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A new Orleans The family made a surprising discovery while clearing their overgrown garden: beneath a pile of weeds lay a mysterious marble tablet inscribed with. Latin characters, including the hair-raising phrase “souls of the dead”.
“The fact that it was in Latin really gave us pause, right?” commented Daniela Santoro, an anthropologist at Tulane University.
“I mean, you see something like that and say, ‘Well, that’s not a normal thing.'”
Intrigued and somewhat concerned, Ms. Santoro contacted her colleague, the classical archaeologist Suzanne Lucania. Ms. Lusnia immediately identified the slab as a 1,900-year-old grave marker Roman The sailor named the Sixth Congenius Real.
“When I first saw the image that Daniela sent me, it really sent a shiver down my spine because I was in shock,” Ms Lucnia said. Further investigation by Ms Lucnia revealed that the tablet had gone missing. 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 Asclepius, the Roman god of medicine.
Lusnia said the tombstone describes the sailor as “worthy” and was commissioned by two men described as his “successors”, who were likely shipmates as Roman legionnaires could not marry at the time.
The tablet was in an ancient cemetery containing about 20 graves of military personnel, found in the 1860s in Civitavecchia, on the seashore in the north-west. Italy about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from RomeIts text was recorded in 1910 and included in a list of Latin inscriptions, stating that the tablet’s whereabouts were unknown.
This tablet was later documented in the National Archaeological Museum in Civitavecchia before World War II. But the museum was “largely destroyed” during Allied bombing and took decades to rebuild, Lucania said.
Museum staff confirmed to Lucnia that the tablet had been missing for decades. Its recorded measurements – 1 square foot (0.09 square metres) and 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) thick – match the size of the tablet found in Santoro’s backyard.
“You can’t have anything better than this dna Even more than that,” Lucnia said.
He said FBI Talks are underway with Italian authorities to repatriate the tablet. An FBI spokesperson said the agency could not respond to requests for comment during the government shutdown.
The final twist in the story reveals how the tablet reached New Orleans.
As media reports of the discovery began to circulate this week, Erin Scott O’Brien says her ex-husband called her and asked to see the news. He immediately recognized the piece of marble, which he had always seen as “a fine piece of art”.
He used it as a 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, absolutely in shock.”
O’Brien said he inherited the tablet from his grandparents – an Italian woman and a New Orleans native who were stationed in the country during World War II.
Perhaps no one would be more thrilled by the rediscovery of the tablet than Sextus. Lucania said grave markers were important in Roman culture, even to preserve the heritage of everyday citizens.
“There is a lot of talk now about Sextus Congenius Verus,” Lucnia said. “If there’s an afterlife and he’s in it and he knows it, he’s very happy because that’s what a Roman wants – to be remembered forever.”