Newly Discovered Frescoes and Human Remains Surface at Pompeii
As archaeologists continue to excavate the ancient Roman city famously preserved in ash following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, they’ve made a number of notable discoveries this year—primarily frescoes and human remains.
The first occurred in March with the unearthing of a fresco depicting Greek mythological siblings Phrixus and Helle. The brother and sister are refugees whose stepmother forced them to flee. The fresco depicts Helle in the moment before she is overcome by the waves and drowned, her face obscured as she reaches for her brother, who is fleeing on the ram of the golden fleece. It was found in the House of Leda, which has been undergoing construction since 2018. Archaeologists also uncovered two new domus nearby.
The following month came the unveiling of a large banquet hall. Frescoes lining the room’s black-painted walls depicted mythological characters and subjects from the Trojan War. Guests would have been entertained in the “Black Room” in the evening, where burning lamps brought the paintings to life in the shimmering light. The room’s well-preserved white mosaic floor comprised more than one million tiles. The room is just one in a larger house within a residential and commercial block in region nine, which yielded the discovery of a laundromat and a bakery the year prior.
In June, a shrine room depicting female figures was found. The 86-square-foot sacrarium contained painted blue walls decorated with female figures representing the four seasons, as well as allegories symbolizing agriculture and shepherding. Notably rare is the room’s color, which would have denoted it as a place of importance for ritual activities and sacred object storage. The room held 15 transportable amphorae and a bronze set of two jugs and two oil lamps. The room sits in region nine in the city’s center, and would have been a bustling residential area thought to house more than 13,000 rooms among 1,070 housing units.
In August, the remains of a man and woman with a small cache of treasure were found inside a temporary bedroom during the renovation of the home. They became trapped there during the eruption and died as a result of being buried by hot gas and volcanic matter. Impressions of objects left in the ash by decomposed organic matter enabled archaeologists to reconstruct the home’s furnishings and their exact positions at the time of the eruption, including a wooden bed, a stool, a chest, and a marble-topped table with bronze, glass, and ceramic objects on it; a large bronze candlestick holder had fallen over in the room.
In October, a small house with erotic frescoes was discovered. The works include a painting of Cretan princess Phaedra, who fell in love with her stepson, Hippolytus, and later accused him of sexual assault when he refused her advances. Another shows Venus and Adonis, who were also the subjects of a tale of unrequited love. The house itself was unique in construction, lacking a traditional atrium that was common among such Roman structures in the first century CE.
