Ancient Roman Tombstone Found in NOLA Yard Placed by US Soldier's Heir

This ancient Roman grave marker recently discovered in a back yard in New Orleans seems to have been passed down and placed there by the heir of a military man who was deployed in Italy in the second world war.

Via declarations that all but solved an global archaeological puzzle, the granddaughter shared with regional news sources that her grandfather, the veteran, stored the ancient artifact in a cabinet at his home in New Orleans’ Gentilly district until he died in 1986.

She explained she was not sure exactly how her grandfather came to possess an item documented as absent from an Rome-area institution near Rome that had destroyed the majority of its artifacts during wartime air raids. Yet Paddock served in Italy with the US army in that period, tied the knot with Adele there, and went back to New Orleans to build a profession as a singing instructor, the descendant explained.

It was also not uncommon for troops who fought in Europe in World War II to return with keepsakes.

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

Regardless, what the heir originally assumed was a nondescript stone slab turned out to be inherited to her after the veteran’s demise, and she placed it down as a lawn accent in the back yard of a home she purchased in the city’s Carrollton area in 2003. She neglected to retrieve the item with her when she sold the property in 2018 to a pair who uncovered the stone in March while cleaning up undergrowth.

The couple – anthropologist Daniella Santoro of the university and her husband, the co-owner – understood the artifact had an inscription in the Latin language. They sought advice from academics who concluded the object was a tombstone honoring a circa second-century Roman sailor and military member named Sextus Congenius Verus.

Additionally, the researchers discovered, the headstone matched the details of one reported missing from the municipal museum of the Italian city, near where it had originally been found, as an involved researcher – the local university archaeologist D Ryan Gray – wrote in a column published online earlier this week.

The homeowners have since turned the headstone over to the federal investigators, and attempts to return the artifact to the institution are in progress so that institution can properly display it.

She, now located in the New Orleans area of Metairie, said she thought about her grandpa’s unusual artifact again after the archaeologist’s article had been reported from the global press. She said she got in touch with a news outlet after a discussion from her ex-husband, who told her that he had come across a article about the item that her grandpa had once owned – and that it in fact proved to be a artifact from one of the world’s great classical civilizations.

“It left us completely stunned,” she commented. “The way this unfolded is simply incredible.”

Gray, meanwhile, said it was a comfort to learn how Congenius Verus’s tombstone made its way behind a house more than thousands of miles away from Civitavecchia.

“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.”