Posted on 07/01/2015 5:37:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
...The two towns remained largely undisturbed, lost to history, through the rise of Byzantium, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In 1738, Maria Amalia Christine, a nobleman's daughter from Saxony, wed Charles of Bourbon, the King of Naples, and became entranced by classical sculptures displayed in the garden of the royal palace in Naples. A French prince digging in the vicinity of his villa on Mount Vesuvius had discovered the antiquities nearly 30 years earlier, but had never conducted a systematic excavation. So Charles dispatched teams of laborers and engineers equipped with tools and blasting powder to the site of the original dig to hunt more treasures for his queen. For months, they tunneled through 60 feet of rock-hard lava, unearthing painted columns, sculptures of Roman figures draped in togas, the bronze torso of a horse -- and a flight of stairs. Not far from the staircase they came to an inscription, "Theatrum Herculanense." They had uncovered a Roman-era town, Herculaneum.
Digging began in Pompeii ten years later. Workers burrowed far more easily through the softer deposits of pumice and ash, unearthing streets, villas, frescoes, mosaics and the remains of the dead. "Stretched out full-length on the floor was a skeleton," C.W. Ceram writes in Gods, Graves and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology, a definitive account of the excavations, "with gold and silver coins that had rolled out of bony hands still seeking, it seemed, to clutch them fast."
In the 1860s a pioneering Italian archaeologist at Pompeii, Giuseppe Fiorelli, poured liquid plaster into the cavities in the solidified ash created by the decomposing flesh, creating perfect casts of Pompeii's victims at the moment of their deaths -- down to the folds in their togas, the straps of their sandals, their agonized facial expressions.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
Doomed by proximity to Vesuvius, the two cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were entombed within a day. Accounts at the time documented the spread of the ash cloud beyond Rome, as far as Egypt and Syria. (Guilbert Gates)
Had the good fortune to have visited there this past April. The place is absolutely fascinating.
Thanks for all your posts.
FMCDH(BITS)
My pleasure, and thanks for the kind remarks!
That was good fortune. I’m glad something’s getting done, the complaints about the state of Pompeii have gone on for decades. There have been odd problems, like tourists picking up statues and carrying them right on out through holes in the fence, nighttime vandalism by the local gentry, public urination on ancient walls, just wonderful stuff.
OTOH, the place was buried by a volcanic eruption and unmaintained in any fashion for 17 centuries prior to discovery, so, we probably should cut the place some slack. The main reason Pompeii remains in large part unexcavated is that the already exposed parts were having this problems. There’s probably some real amazing stuff yet to be found under the soil, and none of us will ever get to see it, live or in photo.
I wonder if some day, Naples will be covered with ash. I guess with modern volcano monitoring they will be able to leave but still it would be a catastrophe.
There were a bunch of other towns that took some punishment, and possibly the new cities (including “Neapolis”, new city, the ancient name for Naples) completely cover the abandoned older places. Ercolano is the modern version of Herculaeneum, and was imposed on the modern city fairly recently I think, I don’t recall what the local modern name used to be. :’) To the east a little there was an estate that was a working farm and basically industrial site in the ancient Roman world; it got buried and only found in the last hundred years or less.
http://www.utexas.edu/courses/romanciv/Romancivimages18/bayofnaples.gif
http://www.utexas.edu/courses/romanciv/Romancivimages18/day18captions.htm
http://www.mmdtkw.org/ALRIVes0801VeseEruption79ad.jpg
http://www.mmdtkw.org/ALRItkwVes08CampiFlegrei.html
Then there’s Nola, which was destroyed 2000 years before that.
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/nola/index
Four years of Latin, two years of Roman Humanities: I have to go!
I’d like to go there some day myself. How much time would you suggest to see it adequately?
I was stationed in Naples, Italy from 1981 to 1984, USAF officer working at the NATO base there. I had the awesome opportunity to go to Herculaneum many times and I would sit for hours watching the archiologists as they uncovered the ruins. I also went to Pompei many times, it was in good shape and nothing was closed at that time. It was unbelieveable to see the intricacy of the spas and statues and the layout of the city. Just fascinating.
I went to Pompeii, it is in really bad shape. Dead people all over the place. Over run with tourists too.
Top row, middle photo: poor doggie.
Nice! As you know, the Herculaneum site is actually better preserved, including a number of upper storeys, and lots of carbonized wood, including doors which still swing on their hinges. At an early time, the diggers noticed that the stone was lousy with tiny pores still filled with poison gases, making digging there a little challenging. :’)
Thanks ETL!
ETL’s photos, fourth row down, four across: bread?
Yeah, there were a couple of place at least where bread was preserved, still in the ovens. Modestus was the baker’s name on the larger, better known bakery. :’)
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