A long-lost ancient Roman artifact reappears in a New Orleans backyard

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New Orleans family finds 1,900-year-old Roman grave marker in backyard.

Artifact belonged to sailor Sextus Congenius Verus , missing from Italian museum.

Tablet was traced to Civitavecchia, Italy, and verified by Tulane experts.

FBI coordinating with Italian authorities for repatriation of the artifact.

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 “spirits of the dead.”

“The fact that it was in Latin that really just gave us pause, right?” said Daniella Santoro, a Tulane University anthropologist. “I mean, you see something like that and you say, ‘Okay, this is not an ordinary thing.'”

Intrigued and slightly alarmed, Santoro re