Archaeologists Uncovered the Tomb of a Roman Gladiator—but the Gladiator Was Nowhere to Be Found

• A Roman gladiator’s tomb from the third century A.D. was uncovered in modern-day Turkey.

• Instead of the gladiator, archaeologists found the remains of 12 unidentified people in the reused tomb.

• The site should allow scientists the chance to catch glimpses into centuries of history.

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Archaeologists working at Turkey’s Ayasuluk Hill in Izmir—once part of the ancient Greek city of Ephesus—have discovered a tomb from the third century A.D. that originally belonged to a Roman gladiator. That ownership, however, only lasted a couple of hundred years. The modern-day discovery, instead of yielding the remains of a gladiator, offered up the remains of 12 men and women from the fifth century A.D.

Euphrates, the gladiator who was meant to be inside, was nowhere to be found.

The excavation team—with backing from the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism—was working at the St. John Monument when they discovered the tomb. Experts dated the original burial to roughly 1,800 years ago and the initial inscriptions identified it as the burial location of a Roman gladiator named Euphrates, according to Turkey Today.

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Just 200 years after the gladiator’s burial, it appears the tomb was reused. “We found one tomb and three tomb-like structures, with 12 individuals inside,” Sinan Mimaroglu, associate professor from Hatay Mustafa Kemal University’s Department of Art History, told Turkey Today. “This indicates a collective burial.”

Additional engravings on the tomb dated it to the fifth century A.D. “The burial inside the church likely belonged to the upper class or clergy,” he said, “as it’s unlikely an ordinary person would be buried in such a meticulous manner within a church.”

Along with the inscriptions, Christian crosses were engraved on both the lid and interior of the stone coffin—some dating to the fifth century, and some (particularly those with the crosses on the lids) tied to the eighth century.

“We know from the inscription on the tomb that it was first used for gladiators,” Mimaroglu told Live Science. “It was built in the third century A.D.”

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According to Mimaroglu, along with the unique situation of a lost gladiator replaced by 12 unknown upper-class individuals, the team was surprised to find a water channel, a drainage system, and mosaics, all only seven inches below the surface. The team believes the find contains evidence of early Ephesus that could date to the second millennium B.C., as the area also revealed ceramics from the Bronze Age.

The team said that archaeological evidence found at the tomb links the site to alterations done during the time of Roman Emperor Justinian I. “These excavations revealed a marble floor dating back to the sixth century, consistent with the period of Justinian I,” Mimaroglu said about previous discoveries made in the area. “This year’s discoveries affirm the presence of a marble flooring from the fifth century.”

Experts believe that the church served first as an ancient burial site, was later converted into a wooden-roofed basilica, and ultimately became a domed church during the reign of Justinian I between 527 and 565 A.D.

The gladiator, though, appears lost to history.

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