a US soldier who served in Italy during the global conflict.

Through comments that all but solved an global archaeological puzzle, Erin Scott O’Brien told local media outlets that her grandfather, the veteran, kept the ancient artifact in a display case at his home in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood until he died in 1986.

She explained she was not sure the way her grandfather ended up with an object listed as lost from an Italian museum near Rome that had destroyed a large part of its holdings during second world war bombing. But the soldier fought in Italy with the American military during the war, tied the knot with Adele there, and went back to New Orleans to build a profession as a musical voice teacher, she recalled.

It was fairly common for military personnel who were in Europe during the second world war to return with mementos.

“I assumed it was simply a decorative piece,” O’Brien said. “I was unaware it was a millennia-old … historical object.”

In any event, what O’Brien initially thought was a plain marble tablet was eventually passed down to her after Paddock’s death, and she set it as a garden decoration in the garden of a house she acquired in the city’s Carrollton district in 2003. The heir overlooked to retrieve the item with her when she sold the property in 2018 to a couple who uncovered the stone in March while clearing away overgrowth.

The pair – researcher the anthropologist of the academic institution and her husband, Aaron Lorenz – recognized the object had an engraving in ancient Latin. They consulted researchers who determined the item was a grave marker dedicated to a circa ancient Roman seafarer and serviceman named Sextus Congenius Verus.

Additionally, the group discovered, the grave marker corresponded to the account of one reported missing from the city museum of the Rome-area town, near where it had initially uncovered, as one of the consulting academics – the local university expert D Ryan Gray – stated in a article shared online earlier this week.

The homeowners have since handed over the artifact to the authorities, and attempts to return the item to the institution are ongoing so that facility can show appropriately it.

She, now located in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, said she remembered her grandpa’s unusual artifact again after Gray’s column had received coverage from the international news media. She said she reached out to a news outlet after a conversation from her former spouse, who shared that he had read a article about the item that her ancestor had once owned – and that it truly was to be a artifact from one of the history’s renowned empires.

“We were utterly amazed,” the granddaughter expressed. “It’s astonishing how this all happened.”

Dr. Gray, for his part, said it was a satisfaction to learn how the Roman sailor’s headstone made its way behind a house more than a great distance away from the Italian city.

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