(ANSA) - NAPLES, 21 NOV - (by Silvia Lambertucci)
To see them like this, the blood seeming to still pulse in the
veins of those hands resting on their chests, their curled
fingers, the cotton of the tunic rumpled up on the belly, it
almost seems as if no time at all has passed. They are the
almost complete and unblemished bodies of two men, a 40-year-old
wearing a warm woolen cloak and his young slave already bent by
life's labours; these are the thrilling new revelations of
Pompeii, the fruit of an excavation that went ahead even in
these hardest weeks of the pandemic and which ANSA has been able
to exclusively document.
But after digging, the marquis had his men re-inter those areas
without leaving an adequate documentation. The current digs,
entirely funded by the Pompeii Park to the tune of one million
euros, are the product of a joint operation with the
prosecutor's office in Torre Annunziata, prosecutor Pierpaolo
Filippelli, and the Carabinieri, to stop the local tomb raiders,
who have left ample traces of their painstaking activities here.
After the investigation of the stables, since January 2020 there
have been excavations under the very long cryptoporticus, built
under one of the large terraces. ."We were lucky," says Osanna,
"because the area where we found the bodies of the two men had
eluded both the excavations at the start of the 20th century and
the tomb raiders: a trench dug by the tomb raiders passed
virtually beside the feet of one of the two victims". An almost
intact area, and for that reason particularly precious. The last
few weeks have seen archaeologists working at a fever pitch. "We
detected the presence of pockets in the layer of pyroclastic
material and then got the surprise of human remains," says an
enthusiastic Osanna.
Conditions were optimal to try to get casts of the victims,
following the technique perfected in 1863 by Giuseppe Fiorelli.
The last attempt was made in the 1990s, sadly without any great
success. But this time the experiment succeeded perfectly. "It
also worked for what the pair were carrying, which proved to be
a piece of woolen fabric, perhaps another cloak, perhaps a
blanket".
And preliminary studies seem to have already identified the
moment of the end, on the second day of the eruption, the
morning of October 25 (according to a recent new proposed
dating), of that fateful 79 AD. There remains the riddle of the
men's identity. The director shakes his head and shrugs, citing
the precedent of the Villa of Diomedes, where the fist digs, at
the end of the 18th century, restored precisely in the
cryptoporticus the remains of many people, men, women and
children, who had probably felt shielded from the cataclysm in
those underground chambers. Who knows, perhaps the man with the
cloak and the slave who was with him were trying to reach the
rest of the family after having guarded the property from the
outside up to the last moment. The mystery is still open for
now. Osanna, who in a few months will pass the baton to the next
director, urges patience: "Now it is fundamental to continue
the excavations," he concludes. "It will take time, but in the
end the Villa of the Harnessed Sorrel, just like the Villa di
Diomedes where work will conclude in the spring, will be able to
open to the public with all its fascinating stories". And at a
time of a pandemic, he smiles, "the continuation of the
restorations, excavations and studies is also a light
illuminating the future". (ANSA).
Pompeii gives back whole bodies of two fugitives
Casts revive two bodies, master and slave, riddle of cloaked man