NEW ORLEANS — NEW ORLEANS (AP) \u2014 A New Orleans family cleaning up their overgrown backyard made an extremely unusual find: Under the weeds was a mysterious marble tablet with Latin characters that included the phrase \u201cspirits of the dead.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe fact that it was in Latin that really just gave us pause, right?\u201d said Daniella Santoro, a Tulane University anthropologist. \u201cI mean, you see something like that and you say, \u2018Okay, this is not an ordinary thing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Intrigued and slightly alarmed, Santoro reached out to her classical archaeologist colleague Susann Lusnia, who quickly realized that the slab was the 1,900-year-old grave marker of a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I first saw the image that Daniella sent me, it really did send a shiver up my spine because I was just floored,\u201d Lusnia said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Further sleuthing by Lusnia revealed the tablet had been missing from an Italian museum for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sextus Congenius Verus had died at age 42, of unknown causes, after serving for more than two decades in the imperial navy on a ship named for the Roman god of medicine, Asclepius. The gravestone calls the sailor \u201cwell deserving” and was commissioned by two people described as his \u201cheirs,” who were likely shipmates since Roman military could not be married at the time, Lusnia said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tablet had been in an ancient cemetery of around 20 graves of military personnel, found in the 1860s in Civitavecchia, a seaside in northwest Italy about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Rome. Its text had been recorded in 1910 and included in a catalog of Latin inscriptions, which noted the tablet\u2019s whereabouts were unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tablet was later documented at the National Archeological Museum in Civitavecchia prior to World War II. But the museum had been \u201cpretty much destroyed\u201d during Allied bombing and took several decades to rebuild, Lusnia said. Museum staff confirmed to Lusnia the tablet had been missing for decades. Its recorded measurements \u2014 1 square foot (0.09 square meters) and 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) thick \u2014 matched the size of the tablet found in Santoro\u2019s backyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t have better DNA than that,\u201d Lusnia said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said the FBI is in talks with Italian authorities to repatriate the tablet. An FBI spokesperson said the agency could not respond to requests for comment during the government shutdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A final twist to the story suggests how the tablet made its way to New Orleans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As media reports of the find began circulating this week, Erin Scott O\u2019Brien says her ex-husband called her and told her to watch the news. She immediately recognized the hunk of marble, which she had always seen as a \u201ccool-ass piece of art.\u201d They had used as a garden decoration and then forgot about it before selling the home to Santoro in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNone of us knew what it was,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cWe were watching the video, just like in shock.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
O\u2019Brien said she received the tablet from her grandparents \u2014 an Italian woman and a New Orleans native who was stationed in the country during World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps no one would be more thrilled by the tablet\u2019s rediscovery than Sextus himself. Grave markers were important in Roman culture to uphold legacies, even of everyday citizens, Lusnia said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow Sextus Congenius Verus is being talked about so much,\u201d Lusnia said. \u201cIf there\u2019s an afterlife and he\u2019s in it and he knows, he\u2019s very happy because this is what a Roman wants \u2014 to be remembered forever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n