A couple were left stunned after unearthing a 1,900-year-old Roman gravestone in their garden – despite living about 5,000 miles away from Italy. Daniella Santoro and Aaron Lorenz made the remarkable discovery while tending to their garden in New Orleans, Louisiana.
In an intriguing twist, the anthropologist and her husband found themselves in possession of a relic from a nation on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The couple noticed that the stone’s inscription was in Latin, prompting them to seek advice. Dr Ryan Gray, an archaeologist at the University of New Orleans, sent photos of the relic to Harald Stadler, a professor at the University of Innsbruck, who also forwarded them to his Latin instructor brother for examination.
In a surprising turn of events, both Gray and Susann Lusnia, an associate professor of classical studies and Daniella’s colleague at Tulane University, independently arrived at the same conclusion, according to the Guardian.
Both scholars determined that the headstone was dedicated to Sextus Congenius Verus, a Roman sailor and military member from around the second century. However, there was another twist in this intriguing story.
It appeared that the gravestone bore a striking resemblance to one reported missing from a museum in the Italian city of Civitavecchia. Susann contacted the museum, and the item was later handed over to the FBI.
Daniella, who surrendered the relic to the Bureau in an attempt to return it to its rightful place, and the rest of “team tombstone” speculated that it may have been transported to the US in the 20th century, possibly in the aftermath of World War II.
During the war, Allied bombing between 1943 and 1944 almost completely destroyed the Italian museum, which didn’t reopen until the 1970s.
Gray, postulating in a column for the magazine, suggested that the stone could have ended up with an antiques dealer, who might have then sold it to a tourist.
However, this isn’t the only remarkable garden discovery made by a couple recently. Olivia and Jack Munro, who were renovating a 400-year-old property, stumbled upon a 72-foot-deep well.
In a TikTok video, Olivia revealed: “We found it by chance when we were doing some work nearby – the digger moved some dirt and we saw a ring of bricks.”
She continued: “We were speechless when we uncovered it.”