Edinburgh, Scotland, October 29, 2007—An amateur enthusiast has uncovered the first Roman tombstone to be found in Scotland in more than 170 years.

Larney Cavanagh recently came across the red sandstone artifact at the edge of a field in Carberry, near the town of Inveresk, announced National Museums Scotland on Monday. Only 13 Roman tombstones have ever been found in Scotland.

The new find dates to between A.D. 140 and 180 and was erected for Crescens, a mounted bodyguard for the governor of Britain, according to the inscription shown here. The missing upper portion probably depicted a cavalryman, while the intact lower half shows a naked barbarian, presumably dead, the institution said.

"It is very rare to find Roman tombstones, and this is the first time we have found evidence of the governor's bodyguard in Scotland," Fraser Hunter, principal curator of Roman archaeology at National Museums Scotland, said in a statement. "This stone is an unexpected window onto our Roman past, and we can tell from it than Crescens was a well-respected and important man."

The artifact is currently being examined in the National Museums Collection Centre in Edinburgh.

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