How did missing 1,900-year-old Roman gravestone end up in US backyard?
The marble tablet with ‘spirits of the dead’ in Latin on it was found when a New Orleans backyard was being cleared
“The fact that it was in Latin that really just gave us pause, right?” said Daniella Santoro, a Tulane University anthropologist. “I mean, you see something like that and you say, ‘OK, this is not an ordinary thing’.”
Intrigued and slightly alarmed, Santoro reached out to her classical archaeologist colleague Susann Lusnia, who quickly realised that the slab was the 1,900-year-old grave marker of a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus.
“When I first saw the image that Daniella sent me, it really did send a shiver up my spine because I was just floored,” Lusnia said.
Further sleuthing by Lusnia revealed the tablet had been missing from an Italian museum for decades.