A MUMMIFIED CITY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3380, 27 June 1927, Page 7

A MUMMIFIED CITY.

(By ■ Sir Charles Waldstein, Litt. D., Ph.D., L.H.D., in an interview.)

After a lapse of nearly 2,000 years the city of Herculaneum, which was buried in an eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79, is to be excavated by the Italians. Mussolini has given the order, and to-day, Rome’s birthday, the work is to be started. •

From an archaeological point of view Herculaneum is quite unique. It was not by any means an important place in the ancient world; nevertheless there is every reason to believe that it, contains treasures of art and literature far more valuable than those in any of the great centres which nourished at the same period in history., A single villa excavated at Herculaneum in the ghteenth century yielded greater treasure in original bronzes and ancient manuscripts than all the excavations at Athens, Rome, or Alexandria.

What are the grounds for the high hopes wo have for the excavations which are about to begin? First, the manner in which Herculaneum was buried. The more suddenly a city is buried, the more chance there is for future generations to find the life of it fixed and preserved. The burial of Herculaneum was sudden and complete, and this was not the case with any of the neighboring cities, not even Pompeii. Pompeii is about 5J miles from the foot of Vesuvius, but Herculaneum is only ih Pompeii was buried to a depth of about 20ft. under a shower of ashes and pumice-stone which blew out .of the crater. The inhabitants had good reason to hope that the city might be saved, and many of them lingered on in their cellars and elsewhere._ They had plenty of time to remove their valuables, but with Herculaneum it was quite different. The city was suddenly overwhelmed by a mass of liquid mud and ashes mixed with water. The inhabitants fled before the advancing peril, leaving their property behind them. Unlike the Pompeiians they could not dig their way back to their houses when the eruption ' was over, because the entire city was submerged, in some places to a depth of 80ft. Every ancient city, except those around Vesuvius, has passed through the dark periods of warfare and destruction. When we come to think of file sieges, the pillagings, the sacking and burnings which great cities like Rome or Byzantium have undergone, we can hardly be surprised that archaeologists can scarcely find a trace of their former treasures, and what man spares Nature destroys on her own account.

By an absolutely unique set of circumstances, Herculaneum has escaped this common fate. Struck down in the full beauty and vigor of her youth, she was embalmed as perfectly and completely as the ancient Pharaohs of Egypt. The tide of liquid mud and ashes which overwhelmed the city advanced slowly, pressing gently through the windows and doors of the houses so as to cause no breakages. It became a sort of batrix round the objects of furniture, preserving them from corroding moisture and from chemical disintegration. So perfect a preservative was it that several of the bronzes found in Herculaneum might have just left the sculptor’s hands. Even the manuscripts found there were legible after special treatment. Perhaps it is the chance of discovering some of the, missing classics _in Herculaneum that is the most exciting prospect of all. The whole educated world has been enthusiastic about the remarkable manuscripts found in the tombs of Egypt, and no doubt many more will come to use from the same source, but Egyptian manuscripts can only be found in fragments because of the way they were used in tombs. It is quite different in the case of Herculaneum. In one villa, a complete library of 800 manuscripts was discovered. It was particularly unlucky that the owner happened to be a man who specialised in Epicurean philosophy — and in the dullest of the Epicurean writers at that. But not everyone in Herculaneum was such a specialist. Who knows what awaits us in the other private libraries of the city? All the Greek tragedies and comedies may he there in their completeness. The missing works of Plato, the lost books of Livy may at last come to light. It is even possible that we may find letters and records referring to the earliest days of Christianity.

The presence of these libraries brings ns to anotber point of difference between Herculaneum and Pompeii. Pompeii was a thriving provincial town, commercial in tone and character. Not a single manuscript has been found in it, and the only tablets discovered were those of an auctioneer. But Herculaneum was not a commercial town at all; it was a seaside resort for many of the leaders of the Roman world who built their villas at its walls. To excavate Herculaneum will be an immense task, but not an impossible one, as it was long imagined to be. A subsequent eruption of Vesuvius spread a coating of lava on top of the mud, which buried the city in 79 A.D., and for hundreds of years it was thought that the town was sealed up in solid rock. Fortunately this is not the case. When once the outer crust of lava has been pierced, vertical shafts can easily be sunk. Then by tunnelling horizontally the whole of Herculaneum can be excavated bit by bit, while the modern town of Resina rests securely on the lava above it.