new orleans — NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A New Orleans family while clearing out their overgrown backyard made a highly unusual discovery: Under the weeds was a mysterious marble slab with Latin letters that included the phrase “spirits of the dead.”
“The fact that it was in Latin is what made us stop, right?” said Daniela Santoro, an anthropologist at Tulane University. “I mean you see something like this and you say, ‘Well, that’s not normal.’”
Intrigued and a little annoyed, Santoro reached out to fellow classical archaeologist Susan Lusnia, who quickly realized that the slab was a 1,900-year-old grave marker for a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus.
“When I first saw the picture that Daniela sent me, it sent chills down my spine because I was on the floor,” Losnia said.
Further investigations by Lusnia revealed that the tablet had been missing from an Italian museum for decades.
Sextus Congenius Verus died at the age of 42 of unknown causes, after serving for more than two decades in the Imperial Navy on a ship named after the Roman god of medicine Asclepius. The tombstone describes the sailor as “worthy,” Lucenia said, and was commissioned by two people described as his “heirs,” who were likely shipmates because the Roman military could not have been married at the time.
The tablet was located in an ancient cemetery containing about 20 graves of military personnel, found in the 1860s at Civitavecchia, a seashore in northwestern Italy about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Rome. Its text was recorded in 1910 and is listed in the Catalog of Latin Inscriptions, which indicates that the whereabouts of the tablet are unknown.
The tablet was later documented in the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia before World War II. But Losnia said the museum was “substantially damaged” during Allied bombing and it took several decades to rebuild. Museum staff confirmed to Losnia that the tablet had been missing for decades. Its recorded measurements – 1 square foot (0.09 m2) and 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick – matched the size of the slab found in Santoro’s backyard.
“You couldn’t have better DNA than that,” Losnia said.
She said the FBI was in talks with Italian authorities to return the tablet. An FBI spokesperson said the agency was unable to respond to requests for comment during the government shutdown.
The final twist of the story indicates how the tablet arrived in New Orleans.
As media reports of the discovery began to spread this week, Erin Scott O’Brien says her ex-husband called her and asked her to watch the news. She immediately recognized the piece of marble, which she had always considered “a wonderful piece of art.” They used it as garden decoration and then forgot about it before selling the house to Santoro in 2018.
“None of us knew what it was,” O’Brien said. “We were watching the video as if we were in shock.”
O’Brien said she received the tablet from her grandparents, an Italian woman and New Orleans native who was stationed in the country during World War II.
Perhaps no one would be more thrilled by the rediscovery of the tablet than Sixtus himself. Lucenia said grave markers were important in Roman culture to uphold heritage, even for ordinary citizens.
“Now Sextus Congenius Verus is much talked about,” said Lucenia. “If there was another life and he was in it and he knew it, he would be very happy because that’s what the Roman wants – for people to remember him forever.”
___
Brock is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America It is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.