At first glance, the marble slab etched in Latin – including the phrase “spirits of the dead” – might have looked like a mass-produced facsimile designed to lend a garden a little decorative gravitas.
But for anthropologist Daniella Santoro, who lives with her husband Aaron Lopez in a historic home in New Orleans’ Carrollton neighborhood, the object – found half-buried in the undergrowth – set off some spidey senses. For a moment, she feared they might have uncovered an old grave.
The Latin text begins Dis Manibus – “to the spirits of the dead” – a common dedication on Roman funerary tablets. In Roman funerary practice, Dis Manibus was a standard dedication to the spirits of the departed, often carved at the top of tombstones. Thousands of such inscriptions survive across the former Roman Empire.