Slaves’ Room Found Immaculately Intact Nearly 2,000 Years Since Pompeii Eruption
Image via Archaeological Park of Pompeii
Degraded as property by Roman law in their day, a group of slaves—possibly a family—finally get the humanization they deserve in the discovery of their stunningly preserved room in the suburban villa of Civita Giuliana, almost 2,000 years after Pompeii’s fateful volcanic eruption. The space and its items are among the latest to be recovered from the villa, which was found in 2017 and continues to bring more compelling evidence of historical ways of life.
Pictures published by the Archaeological Park of Pompeii depict a simple 16-square-meter (172-square-foot) room with three beds, a small window, a chamber pot, ceramic jugs, and a wooden chest with what looks to be a set of horse harnesses.
The beds are “roughly worked” with wooden planks that could be adjusted to support the height of their users. Two of them measure 1.7 meters (5.6 feet) in length, while another is just 1.4-meter long (4.6-feet long) and was likely for a child. The presence of the child-sized bed suggests that a family inhabited the room.
In addition, what used to be fabric blankets for the beds have been recreated with plaster, while the real ones lay as cavities in the ground.
Image via Archaeological Park of Pompeii
Notably, a chariot shaft was found in the area, indicating that the servants had been working on their master’s vehicle in what was meant to be their place of rest. A cast of this part has been made and is shown on the right of the collage below.
Image via Archaeological Park of Pompeii
Archaeologists say the room is so amazingly preserved because of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, which trapped much of the vicinity under rubble.
“The true treasure here is the human experience, in this case of the most vulnerable members of ancient society, to which this room is a unique testimony,” remarked Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director-general of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, in a news release.
Zuchtriegel called the site “a window into the precarious reality of people who seldom appear in historical sources that were written almost exclusively by men belonging to the elite, and who as a result risk remaining invisible in the great historical accounts.”
[via Insider, images via Archaeological Park of Pompeii]
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