Not very long after God told some at St. Joseph Abbey that the way out of financial hardship might be selling the monks’ handcrafted caskets, the state of Louisiana arrived with a different message. 
 
 It was a cease-and-desist order and came with threats of thousands of dollars in fines and possible criminal prosecution. 
 
 “Before we even sold a casket,” St. Joseph Abbot Justin Brown said in a recent interview in the picturesque abbey, which is located about an hour’s drive from New Orleans, on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. Now a band of libertarian lawyers is hoping that the honey-colored Louisiana cypress coffins provide the vehicle for a Supreme Court review of government economic regulations. 
 
 Brown, a soft-spoken man who is only the fifth leader of a monastery that dates to 1889, said he had not known that in Louisiana only licensed funeral directors are allowed to sell “funeral merchandise.” 
 
 That means that St. Joseph Abbey must either give up the casket-selling business or become a licensed funeral establishment, which would require a layout parlor for 30 people, a display area for the coffins, the employment of a licensed funeral director and an embalming room. 
 
 “Really,” Brown said. “It’s just a big box.” 
 
 And so, after much prayer and two failed attempts to get the Louisiana legislature to change the law, the monks went to federal court. 
 
 The monks won round one in July, when U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. ruled Louisiana’s restrictions unconstitutional, saying “the sole reason for these laws is the economic protection of the funeral industry.” 
 
 The Louisiana State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, which has argued that the law protects consumers, has appealed, and the circuit court in New Orleans will hear the case in early June. 
 
 The monks are represented by the Arlington County-based Institute for Justice, which has a knack for picking empathetic, working-class parties — hair braiders, flower arrangers, city tour guides — to personify what it says is its battle against government regulation that strangles free enterprise. 
 
 The group is on a constant watch to find the perfect case to challenge a series of economic regulation decisions nearly unbroken since the New Deal. Courts must find only that there is a “rational basis” for an act, the most accommodating standard for government action. 
 
 William H. “Chip” Mellor, president of the group, said there are three essential components to a successful suit: “outrageous facts,” “evil villains” and “sympathetic clients.” 
 
 By that measure, the institute might find it hard to top St. Joseph Abbey. Jeff Rowes, one of the lawyers in the case, said he recently gave this advice to a seminar of law students: 
 
 “The number one thing you should do as a public interest litigator is to get monks as your clients in every single case.” 
 
 ‘It’s God’s idea’ 
 
 Brown, 54, never really thought of going into the casket-building business, although the abbey has built caskets for years for the monks and others in southeast Louisiana. 
 
 But the monks of St. Joseph, part of the Order of Saint Benedict, must support themselves. “Ora et labora” — “prayer and work” — is the order’s motto. Money comes from contributions, the seminary that trains priests, a retreat center and small enterprises such as a gift shop that features abbey-made Monk Soap in fragrances such as Mayan Gold. 
 
 But the abbey lost a large portion of its income in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina destroyed part of the pine timberlands whose harvest had been profitable. 
 
 It was Deacon Mark Coudrain, a woodworking enthusiast asked by his father to build a casket for him, who approached Brown with the prospect of turning the abbey’s occasional coffin construction into a business. 
 
 “I really like to say it’s God’s idea that I didn’t want to do,” Coudrain said. Eventually, he decided, “there’s a need, the abbey’s the perfect place and God was saying, ‘You know, I taught you something, why don’t you use it?’ ” 
 
 So the monks prayed, voted and bought $200,000 in equipment to establish St. Joseph Woodworks. 
 
 And so for some of the 36 monks at St. Joseph — they range in age from 26 to 89 — casket-building has become part of the daily routine. Prayers and readings start at 6; breakfast is taken in silence at 7. Mass is at 11:15 and lunch at noon. 
 
 At a recent meal, the monks scattered along long wooden tables anchored by the requisite Louisiana condiments of Tabasco and Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning, listening to a fellow monk read from Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Lincoln.” 
 
 There are more chores in the afternoon — some monks teach at the seminary next door — and the singing of psalms at 5:30. Dinner is at 6, the O’Reilly book replaced by a more religious text. 
 
 At the woodshop, several of the monks work with Coudrain and volunteers. Brother Elias Eichorn, the “iron monk” who recently completed the Boston Marathon and is training for a triathalon, works on lids. Brother Emmanuel Labrise, a fairly recent arrival from Pennsylvania, lines them with white cloth. 
 
 There are two versions, a monastic style with metal handles that sells for $1,500 and a traditional version with wooden rail handles for $2,000. In a nod to modernity, they can be modified for the oversized. Each is blessed and, an in attempt to create the abbey’s signature, marked with a medal of Saint Benedict. 
 
 “Noble simplicity,” Brown said. “It’s simple, but it’s not cheap.” 
 
 ‘The last word in life’ 
 
 The workshop was dedicated Nov. 1, 2007, and a local Catholic newspaper reported the event. The cease-and-desist letter came immediately, Brown said. 
 
 The abbot said it was difficult to know what to do. The abbey had made a huge investment, but he was reluctant to sue for the right to sell the caskets. 
 
 “Was that something monasteries should do, or should we just lay low and be quiet about it?” Brown wondered. “A lot of these funeral directors are good Catholic men.” 
 
 He decided to continue to sell caskets to those who asked for them but not to advertise. His state House representative, Scott Simon (R), looked for a compromise. “It was my first bill,” Simon said in an interview. The funeral directors association, he said, had it killed in committee. 
 
 “I learned that funeral directors have the last word in life, and in the legislature,” Simon said. 
 
 After the funeral directors board in 2010 subpoenaed Brown and Coudrain to testify about the casket sales, the men agreed to let the Institute of Justice file a federal lawsuit challenging Louisiana’s law as a violation of due process and equal protection. The abbey’s attorneys said Louisiana is the only state to enforce a ban on in-state sales. 
 
 Although robes are usually worn just around the monastery, Brown said, he donned his habit for the news conference on the courthouse steps, which featured a casket. 
 
 Representatives of the funeral directors board, the association that lobbies the legislature and several funeral directors who serve on both did not return phone calls or e-mails asking for comment on the case. 
 
 But in court pleadings, the board said the legislature had good reason for limiting in-state sales of caskets. The act protects Louisianans from “improper and overreaching sales tactics in the area of ‘at need’ casket sales,” the brief says. In some parts of the state, many burials are above­ground, and that requires “knowledgable decisions” in casket sales “mindful of Louisiana’s unique situation.” 
 
 The institute’s attorneys say that makes no sense. The state has no legal requirement that anyone be buried in a casket, and, under federal rules, funeral directors must accept a casket that a family has purchased elsewhere. 
 
 Thus, Louisianans are free to purchase a casket online from Wal-Mart or Costco, Judge Duval noted, but not from an in-state casket-maker. 
 
 Still, the Louisiana board argues, courts are simply not free to overturn economic regulation laws that have some rational basis. 
 
 And, the board said, if it has the “incidental consequence of economic protectionism, such a consequence does not render Louisiana’s statutory scheme constitutionally infirm.” To second-guess the legislature is to return to the days before the New Deal, when courts imposed their own economic judgment, the board said 
 
 The Institute for Justice’s Mellor replies that protectionism is different. 
 
 “The standard of review is so favorably tilted to the government that legitimate occupations are foreclosed — or entry into the occupations is so heavily conditioned — that they basically become cartels or monopolies protected by government edict,” he said. 
 
 Federal appeals courts have split in evaluating similar laws. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit said there was nothing unconstitutional about an Oklahoma law that protected the intrastate funeral home industry. 
 
 “While baseball may be the national pastime of the citizenry, dishing out special economic benefits to certain in-state industries remains the favored pastime of state and local governments,” it ruled. 
 
 But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit struck down a Tennessee law protecting funeral directors, saying an attempt to “privilege certain businessmen over others at the expense of consumers is not animated by a legitimate governmental purpose.” 
 
 The institute’s attorneys hope the eventual decision from the New Orleans appeals court will make the issue attractive to the Supreme Court. 
 
 If that happens, Brown said, so be it. 
 
 “I was concerned that it would disturb the peace of the monastery by getting involved in something somewhat controversial, adversarial, but it hasn’t,” he said. “If you study monastic history, there were often conflicts between monks and civil authorities.” ||||| Anastasia Nikolaevna Although no longer missing, the final resting place of Anastasia Nikolaevna, daughter of tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, was a nearly century-long mystery that ended in 2009. Along the way, false reports, witnesses and impostors claiming to be the deceased grand duchess turned up. The idea that somehow Nikolaevna had escaped execution gripped popular imagination, including an animated film in 1997. In 1991, speculation that Nikolaevna survived the massacre that claimed her family was bolstered by the discovery of a mass grave. Buried there were the remains of the tsar, his wife and three of their daughters. Traces of the two remaining children, a son and another daughter, were not at the site. In 2007, a grave in Yekaterinburg, Russia, proved to be the final resting place of the two remaining children. Two years later, researchers announced that DNA analysis confirmed that the remains were of the two young royals. 
 
 Emperor Jianwen When you're emperor of a nation as large as China, you'd think someone would notice your disappearance. Emperor Jianwen (1377-1402) was the second emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and nearly led it to ruin. Failed efforts to gain greater control over territory within his empire, which was governed by his uncles, led to the outbreak of civil war. When troops belonging to one of Jianwen's uncles attacked Nanjing, then the capital under the Ming Dynasty, the imperial palace caught fire, supposedly killing Jianwen and his concubines. However, an alternate version of events suggests Jianwen secretly escaped in the midst of the battle and took refuge in a monastery, where he lived out the rest of his days. 
 
 Queen Nefertiti Obscure royals are bound to escape history's notice. But when the ones who really left their mark manage to elude discovery, that's another story entirely. Ancient Egypt's Queen Nefertiti might be the most sought-after royal yet undiscovered. She died over 3,300 years ago, but was made famous in the modern era following the discovery of the 19-inch limestone, painted bust of her, seen here. Nefertiti was, in the words of Discovery News' Rossella Lorenzi, "the royal wife of the 'heretic' pharaoh Akhenaton, who initiated a new monotheistic religion that involved the worship the sun god Aton." Despite pursuits to find her tomb, including one such expedition funded by the Discovery Channel, no archaeologist has yet found where Nefertiti is buried. READ MORE: Tracking Nefertiti: Egypt Guide 
 
 Pharaoh Userkare If famous kings who died within the last 1,000 years are difficult to find, then an obscure pharaoh that lived some 4,300 years ago must be close to impossible. The reign of Userkare, the second pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty, has been shrouded in mystery, partly due to the fact that his tomb had not been discovered. In 2010, Giulio Magli, professor of archaeoastronomy at Milan's Polytechnic University, suggested a possible final resting place for the pharaoh. as reported by Discovery News' Rossella Lorenzi. The search, however, is still ongoing. WATCH VIDEO: Find out what it's like hunting down ancient Egyptian treasures. 
 
 Henry I When Henry VIII was engaged in his campaign against Catholicism, he seized church lands and raided monasteries. In the process, his men disturbed and even destroyed the final resting places of the monarchs who came before him. In fact, Henry VIII even likely caused the destruction of the tomb of his namesake: Henry I. Henry I was the son of William the Conqueror, and reigned for nearly 30 years from 1106 to 1135. Although he crowned himself king in 1100, his reign was disputed by his older brother, Robert, who had been away fighting in the Crusades. Henry initially was able to buy Robert off, but the two later came into conflict again, which was only resolved in 1106 with Henry's army capturing Robert in battle and imprisoning him for life. Henry spent much of his time away from England, often frequenting Normandy. In order to rule in his absence, he created a bureaucracy that would efficiently govern and run the affairs of state, the most important duty of which was to collect taxes. Following the death of his son, Henry was left with only one legitimate heir, his daughter. When Henry died in 1135, his daughter's rule was rejected by the English nobility and civil war ensued. 
 
 Harold II Even though Harold II might have had one of the most famous deaths of any monarch in English history, his final resting place is unknown. Harold II assumed the throne in 1066. That same year, William the Conqueror led an army of Norman invaders into England. The armies of William and Harold met at the Battle of Hastings in October. After hours of fighting, with victory within his grasp, Harold was, according to legend, either shot in the eye or stabbed with a sword. His body was then mutilated and dismembered. Although the site of Harold's death is known, what followed after is a matter of some speculation. According to popular accounts, William had Harold's body buried in secret, even though Harold's mother offered a sum to claim the body. 
 
 Edward V and Richard, Duke of York Before Richard III assumed the throne, there was only one person standing in his way: his nephew, Edward V. Only a boy at 12 years old, Edward V was unprepared for the responsibilities of the crown left to him by his father, Edward IV, who entrusted Richard as Protector until the boy came of age. The future king Richard III in short order imprisoned Edward V in the Tower of London, along with his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York. The uncle then declared Edward IV's marriage invalid, and therefore his heirs were illegitimate. Richard III assumed the throne and the two boys disappeared from history shortly thereafter. Although remains belonging to two children were discovered in the 17th century by workers renovating a section of the Tower, the bones were never conclusively identified as belonging to the two boys. 
 
 The remains of Richard III, the monarch immortalized as a villainous hunchback by William Shakespeare and the last English king to die in battle, might have been discovered in a parking lot in Leicester. DNA analysis is still needed to confirm the findings, and that could take up to 12 weeks, according to researchers at the University of Leicester. While we wait, let's look at other royals known to have vanished from history. NEWS: Medieval Church Discovered Beneath Parking Lot 
 
 A four-year study has dramatically rewritten the history of Glastonbury Abbey, said to be the burial place of the legendary King Arthur and the site of the earliest Christian church in Britain. 
 
 King Arthur’s grave, allegedly found by monks in 1181, is nothing but a pit filled with rubble, say the researchers. And the church was not founded by Jesus’s disciples in the first century A.D., but was built by medieval monks to raise cash. 
 
 Faced with a financial crisis when their abbey was destroyed in a fire in 1184, the creative monks rebuilt the abbey to look older and mystical. To draw on Arthurian legends, they even crafted a fake burial cross with the name of the king. 
 
 “The monks needed to raise money by increasing the numbers of visiting pilgrims – and that meant keeping the myths and legends alive,” team leader Roberta Gilchrist, professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading, UK, said. 
 
 Photos: Royals Lost and Never Found 
 
 Gilchrist and colleagues reexamined and reinterpreted all known archaeological records from excavations at the site between 1904 and 1979, none of which have ever been published. 
 
 “Dig directors were led heavily by Glastonbury’s legends and the occult. Using 21st century technology we took a step back from the myth and legend to expose the true history of the Abbey,” Gilchrist said. 
 
 Her team carried out chemical and compositional analysis of glass, metal, and pottery artifacts held in the Glastonbury Abbey Museum, and undertook a new geophysical survey of the Abbey grounds. 
 
 Dark Side of Medieval Convent Life Revealed 
 
 They also reexamined the work of British archaeologist Ralegh Radford who excavated the site in the 1950s and ’60s. 
 
 Radford claimed to have discovered a Christian British cemetery, a Saxon cloister that was believed to be the earliest in England, as well as the location of King Arthur’s grave, allegedly discovered by the Glastonbury monks. 
 
 But Gilchrist’s analysis disputes his finding. Foundations revealed the walls do not line up and are unlikely to be those of a cloister, and the graves Radford dated to be “Dark Age” in fact date to later than the Saxon church and cemetery. 
 
 1,500-Year-Old Church Found Near Israel’s Main Highway 
 
 Moreover, the site of Arthur’s tomb turned to be a pit in the cemetery containing material dating from the 11th to 15th centuries, with no evidence linking it to the era of the legendary king. 
 
 “It’s likely the judgement of excavators like Radford was clouded by the Abbey myths. They were also less critical of historical sources than we are today and did not have the luxury of 21st century technology,” Gilchrist said. 
 
 Further analysis has also showed how the monks crafted the early Christian tales to restore the Abbey to its former glory after the devastating fire. 
 
 Byzantine Monastery and Mosaics Found in Israel 
 
 “We found evidence that the monks laid out the buildings in a very distinctive way to emphasize the ‘earliest church’ story,” Gilchrist said. 
 
 She noted the monks deliberately designed the church to look older in order to validate its ancient heritage and preeminent place in monastic history. 
 
 “They used archaic architecture style and reused material to emphasize the Abbey’s mythical feel. This swelled pilgrim numbers – and the Abbey’s coffers,” Gilchrist said. 
 
 Stonehenge Myths and Conspiracies 
 
 Indeed, the monks’ strategy paid off. Glastonbury Abbey became the second richest monastery in England by the end of the Middle Ages. 
 
 “Re-examination of the archaeological records revealed the exceptional scale of the abbot’s lodging, a luxurious palatial complex to the southwest of the cloister,” Gilchrist said. 
 
 But it’s not all bad news for Glastonbury Abbey. 
 
 The study found evidence the site was occupied 200 years earlier than previously estimated and housed an important complex of five glass furnaces radiocarbon dated to about AD 700. 
 
 “This represents the earliest and most substantial evidence for glass-working in Saxon England,” Gilchrist said.
– A group of monks in Louisiana is heading to federal appeals court in a battle against the state. The monks want the right to sell their handcrafted caskets, but the state has demanded they cease and desist because of regulations regarding "funeral merchandise"—which the monks say were enacted to unfairly protect the state's funeral industry, reports the Washington Post. "Really, it's just a big box," says the abbot. The monks were victorious their first time in federal court, but the State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors appealed, and the next round will be heard early next month. St. Joseph Abbey, located an hour's drive outside of New Orleans, entered the casket business in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina destroyed an income-generating section of forest owned by the monastery. Before they even sold their first coffin, the state ordered they either stop or take the obstacle-filled path of becoming a licensed funeral establishment. A group of what the Post calls "libertarian lawyers" took up the monks' case and are hoping it makes it all the way to the Supreme Court as an example of government interference in free enterprise. Read the full story here.