Ancient Roman Headstone Discovered in NOLA Garden Placed by US Soldier's Heir

The historic Roman tombstone recently discovered in a garden in New Orleans was evidently received and left there by the granddaughter of a US soldier who was deployed in Italy in the global conflict.

Via declarations that practically resolved an global archaeological puzzle, the granddaughter informed area journalists that her ancestor, her grandfather, kept the 1,900-year-old item in a cabinet at his dwelling in New Orleans’ Gentilly neighborhood prior to his passing in 1986.

O’Brien said she was uncertain exactly how the soldier came to possess an object reported missing from an museum in Italy near Rome that misplaced a large part of its holdings amid second world war bombing. But Paddock served in Italy with the armed forces during the war, married his wife Adele there, and went back to New Orleans to pursue a career as a musical voice teacher, she recalled.

It was fairly common for military personnel who served in Europe during the second world war to bring back mementos.

“I just thought it was a piece of art,” O’Brien said. “I was unaware it was a millennia-old … historical object.”

Anyway, what O’Brien initially thought was a nondescript marble tablet turned out to be passed down to her after her grandfather’s passing, and she set it as a yard ornament in the back yard of a house she acquired in the city’s Carrollton area in 2003. She neglected to take the stone with her when she moved out in 2018 to a husband and wife who uncovered the stone in March while clearing away brush.

The couple – scholar the anthropologist of the academic institution and her husband, the co-owner – recognized the item had an writing in the Latin language. They consulted researchers who concluded the artifact was a grave marker honoring a circa ancient Roman mariner and serviceman named Sextus Congenius Verus.

Moreover, the group found out, the headstone fit the details of one listed as lost from the city museum of the Rome-area town, near where it had originally been found, as a participating scholar – the local university expert the archaeologist – explained in a column published online Monday.

The homeowners have since turned the headstone over to the federal investigators, and efforts to return the relic to the Italian museum are ongoing so that museum can properly display it.

O’Brien, who resides in the New Orleans community of Metairie, said she thought about her grandfather’s strange stone again after the archaeologist’s article had been reported from the worldwide outlets. She said she got in touch with local media after a conversation from her ex-husband, who shared that he had seen a article about the item that her grandpa had once owned – and that it in fact proved to be a piece from one of the world’s great classical civilizations.

“We were utterly amazed,” the granddaughter expressed. “The way this unfolded is simply incredible.”

Gray, meanwhile, said it was a satisfaction to learn how the ancient soldier’s headstone traveled behind a house more than thousands of miles away from Civitavecchia.

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