What Happened to Pompeii?

What Happened to Pompeii? — page 1 — Who Found the Buried City The Roman city of Pompeii and its neighbor Herculaneum had been buried and forgotten for centuries Then in the early 1700s their dramatic stories were rediscovered In the early 1700s workers were digging a well near the Bay of Naples in southern Italy Above them rose the great volcano Mount Vesuvius The workers found some old stones As they cleared the earth away they realized The cone-shaped Mount Vesuvius rises behind the ruins of Pompeii X 4

What Happened to Pompeii? — page 2 — that the stones were statues of women The women wore the kind of clothes that were once worn by the ancient Romans What were they doing in the Naples countryside Naples Pompeii Bay of Naples IN CONTEXT The Bay of Naples During the Roman Empire Naples was an important city in southern Italy Ports on the Bay of Naples received goods from other places in Italy and from around the Mediterranean The region was popular with wealthy Roman visitors who could reach it easily from the capital to the north The ruins at Pompeii give a clear idea of what a Roman town would have looked like X 5

What Happened to Pompeii? — page 3 — Key Clue In 1734 Naples and the countryside around it came under the control of a new king Charles VII He heard about the discovery of the mysterious statues and sent soldiers to look for more old objects He hoped to be able to sell anything they found to art collectors His soldiers soon found more old statues They also uncovered the first clue to help identify what they might be One of the pieces of stone was carved with letters When an expert studied the writing he recognized it as being Latin Latin was the language used by the ancient Romans The fragment of text read the theater of Herculaneum Winckelmann studied cameos or brooches found in other Roman cities X SCIENCE SOLVES IT Digging Up Pompeii Johann Winckelmann a German art historian and archaeologist is sometimes known as the Father of Archaeology He was interested in excavating ancient sites When he visited Pompeii in 1760 Winckelmann did not think digging up the ancient city would be worthwhile If Pompeii and Herculaneum had been buried by volvanic lava he thought both cities would have been crushed by the weight so nothing would be left to be discovered 6

What Happened to Pompeii? — page 4 — Who Found the Buried City Historians recognized the name Accounts left by ancient Roman writers described how the town of Herculaneum had once stood near the foot of Mount Vesuvius Herculaneum had been buried by lava after an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 ce The buried statues had once stood in a city that had been buried for more than 1,500 years If this was the site of Herculaneum historians knew there would be other valuable ruins to be uncovered The stories about the destruction of Herculaneum said that another city had been destroyed at the same time This was Pompeii In 1748 King Charles sent his soldiers back to Herculaneum to look for this second site They heard that local people had discovered old artifacts at a site about 12 5 miles 20 km down the coast from Mount Vesuvius The ancient Romans stored foods and liquids in these clay urns X 7

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