The Last Day Of
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Part of Light Night Leeds City Museum Friday 4th October 2013 Bringing the ancient world to life through the Victorian carnival FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY. Roll up! Roll up! And see the Ancient Worlds Gallery in a whole new light! More information http://carnivalofancientwonders.wordpress.com/ Roll up! Roll up! For one night only… Experience the “Last Day of Pompeii” through a series of artefacts from recent excavations presented in tableaux illuminating the sights and activities of everyday Roman life, as presented by Mr Walter Washburn, archaeologist with the German excavating team (1892-1893). 4th October 1893 The Journal and Notes of Mr Walter Washburn, kept during his visit to Italy, 1892-1893, during which time he visited Pompeii and participated in an excavation there. Vesuvius from Portici, c. 1774–1776, original in oil on canvas (40” x 51”) by the British artist Joseph Wright (1734–1797). Credit: The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, Frances Crandall Dyke Bequest. Monday 3rd October 1892 Dearest Polly, I can still hardly believe how lucky I am. It is only a week since my kind hosts in Naples introduced me to August Mau – yes, the very man who just ten years ago categorised the styles of Pompeian painting – and already he has invited me to visit his newest excavation! I am so glad that mother insisted we learn German as well as French, otherwise I could never have gained his approval by discussing details he published in the German Archaeological Institute’s Roman Mittheilungen. But I don’t need to tell you that! I do need to tell you that he has the most impressive white moustache, very distinguished – I’m half considering growing one myself... The Domus L. Albusius Celsus is the 8th house in the 2nd insula of Region 5 under Guiseppe Fiorella’s numbering system (V.2.i) - I enclose a map torn from my Baedeker Guide, with apologies and thanks to Messrs Baedeker, but shall make a more detailed version for you soon. Excavations began last season and there are only a few weeks before Mau goes to winter in Rome, although he says that, if I suit – oh,, I so hope I will – and improve my Italian, I may rejoin them in the Spring! I will take notes and sketch diligently over the next weeks and send you copies of as much as time permits, particularly the decorative schemes, as I remember how much you enjoyed them during our trip with Uncle Richard to the Pompeii Court at Crystal Palace. I am sure you will appreciate seeing these before everyone else! Your loving brother, Walter It is very strange that parts of this city are open to visitors, while others resemble a building site. These visitors dresses would never survive the gruelling work ahead of me, as it appears I will actually be expected to shift baskets of lapilli from our site! Postcard of the Forum (the main public area). Up to the present time about three-fifths of Pompeii have been excavated. In 1872 Fiorelli estimated that at the current rate of excavation the whole city would be laid bare in 74 years. Since then work has progressed more slowly, partly because greater care is being taken for the preservation of the remains. At the present we believe that the twentieth century will hardly witness completion of the excavations. Excavations made under the Direction of Inspector Giuseppe Fiorelli, in 1860, using his new method . Articles of furniture and objects of art that can easily be moved (like the statuettes often found in gardens) are usually taken to the Museum in Naples; a few things have been placed in the little Museum at Pompeii. Now and then small sculptures have been left in a house exactly as they were found; but the necessity of keeping such houses locked and of guarding them with especial care prevents wide adoption of this method of preservation. This is not a street, it is a house, still with its stone furniture in the atrium - Regio VIII Insula 4, 4, 49. Paintings have been preserved by different methods at different times. Generally, however, the best pictures have been cut from the walls and transferred to the Museum, while the decorative framework has been left undisturbed. It is regrettable that in this way the effect of the decorative system as a whole has been destroyed, for the picture forms the centre of a carefully elaborated scheme of decoration which needs to be viewed as an artistic whole in order to be fully appreciated; and the removal of a painting cannot be accomplished without damaging the parts of the wall immediately in contact with it. A far better method would be to leave intact all walls containing paintings or decorative work of interest, providing such means of protection against the weather as may be necessary – even re-roofing or reconstructing the building. A good beginning in this respect has been made in the case of the house of the Vettii (VI.15.1), the beautiful and well preserved paintings of which have been left on the walls and are preserved with the greatest of care. Although this house is now locked and under guard, which can prove troublesome for the casual visitor – I will suggest this way forward to Herr Mau should there be any paintings of quality in the Domus L. Albusius Celsus. The treatment of a mosaic floor is an altogether different problem. While the floor as a whole, with its ornamental designs, is left in place, fine mosaics representing paintings, which are delicate and easily destroyed, are wisely taken up and placed in the Museum. Photograph by Giacomo Brogi taken about twenty years ago: “5075Pompeii. Wall of the Temple of Augustus, also known as the Pantheon”, showing the roof added to protect the decorative scheme in situ. It is actually a photograph of the Macellum, which brings home to me the importance of cataloguing the finds and the site accurately for future generations. While photographs like this seem frivolous (they sell well to tourists!), the photographer assures me that do an important job of reminding people that these rooms were once occupied – by people very similar to those who live in the Naples area today - and of preserving the paintings, which are beginning to fade in the sun. You can see where a superior painting has been removed to by being cut out of the plaster! Photograph of “Edoardo in Pompei” by Wilhelm von Plueschow. Pompeians cast in plaster. Fiorelli’s new excavation method – digging down through the layers rather than tunnelling into houses, meant that he noticed voids in the volcanic material. When he poured plaster into them he discovered that these voids were moulds of things like wooden furniture and even people. When I came to Pompeii as a visitor I entered on the South-East side of the city through the Porta Marina , but today as an actual archaeologist I enter through the Nola Gate on the other side of the city in Regio IV, which is almost entirely unexcavated. From here you can see the amphitheatre, where I hope to examine some of the graffiti in the tunnels beneath. These scratches in the plaster of the walls is one of the things which helps me feel so close to the Pompeians of 1800 years ago, whose lives were cut short by the volcano. Herr Mau has told me that his house has an inscription dating from the reign of Nero – I cannot wait to see it! These are a few of my favourites from wandering around: Vici Nuceriae in alia DCCCLVS, fide bona. ’I beat Nuceria at dice: 855.5 denarii ($150 US dollars) – without cheating! Accounts from a bakery (Regio I. iii. 27) in which an as (a small bronze coin, is worth 1½d):Oleum, l[ibra], a[ssibus] IV; palea a. V; faenum a. XVI; diaria a. V; furfure a.VI; viria I a. III. Oil, 1 pound, 4 asses; straw, 5 asses; hay, 16 asses; a day's wages, 5 asses; bran, 6 asses; one wreath for the neck, 3 asses;. The discovery of bread in one of the ovens of a bakery in Pompeii, 1870. Note the applauding female onlooker – Polly, I wish you were here to see Pompeii too… Walter Washburn, Esq., in Pompeii. October 1892. I asked Wilhelm von Plueschow if he would take a picture of me in the Forum Triangulare. Here it is. You will be pleased, Polly, that I did not succumb to his kind offer of wearing one of his togas! View of the Forum Triangulare, looking toward Vesuvius, which is smoking today…. On the left, are the remains of the Doric temple and of the altars with a well house in front; on the right, is the exterior of the large theatre. Interior of the amphitheatre, looking west with a transverse section of the amphitheatre, showing the tunnels under the seating where lots of graffiti can be found; much of it concerning gladiators and not all of it yet recorded. "O Campani [inhabitants of a neighborhood – vicus -- in Pompeii], you perished together with the Nucerians in that victory." This refers to the riot in the amphitheatre in 59 AD and was published by Champfleury in his Histoire de las Caricature Antique in 1866. Scratched into the podium of a tomb in the necropolis outside the Nucerian Gate (the Gate nearest the amphitheatre) is this graffito of two Thracian gladiators. Marcus Attilius (left) and Lucius Raecius Felix (right). The numbers after their names give their form.