THE eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago is largely considered to be one of the worst in history – incinerating or suffocating thousands of people living at the base of it.
And have just uncovered the heartbreaking final moments of a young family’s bid to survive.
During a recent excavation of a house in , archaeologists found the remains of four people, including a child, in a barricaded room.
A bed had been moved against the bedroom door, in what was likely the family’s last effort to escape the searing hot ash that was flooding the city.
“In this small, wonderfully decorated house, we found traces of the inhabitants who tried to save themselves, blocking the entrance to a small room with a bed,”;Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archeological Park of Pompeii,said in a statement translated from .
The findings, published in Scavi di Pompei, offer an insight into the people who knew their lives were in trouble when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.
“Excavating and visiting Pompeii means coming face to face with the beauty of art but also with the precariousness of our lives,”; added Zuchtriegel.
The house, named casa di Elle e Frisso, was first uncovered in 2019, during the excavations of a neighboring site called the House of Leda and the Swan.
It was an ordinary day when , a major , erupted and entombed the cities of in ash.
This type of volcano is known for having extremely violent eruptions due to its magma containing higher levels of gas.
When Vesuvius first exploded, it sent a massive column of ash and volcanic rock into the air.
This giant plume then poured down onto nearby towns, crushing houses and suffocating residents.
A series of pyroclastic flows – fast-moving, searing avalanches of gas, ash and volcanic debris – then flooded through nearby towns and cities.
Casa di Elle e Frisso, also known as the house of Helle and Phrixus, was a decorated home, with paintings and a banquet hall.
Researchers believe the home belonged to a middle or upper class Roman family.
And a lack of decorations and elements suggests they might have been renovating at the time of the eruption.
One painting that was found depicts the mythological twins Phrixus and Helle fleeing from their stepmother on a magical ram with a golden fleece, before Helle fell to her death in the waters below.
It’s this painting that gave the house its name.
Other details found by archaeologists include a water basin, a bronze amulet thought to be worn by the child, bronze scales, bronze cooking pans and a hole in its roof to collect rainwater.
Yet this hole is likely what let the deluge of ash swamp the home.
“This is because the lapilli, the volcanic stones that risked invading the space, entered through the opening in the roof of the atrium,”; Zuchtriegel said.
“They didn’t make it, in the end the pyroclastic flow arrived, a violent flow of very hot ash that filled here, as elsewhere, every room, the seismic shocks had already caused many buildings to collapse.”;
