A compelling exhibition at the British Museum explores the daily life and tragic end of Herculaneum and Pompeii. By Nicky Rowe

The Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibit at London’s British Museum could easily fall into the style of school history lessons, or assume nothing and perform a simple inventory of artefacts, as has been done before. But the beauty and intelligence of this exhibition is breathtaking and due solely to its muted, domestic focus. The number of books, films and international exhibitions about the fate of Pompeii, Herculaneum (and the largely forgotten Stabiae) are countless in scope, but in this elegant telling the catastrophic eruption is inaudible as a whisper until the final corner is turned from the curated house, into the street and then somehow into the violent death that erupted from Mt Vesuvius in AD 79.
The British Museum, in partnership with the Archaeological Superintendency of Naples and Pompeii has created a story that begins not with the event, the aftermath or the conservation of the eruption, but with life as it was two days earlier. On entry there is nothing but a diverging path: the path of ‘Life’ and the path of ‘Death’. At their convergence is the plaster cast of a collared, presumably chained guard dog (pictured), recoiled and contorted in pain. Life and death are rendered paradoxically: without this event of death, we would know so little about Roman life.
The people of Pompeii and Herculaneum were largely descended from freed slaves of Greek, Etruscan and Italian origin. They were educated and literate, enamoured with compelling self-images and prestige. Some of the private houses in Pompeii were 200 to 300 years old.
One third of Pompeii and two thirds of Herculaneum remain unexcavated. Only 1500 bodies of their combined 20000 residents have been uncovered, but they reveal that the two cities suffered remarkably differently deaths at the hands of Mt Vesuvius.
Pompeii, on the slopes of the volcano, was buried in up to 24 meters of volcanic ash after the midday eruption. The cloud of ash and rock plumed nearly 30km into the sky and a few hours later began to descend over the city. The falling cloud killed those outside and violent tremors caused buildings to collapse, trapping those within. Hours later the cloud in entirety came tumbling down and triggered a pyroclastic surge – an avalanche of superheated ash, gas and rock that moved at 30 miles per second and killed everything in its path. It was this 750°F surge that incinerated the people of the seaside town of Herculaneum. Other than scant falling ash the people of Herculaneum had no warning at all that they were to be instantly carbonised.
Plaster casts (like the dog) were made by filling the voids left by long-decayed bodies under mountains of ash that fell on Pompeii. But the finds from Herculaneum, such as the cradle and food, only exist because of the immediate carbonising effect of the surge. This is the first time the findings of the two towns have been shown together, and the result is the nearest depiction we have had yet of life as it was.
Following the path of life, visitors enter a Pompeii streetscape. It is here that the deft touch and cogent, masterful timing of the British Museum’s curating is made clear. History is at once unwritten. The sound of horse hooves and bells are a reminder that life, not death, is the motive of this display.
To contain the domestic focus of the over 400 artefacts, visitors are guided through the House of the Tragic Poet: atrium, cubiculum (bedroom), hortus (garden), living room, culina (kitchen). Artefacts are housed just as they may have lain.
At the entrance to the villa is a fresco of a guard dog (pictured), found at the same house as the plaster-contorted guard dog left chained while its owner fled. Intricate curtain holders in the shape of a ships bow, a linen chest complete with carbonised cottons, a winged phallus windchime (a phallus with a phallus and a phallus tail) are in the bedroom. A marble, jokey statue of a drunken, urinating Hercules, a mosaic of a woman etched with specks of coloured stone too tiny to contemplate and the carbonised cradle (pictured) rocking a baby wrapped in a woollen blanket when the firewall hit are only some of the treasures. The findings here are too plentiful and too wonderful, or haunting, to impart. In the garden, birds are singing. Suddenly, this is not a nameless house recreated, but someone’s house, and these are real possessions, not borne of a museum but bought for their beauty or their usefulness, just as we do now.
At the last corner, we meet death. It comes quickly. A family lies together in a stairwell, arched and petrified. The awful, cringing pugilist pose has seized them – boxer-like, arms bent and tensed as their tendons contract in response to the searing heat. The possessions they thought to take with them are laid out next to them, momentoes of humanity that hold fast even as life is threatened by death: jewellery, bags of coins, the key to the front door. The things that mattered then are the same things that matter now. Even more now, possibly, thanks to this wondrous expression of life.
“Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum” is at the British Museum until September 29, 2013. Follow updates on the exhibition via Twitter on #PompeiiExhibition and the Museum’s Twitter account @britishmuseum, or check out www.british museum.org.
An accompanying publication is available from March 2013 by British Museum Press:Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, by Paul Roberts. Hardback, £45, paperback £25.

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