Antique Roman Headstone Found in New Orleans Garden Placed by American Serviceman's Granddaughter

This old Roman grave marker just uncovered in a lawn in New Orleans was evidently passed down and abandoned there by the granddaughter of a US soldier who was deployed in Italy throughout the second world war.

Via declarations that practically resolved an international historical mystery, Erin Scott O’Brien told regional news sources that her ancestor, her grandfather, kept the 1,900-year-old relic in a showcase at his residence in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood until he died in 1986.

O’Brien said she was unsure precisely how her grandfather came to possess something documented as absent from an Italian museum near Rome that had destroyed a large part of its holdings because of wartime air raids. Yet the soldier fought in Italy with the American military in that period, tied the knot with Adele there, and returned to New Orleans to pursue a career as a singing instructor, O’Brien recounted.

It was also not uncommon for troops who fought in Europe during the second world war to bring back mementos.

“I believed it was merely artwork,” O’Brien said. “I had no idea it was a 2,000-year-old … relic.”

In any event, what the heir originally assumed was a nondescript marble tablet was eventually handed down to her after the veteran’s demise, and she placed it down as a garden decoration in the back yard of a residence she acquired in the city’s Carrollton district in 2003. O’Brien forgot to retrieve the item with her when she moved out in 2018 to a pair who found the object in March while cleaning up undergrowth.

The husband and wife – researcher Daniella Santoro of the university and her husband, Aaron Lorenz – understood the artifact had an engraving in ancient Latin. They sought advice from academics who determined the object was a headstone dedicated to a circa ancient Roman sailor and military member named the Roman individual.

Additionally, the team discovered, the tombstone matched the details of one documented as absent from the municipal museum of the Rome-area town, near where it had originally been found, as an involved researcher – UNO archaeologist the archaeologist – explained in a article released online Monday.

The homeowners have since handed over the artifact to the FBI’s art crime team, and plans to return the artifact to the Civitavecchia museum are in progress so that facility can show appropriately it.

O’Brien, who resides in the New Orleans community of Metairie suburb, said she remembered her grandfather’s strange stone again after the publication had been reported from the global press. She said she got in touch with a news outlet after a discussion from her former spouse, who informed her that he had seen a article about the item that her grandfather had once possessed – and that it in fact proved to be a item from one of the world’s great classical civilizations.

“It left us completely stunned,” O’Brien said. “It’s just unbelievable how this came about.”

Dr. Gray, for his part, said it was a relief to find out how Congenius Verus’s headstone traveled near a home more than 5,400 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,” Gray said. “I never imagined we would locate the precise individual – thus, it’s thrilling to learn the full story.”