Vintage Roman Empire Grave Marker Uncovered in New Orleans Yard Placed by American Serviceman's Descendant

The ancient Roman grave marker recently discovered in a back yard in New Orleans appears to have been received and left there by the heir of a US soldier who fought in Italy during the global conflict.

In statements that nearly unraveled an international historical mystery, the granddaughter told regional news sources that her grandfather, Charles Paddock Jr, displayed the 1,900-year-old artifact in a cabinet at his home in New Orleans’ Gentilly area until he died in 1986.

The granddaughter recounted she was unsure precisely how her grandfather ended up with an item documented as absent from an museum in Italy near Rome that had destroyed most of its collection because of wartime air raids. However the soldier fought in Italy with the US army in that period, tied the knot with Adele there, and returned to New Orleans to build a profession as a singing instructor, O’Brien recounted.

It happened regularly for soldiers who served in Europe throughout the global conflict to come home with keepsakes.

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

Regardless, what O’Brien initially thought was a nondescript marble piece ended up being passed down to her after Paddock’s death, and she set it as a garden decoration in the garden of a residence she acquired in the city’s Carrollton area in 2003. The heir overlooked to retrieve the item with her when she sold the house in 2018 to a pair who found the object in March while clearing away undergrowth.

The husband and wife – anthropologist Daniella Santoro of the academic institution and her husband, Aaron Lorenz – recognized the item had an engraving in Latin. They contacted researchers who concluded the item was a headstone honoring a circa 2nd-century Roman seafarer and military member named Sextus Congenius Verus.

Furthermore, the group discovered, the headstone matched the details of one reported missing from the municipal museum of Civitavecchia, Italy, near where it had initially uncovered, as one of the consulting academics – the local university archaeologist the archaeologist – explained in a column published online earlier this week.

Santoro and Lorenz have since surrendered the relic to the FBI’s art crime team, and attempts to repatriate the relic to the Civitavecchia museum are in progress so that facility can properly display it.

The granddaughter, living in the New Orleans suburb of nearby town, said she thought about her ancestor’s curious relic again after Gray’s column had received coverage from the global press. She said she contacted a news outlet after a phone call from her previous partner, who shared that he had read a news story about the item that her grandpa had once owned – and that it actually turned out to be a item from one of the world’s great classical civilizations.

“We were in shock about it,” she commented. “It’s just unbelievable how this came about.”

The archaeologist, however, said it was a satisfaction to find out how the ancient soldier’s tombstone made its way near a residence more than 5,400 miles away from its original location.

“I assumed we would identify several possible carriers of the artifact,” Dr. Gray commented. “I never imagined we would locate the precise individual – thus, it’s thrilling to learn the full story.”