When you buy connections to our articles, the future and its union partners can win a commission.
The remains of the bed that the family tried to use for barricading the neck closed during the eruption of Vesuvius. | Credit: Pompeii Archaeological Park
Archaeologists have revealed heartbreaking evidence of the family’s family’s attempts to escape from the arriving destruction during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.
During a recent excavation of a house in Pompey, the remains of four people, including a child, were found along with a bed, which was moved to block the bedroom door in what was probably the final endeavor of the family to escape from the loading hot ashes, gas and dust that wrapped the city. The findings were published on April 30 in the online electronic render Scavi di pompeiiS
“In this small, beautifully decorated house, we found traces of residents who tried to save themselves, blocking the entrance to a small room with a bed,” ” Gabriel BuchtrigelDirector of Pompeii’s Archaeological Park, said in a statement translated by ItalianS
The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD was one of the most catastrophic volcanic events in history, after known to destroy the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculane, located at the foot. Vesuvius is In StratovolcanoA type known for having extremely violent eruptions because of its magma containing higher levels of gas. This leads to much greater pressure that accumulates underground and therefore more explosive eruptions.
When Vesuvius first broke out, he sent a massive column of ash and a volcanic rock in the air that it was raining down loudly In nearby cities, collapsing roofs and suffocating residents. Then a series of pyroclastic streams (fast moving, extremely hot avalanches of gas, ash and volcanic debris) swept the mountain, burning and burying everything along the way and leaving the buried cities inhabited in a tomb of ashes.
Related: Pompeii’s victims are not the ones we thought they were, DNA analysis reveals
Pompeii is buried under about 20 legs (6 meters) of volcanic material after eruption. The city was then lost by time until it rediscovered through a millennium later. Pompeii and Herculaneum are widely viewed by archaeologists, as excavations officially began in the 1700s, revealing buildings, murals, belongings and human remains.
human bones and skulls in the dirt
The remains of one of the people who lived in the house.
Remains of bed vs Wal in a room full of soot and dirt
The remains of the bed that the family tried to use for barricading the neck closed during the eruption of Vesuvius.
A wall picture of a boy with wings and ram
The picture of Helle and Frix, for which the house was named.
Wall paintings
More drawing on the walls of the house.
Barricaded door
The house in the new study, called Casa Di Elle Els, or The House of Helle and Phrixus, was named for a mythological picture found in one of its rooms, depicting the twins of Frix and Helle, fleeing the step -by -dial of the Magic Aries.
The house of Helle and Frix was first found in 2019 during an excavation of a neighboring site called “Ice and Swan House”. In this most recent excavations at the Hell and Frix house, which found a number of other details in the home, including a water pool, a banquet hall and a hole in its roof to collect rainwater in the home. They also found a bronze amulet or a “bull”, probably worn by the child, as well as a number of drinking containers, storage containers, bronze flakes and bronze pans for cooking.
Archaeologists created the cast of the bed that the family had used in an attempt to protect themselves from the flood of ash, probably through the hole in the roof.
“This is because the paws, the volcanic stones that risked invading space, entered the opening into the roof of the atrium,” Zuchtrigel said. “They failed, eventually the pyroClastic flow, a violent flow of very hot ash, which was filled here, as in other places, every room, seismic shocks had already caused many buildings to collapse.”
Related stories
-4,000-year-old prints near Pompeii show people who run away from Mount Vesuvius eruption thousands of years before the famous
– Fresco, discovered in Pompeii, shows a type of woman who “releases herself from the male order to dance freely, to walk and to eat raw meat in the mountains” “
– Pompeyi victims have died in “extreme agony”, reveal 2 newly discovered skeletons
Due to the lack of a number of decorations and other elements, archaeologists may have expected to find in the home, they suggest that the family may have been in the process of renovating their house during eruption. The presence of Phrixus and Helle murals, as well as a medium -sized home, indicates that the family was a middle or senior class in Roman Society.
“Excavating and visiting Pompey means to face the beauty of art, but also with the uncertainty of our lives,” Zuchtrigel said.