Antique Roman Grave Marker Discovered in New Orleans Garden Left by American Serviceman's Granddaughter

This old Roman tombstone newly found in a garden in New Orleans seems to have been passed down and left there by the female descendant of a US soldier who was deployed in Italy during the World War II.

In statements that practically resolved an international historical mystery, the heir told local media outlets that her ancestor, her grandfather, kept the 1,900-year-old item in a display case at his home in New Orleans’ Gentilly area before his death in 1986.

O’Brien said she was not sure precisely how Paddock ended up with something listed as lost from an Italian museum near Rome that had destroyed the majority of its artifacts amid wartime air raids. Yet her grandfather was stationed in Italy with the armed forces throughout the conflict, married his wife Adele there, and went back to New Orleans to build a profession as a musical voice teacher, the descendant explained.

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

“I assumed it was simply a decorative piece,” O’Brien said. “I didn’t realize it was an ancient … artifact.”

In any event, what she first believed was a plain marble piece turned out to be passed down to her after Paddock’s death, and she placed it down as a garden decoration in the garden of a house she acquired in the city’s Carrollton area in 2003. The heir overlooked to take the stone with her when she moved out in 2018 to a husband and wife who discovered the relic in March while cleaning up undergrowth.

The pair – scholar the anthropologist of the academic institution and her husband, Aaron Lorenz – recognized the object had an inscription in ancient Latin. They consulted scholars who determined the artifact was a tombstone memorializing a around ancient Roman mariner and serviceman named Sextus Congenius Verus.

Moreover, the group discovered, the grave marker matched the details of one documented as absent from the municipal museum of Civitavecchia, Italy, near where it had initially uncovered, as a participating scholar – the local university specialist the archaeologist – explained in a publication shared online earlier this week.

The couple have since turned the headstone over to the authorities, and plans to return the relic to the institution are ongoing so that facility can exhibit correctly it.

The granddaughter, living in the New Orleans suburb of nearby town, said she recalled her grandfather’s strange stone again after Gray’s column had gained attention from the international news media. She said she got in touch with a news outlet after a phone call from her ex-husband, who informed her that he had seen a report about the artifact that her grandpa had once owned – and that it actually turned out to be a piece from one of the world’s great classical civilizations.

“It left us completely stunned,” the granddaughter expressed. “The way this unfolded is simply incredible.”

The archaeologist, however, said it was a satisfaction to find out how the Roman sailor’s tombstone made its way behind a residence more than 5,400 miles away from the Italian city.

“I expected we would compile a list of potential individuals connected to its journey,” Gray said. “I didn’t really expect to actually find the actual person – so it’s pretty exciting to know how it ended up here.”