A couple in New Orleans, while tidying their neglected backyard, stumbled upon a remarkable discovery hidden among the overgrowth – an ancient Roman marble tablet that had been missing since World War II.

Daniella Santoro, an anthropologist at Tulane University, found the enigmatic piece while working in her garden in March. Her initial thought was that it might be a grave marker for a family member or pet.

But the writing on the tablet was in Latin, which ‘really just gave us pause,’ she said.

‘I mean, you see something like that and you say, “Okay, this is not an ordinary thing,”‘ she said. 

Santoro quickly posted a photo of the tablet to Facebook hoping that a colleague would be able to tell her more about it. 

Through a connection with a colleague, she was introduced to Susann S. Lusnia, an associate professor of classical studies at Tulane University, who verified the tablet’s authenticity.

The stone is over 1900 years old, and was a grave of a Roman sailor named Sextus Congenius Verus. 

‘When I saw the inscription, I was floored,’ Lusnia told USA TODAY. ‘It just kind of sent a shiver down my spine.’

Santoro was taken aback. ‘I genuinely never considered it could be a genuine artifact,’ she remarked. Her hunch that it was a gravestone proved accurate, although it was much older than she had imagined.

The former owners of Santoro’s property recognized the marble tablet after news about the discovery rapidly spread last week. Erin Scott O’Brian recounted that her ex-husband urged her to tune in to the news, and upon doing so, she immediately identified the artifact.

She and her husband had once used the tablet as a garden ornament and overlooked it when they sold their home to Santoro in 2018, assuming it was merely an attractive ‘art piece.’

‘We were watching the video, just like in shock,’ O’Brian said. 

The tablet was originally discovered in the 1860s in Civitavecchia, a seaside city in northwest Italy about 30 miles from Rome. 

The gravestone was part of an ancient Roman cemetery of about 20 military personnel – and is dated to between 100 to 200 AD.

Its text was transcribed to a catalog of Latin inscriptions in 1910. The writing indicated that the tablet was for Sextus Congenius Verus, an ancient Roman sailor who died at 42 of unknown causes. 

He had served in the imperial navy on a ship named for the Greco-Roman god of medicine, Asclepius. The gravestone called the sailor ‘well deserving’ and was commissioned two people described as ‘heirs.’

Lusnia explained that the ‘heirs’ were likely Verus’s shipmates because Roman military were not allowed to marry at the time. 

The last record of the tablet before it was rediscovered in New Orleans was from the National Archeological Museum in Civitavecchia prior to World War II. 

The museum had been decimated by Allied bombing during the conflict and took decades to rebuild. Museum staff confirmed that the tablet had been missing since then. 

O’Brian said she had received the artifact from her grandparents – an Italian woman and a New Orleans man who had been stationed in Italy during World War II. 

Lusnia said she believed a likely explanation for the tablet appearing in New Orleans was that a soldier had nabbed it and brought it home after the war. 

She said the ancient sailor would have been thrilled at the rediscovery of the tablet. Grave markers were important in ancient Roman culture as a means to uphold legacy. 

‘If there’s an afterlife and he’s in it and he knows, he’s very happy because this is what a Roman wants — to be remembered forever,’ the professor of classical studies said. 

The artifact is currently in the possession of the FBI’s art crime unit, and the agency is in talks with the Italian government for its repatriation. 

A 1970 UNESCO treaty encourages countries to return cultural artifacts to their place of origin when they have been removed illegally. 

Santoro said it was bittersweet to part with the remarkable tablet but that she hopes to go to Italy with her family and see it in the Civitavecchia museum one day.