Not the typical horse mounting block.
Wooley and Wales
A woman in England recently discovered that she was using an ancient Roman relic as a stepping stone to put her horse on.
The owner of a bungalow in the south of England came across the marble slab in her rock garden 20 years ago. She used it in her stable for almost ten years before layers of dirt and moss finally washed away enough to reveal laurel wreaths and carved an inscription into its surface, according to the British auction house Woolley and Wales, which plans to turn the page this spring to auction. for a pre-sale estimate of £ 10,000 – £ 15,000 (approximately $ 13,600 or AU $ 17,555 to $ 20,400 or AU $ 26,332).
After realizing that she had not stepped on an ordinary garden rock, the rider, say Woolley and Wales, consulted a local archaeologist who identified the second-century marble slab, probably originating in Greece or Asia Minor, the peninsula that today forms the Asian part of Turkey. It is 63 centimeters long, with an inscription in Greek that reads: “The people (and) the young men (honor) Demetrios (son) of Metrodoros (the son) of Leukios.”
“Artifacts of this kind often came to England as a result of Grand Tours in the late 18th and 19th centuries, when wealthy aristocrats would travel through Europe to learn classical arts and culture,” said Will Hobbs, a Wooley and Wales antiquities specialist. , said in a statement. “We assume it entered the UK, but what’s a complete mystery is how it ended up in a home garden, and that’s where we want the public’s help.”
The bungalow where the valuable plate was found is located on Common Road in the town of Whiteparish – about 100 kilometers west of London – and was one of several built in the mid-1960s. The auction house hopes that someone who lived in the area at the time or helped build the house could provide information that could shed light on the origin of the building material.
Hobbs notes that two notable homes near Whiteparish were demolished in 1949 after being requisitioned by the military during the war. Another nearby house was destroyed in a fire in 1963, and it is possible that rubbish from there was reused on building sites in the area shortly afterwards.
The lesson? The next time you encounter a modest rock in your garden, you can take a closer look.