Strange table used at beach bar ends up being 1,700-year-old Roman sarcophagus

The beach bar that’s actually a precious Roman artifact

After being found by a tourist at the Sts. Constantine and Helena Resort on the Black Sea, a Bulgarian news outlet traced the sarcophagus to the Radjana Beach Bar in photographs dating back to 2020, as per MSN. A photograph on Facebook showed people sitting around the priceless object with a bar in the background. So how did the sarcophagus without a lid get to the bar let alone the beach? The owners did not comment.

Though it ended up on a beach haphazardly, however, experts ensured that the historical artifact of considerable significance at eight feet, as per Daily Mail, was transported to the Archaeological Museum of Varna carefully, which involved heavy equipment and the Fire Department, as Ancient Origins reports.

“We want to see what is under it, whether any of the original coloring has remained, what technique was used to make it—all of the information that will tell us if the sarcophagus is authentic. We have just started, we can’t say anything for sure,” museum expert on the scene Milen Marinov stated in Ancient Origins.

Upon removing the paint that had been added to the façade, archaeologists identified the Shelly limestone as well as the decorations such as the garlands, a common motif in Ancient Roman funerary art, also featuring heads, rosettes, and a double-edged ax as a genuine example of Roman art from the second or third century AD, as per TVP World.

The Roman sarcophagus was probably stolen

Daily Mail reported that the design doesn’t fit the aesthetic of other Roman artifacts in Varna, so most likely, it came from another region in Bulgaria, though it seems to have definitely originated in the country. All the same, Varna boasts a history that spans 7,000 years, which became a Thracian settlement and later an Ancient Greek colony, which then got integrated into the Roman Empire in 15 AD, Ancient Origins explains.

But more importantly, Alexander Minchev, the head of the investigatory team, told Bulgarian National Television, as per Daily Mail, that “ ‘every object that has archaeological value, regardless of where, when and by whom it was found, belongs to the state.”

As one of the poorest countries in the EU, TVP World notes, the country cannot perform excavations easily, some of the country’s precious artifacts are illegally taken and sold on the international black market. The strange apparition of the Roman sarcophagus could probably be attributed to shady dealings or a misunderstanding even that sent the authentic, ancient object on an adventure that ended at the shore.

“It is the job of the police, possibly the prosecutor’s office, who must investigate how this sarcophagus ended up in Varna and on the beach. That is something to be done by the relevant authorities, and it must be done because this is probably not an isolated case,” Minchev told the The Sophia Globe. So to those in Bulgaria: keep an eye out for objects that might be lying around — it might be the real thing. Archaeologists want to be informed, so call the local police.