Everyone knows that on August 24, 79 AD, Vesuvius erupted, and as a result of this eruption, the ancient cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were filled up. But how did this dating come about? Who, how and when decided that Pompeii perished from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the 1st century AD? All official literature, textbooks, travel guides, the entire Internet are full of almost word for word, a fairy tale about the letters of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus, where he describes the eruption of Vesuvius, which allegedly led to the death of Pompeii. Why a fairy tale? Because without even asking questions about the reality of Pliny's and Tacitus as historical characters and discrepancies in the dates and texts of translations of different years, it is enough to pay attention at least to the fact that Pliny the Younger does not mention Pompeii and Herculaneum in his letters, nor as cities of the coast nor, moreover,as perished along with his uncle, Pliny the Elder, as a result of the same disaster.
It should be noted that in all early printed editions, there is no concept of "in what year" the eruption occurred, and only later, when the years of life of the characters mentioned by Pliny are coordinated with the chronology of the Ancient World, adopted according to other ancient authors, a year appears. The description of the death of Uncle Pliny the Younger in his letters to Tacitus is more like an excerpt from a work of fiction, which I will not cite here, it is known so. I will just say that after the eruption of the "79th year" various sources give up to eleven eruptions in the period between 202nd and 1140th years. But for the next 500 years, up to the December eruption of 1631, there is no more or less reliable information about the eruptions of Vesuvius. It looks like an active, with enviable regularity, the volcano suddenly calmed down, accumulating strength, for as much as 500 years!Beginning in 1631, Vesuvius no longer ceases to bother the inhabitants of Campania with its activity until the last eruption of 1944. Could it be that Pompeii perished as a result of this December eruption of 1631? Is there documentary evidence of this relatively late natural cataclysm? Are there any further parallels with the above description of Pliny the Younger? It turns out that there is such evidence, and there are quite a lot of them. In the book Alcubierre, R., et al., Pompeianarum Antiquitatum, published in Naples in 1860, diaries of excavations for the period from 1748 to 1808 are given. Among other things, it describes the artifact under inv. 16, discovered on August 16, 1763 in the form of a statue with an inscription attributed to Svedy Clemens, which mentions Pompeii and is supposedly kept in the Museum of Naples.
So, in fact, this statue is not there and no one knows anything about it. Nor is it in the museum's catalog of "antique inscriptions". In addition, according to this book, the inscription was on the pedestal of some statue of travertine, and in Pompeii today an ordinary stone with the same text stands in the middle of the road on a hill! How can this be? And like this. It was necessary for the millions of tourists who visit Pompeii every year to at least somehow "documentarily" confirm that the city to which they aspire from all over the world is really the same Pompeii. Or maybe that initially, when Pompeii was excavated in the 18th century and asked the question - what have we excavated? - there was a misunderstanding, deliberate or not, but a MISUSE, MISTAKE, and since then, unfortunately, all scientific works, dissertations,are historical and near-historical opuses based solely on this misunderstanding? The history of the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum is a separate broad topic that requires special detailed consideration. Therefore, here I will only touch it slightly, without going into details and not subjecting the primary sources to a critical analysis. I will dwell only on the key, inconvenient for some researchers, moments that are hushed up in every possible way or, on the contrary, are blabbed by adherents of the classic version of the death of Pompeii on August 24, 79 AD.who are hushed up in every possible way, or, on the contrary, are blabbed by the adherents of the classic version of the death of Pompeii on August 24, 79 AD.who are hushed up in every possible way, or, on the contrary, are blabbed by the adherents of the classic version of the death of Pompeii on August 24, 79 AD.
In the encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron, the famous papal architect-engineer Domenico Fontana is mentioned as the first involuntary discoverer of Pompey, among other things, famous for the completion of the construction of St. Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican, the transfer and installation of the Egyptian obelisk on its main square and the construction of the Palazzo Reale “In the Middle Ages, even the very place where Pompeii was located was forgotten, and for one and a half thousand years, it was hidden unknown to anyone under the ash and later soil layers that covered it. In 1592, the architect D. Fontana, while building the existing underground canal for the delivery of water from the Sarno River to Torre Annunziato, came across the Pompeian ruins, but no attention was paid to them. " The water conduit was commissioned, in the late 1500s, by Count Sarno, from the architect Domenico Fontana,for the purpose of supplying water to Torre Annunziato. From the early 1900s, it was used by peasants as an irrigation, for irrigation of fields and functioned until the 1960s, when the use of the canal ceased and it fell into decay. From these words it can be concluded that the engineer Fontana, was engaged in the production of mining tunneling at some depth and, in the process of these works, came across the roofs and walls of houses, buried under a layer of ash many meters, the city. It seems that there is nothing surprising here, if you do not ask the question, but how, purely technically, he managed to walk almost two kilometers in volcanic soil, not fragrant at all, emitting methane and carbon dioxide, without forced ventilation of the mine workings? On the Italian site Antikitera.net on February 26, 2004, an interesting note was published,referring in turn to the publication of the Culturalweb.it website dated January 23 of the same year, which says about the canal of the engineer Fontana, in particular the following: “When the canal was dug, it crossed (which no one suspected) Pompeii from the east starting under the Sarno gate and continuing to the street of the Tombs, in the western part of the city. On his way through the old city, he touched the temple of Isis, the temple of Eumachia, passed under the forum and the temple of Apollo. Numerous wells and observation posts were located along the canal, which, in addition to providing light and air, made it possible to periodically clean the canal. " It turns out that Domenico Fontana, leading an underground gallery, 1764 meters long, through the Pompeii Hill in 1592, managed to go so far not just underground, but even under the foundations of buildings and fortress walls,seemingly built in the 1st century AD, which on its way did not touch or damage any of them! Particularly interesting should look "numerous wells", which, given the multi-meter thickness of volcanic rocks that buried Pompeii like the pipes of the "Titanic", should adorn the Pompeian landscape today. But are there any available there?
On the way from Naples to the south to the Torah of Annunziata, 15 kilometers from Naples, you can see a monument - an epitaph on the facade of the villa of Pharaoh Mennela to those who died in the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631 - two stone plates with text in Latin. On one of them, along with RESINA and PORTICI, the cities of POMPEIA and HERCULANUM are mentioned in the list of dead cities !!!
Promotional video:
Even an ordinary tourist guide notes the clear discrepancy between the Pompeian artifacts and the 1st century AD, but, purely intuitively, compares it with the Middle Ages, where these artifacts fit very well. The very high level of fine art in Pompeii (frescoes, mosaics, statues) is surprising, correlated with the high level of scientific achievements of the Renaissance. During the excavations, a sundial was found, divided into "uniform hours". That is, a device, the creation of which was a difficult task even in the late Middle Ages. The famous mosaics of "antique" Pompeii are strikingly similar in composition, color, style to the frescoes of Raphael, Giulio Romano, that is, to the frescoes of the Renaissance. All this testifies to the extremely high level of development of the city and its inhabitants.
Art
Especially striking is the amazing similarity, even in details, of the compositions of the Pompeian fresco "Three Graces" and the much later Raphael. We see the same plot in the painting by Francesco del Cossa "The Triumph of Venus" 1476-1484, by Peter Paul Rubens "The Three Graces", circa 1640 and in a sculptural composition from Cyrene, an unknown author, dated 3- them century BC … I personally am surprised and questions to which no one can really answer me, so far, is not able. I admit that there was a kind of canon among artists, how to portray grace, but not in details? Was he prescribed by the Pope? This is obvious plagiarism! Either Raphael sketched a mural in Pompeii, having previously worked with a shovel, or Raphael had a time machine!
“The use of the same details by Roman and Renaissance painters, general color schemes, plot parallels, general compositional plans, the presence on Pompeian frescoes of things that appeared only in the 15th - 17th centuries, the presence in Pompeian paintings of painting genres that formed only in the Renaissance, as well as the presence of Christian motifs on frescoes and mosaics indicates that both Pompeian frescoes and the works of Renaissance artists are the creation of the hands of people who lived at the same time, i.e. Pompeian frescoes, like the great works of Renaissance artists, were painted in the 15th and early 17th centuries."
Written monuments
When excavating Pompeii and Herculaneum, archaeologists did not expect to find written monuments made on soft materials - on papyrus, linen or parchment. After all, during the eruption of the volcano, everything that could burn was destroyed. But a miracle happened: in Pompeii, in the villa of Lucius Cecilius Yukunda, an intact chest was found, and in it there were about one and a half hundred written books. One hundred twenty-seven of them have already been read. The rest are so tightly glued to each other that it is impossible to separate them.
At least for now. Unfortunately, those that were lucky enough to read turned out to be accounting documents. And in Herculaneum, in the 18th century, a whole library was found - one thousand eight hundred Greek papyri! Mostly the works of Philodemus. Most of them were found at the site of the so-called Villa of the Papyri. So far, only a small part has been read. As far as we know, this find was generally the first find of papyri. After that, papyri began to be found in Egypt and throughout the Mediterranean in droves. Attention is drawn to the fact that papyrus, as a wild plant in Egypt, was not found, even Napoleon in his time was looking for it there unsuccessfully, but papyrus feels good in Sicily, not far from the ancient Syracuse. Until the 20th century, there was a cooperative for the production of papyrus paper to meet the needs of tourists in "antique" souvenirs.
Instruments
Pompeian instruments are practically indistinguishable in form and technique from modern ones, perhaps made of bronze. Corner with a perfect right angle, compasses, forceps, dental instruments, scalpels … Note the thread of the gynecological instrument (Speculum uteris).
Without a lathe? As far as I know, screws with square nuts appeared towards the end of the Renaissance, and they were only made by hand - with files or file files. The first project of a machine for the production of screws was proposed in 1569 by Besson (France). But the watchmaker Hindley (England) applied Besson's idea in practice only in 1741.
The process of making a thin-walled wind instrument, its bell, wings, bending pipes are impossible not only without an appropriate level of technology development, but also without a certain tool-and-machine base., which predetermined the emergence of modern musical culture, traditionally dating back to the 17th century. and little that has changed since then began no earlier than from the 16th century.
Plumbing
Almost exactly the same today can be purchased at any plumbing store. Such cranes and larger valves can be found in the open air in Pompeii. The cranes, if you believe the description, are a sealed structure of three parts: a body, a bushing with a through hole and a shut-off cylindrical valve ground to it.
It is hard to imagine that this can be done using primitive tools, “on the knee”. Pompeian cranes were unregulated and served as gate valves. The supply and main pipes were lead. By the way, in England there are still many old houses, who does not know, pipes are also made of lead. In general, the water supply system of Pompeii today is admired for its engineering sophistication.
Now about glass
Apart from bottle, perfume bottles, colored glass of various shades, there are quite a lot of absolutely transparent thin-walled items in the museum's showcases; the same glass vases are depicted in frescoes. Compared to the Pompeian ones, other glass products that have survived to this day and dated to the first millennium do not differ much in transparency. All this is all the more surprising when you consider that the first transparent glass was received in the middle of the 15th century in Venice, on the closed "restricted to travel" island of Murano glass blowers, Angelo Barovir. For a long time after that, the secret of its production was kept in Venice from competitors like the apple of an eye. In Herculaneum, glass panes were found in standardized sizes 45x44cm and 80x80cm.
How do you imagine brick making in the 1st century?
This is not a plinth, it is a real standard brick with dimensions of about 23x13x3 cm. There are also other sizes, special, for example, for making round columns.
The brick is of high quality, rather homogeneous in its structure, practically does not stratify, which indicates that the clay is thoroughly mixed and cured before firing. The firing itself was carried out at a high temperature of about 1000 C, the brick "rings" when tapped until now. Pompeian bricks were not handcrafted, such as the production of adobe in wooden molds. If you look closely, you can see longitudinal stripes on the side edges, which are usually formed during the brick-making process with a belt press, if the forming frame has burrs. The use of a forming belt press is also indicated by the complex wave shape of the Pompeian tiles.