The History Blog

A vividly painted tomb dating to the 4th century B.C. has been unearthed in an ancient necropolis in Pontecagnano, near Salerno in the Campania region of southwest Italy. The Pontecagnano necropolis is enormous. Excavations have yielded more than 10,000 graves from the Iron Age through the late Roman Imperial period, but this is one of only four painted ones. Its architectural style makes it unique among the four.

The tomb was discovered this summer in an area of recent urban development. It is made of heavy travertine blocks with a double-sloped pitched roof. The interior was accessed through a steep staircase cut into an embankment of travertine. The entrance is closed with a travertine door.

The back wall of the tomb is painted with a scene of a returning warrior. Riding a galloping white steed, the warrior carries a spear and wears a shiny gold helmet. He is followed by an attendant on foot. The side walls are decorated with pomegranates and swags. Even the access door to the tomb is painted in a vivid harlequin pattern.

No grave goods were found in the tomb, but there are fragments of a gold leaf crown that the deceased was wearing when he was interred. The preliminary dating of the tomb to the 4th century B.C. is based on comparisons between the iconography of this tomb with that in other tombs of Italian elites from the period.

Founded by Etruscans in the 9th century B.C., Pontecagnano was the southernmost Etruscan settlement in Italy. It was wealthy from the beginning, prospering from established Etruscan trade contacts with Sardegna, Sicily, Greece, Egypt and the Middle East. It had a diverse population of people from different parts of Italy, as evidenced in tombs from the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. that contain pottery from their locations of origin.

In the 5th century B.C., numerous tombs containing weapons and armor appear in the necropoli of Pontecagnano. They attest to an influx of warriors of Italic origin who were employed as mercenaries. The same type of burials from this period are also found in the nearby Greek colony of Paestum. We know they were mercenaries rather than invaders because they were elites with plenty of money to spend, but they didn’t overthrow the existing power structure and culture. Etruscan religious sanctuaries, residential structures and language still dominated.

The Etruscan era ended in the 3rd century B.C. with the advent of Roman power. In 268 B.C., the Roman Republic established a new city at the site, Picentia, to house the Piceni people they deported from northeastern Italy after a failed revolt.

Eight previously unknown storage chambers have been discovered in the pyramid of Pharaoh Sahure, the second king of the Fifth Dynasty (ca. 2465 – ca. 2325 B.C.) and the first to be buried in Abusir. The storage areas are empty, but archaeologists believe they were originally intended to hold the grave goods of the king. The discovery sheds new light on the design and layout of this architecturally important pyramid.

Sahure’s pyramid broke significantly from the precedents set by the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty. It was much smaller than the massive pyramids of Sneferu, Khufu and their successors, but the interior was much more highly decorated with more than 100,000 square feet of reliefs on the walls of the pyramid and its two mortuary temples, more than three times the amount in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Sahure also used prized materials like granite and alabaster in his pyramid and clad it in brilliant white Tura limestone.

The inner chambers of the pyramid weren’t just looted of the precious grave goods in antiquity. They were also targeted by stone thieves, causing collapses and structural damage that threatened the pyramid’s stability and made it impossible for modern archaeological investigations to accurately map its interior passages.

Since 2019, the German-Egyptian archeological mission from the University of Würzburg has been restoring the pyramid, working to stabilize the interior and prevent future collapse. While shoring up damaged walls and ceilings and excavating rubble, the team exposed undocumented passages to reveal the original layout of the inside of the pyramid. The process made it possible to secure the burial chambers which were so heavily damaged they were previously inaccessible.

Careful documentation of the floor plan and dimensions of each storage room has significantly improved researchers’ understanding of the pyramid’s inner workings. The restoration pursued a balance between preservation and presentation to ensure the structural integrity of the rooms while making them accessible for future study and potentially the public.

Using state-of-the-art technology, including 3D laser scanning with a portable ZEB Horizon LiDAR scanner from GeoSLAM, the Egyptian-German team, in collaboration with the 3D Geoscan team, carried out detailed surveys inside the pyramid. This modern technology enabled comprehensive mapping of both the expansive exterior areas and the narrow corridors and chambers within. The frequent scans provide real-time updates of progress and create a permanent record of exploration efforts.

This groundbreaking project represents a significant milestone in the understanding of the Pyramid of Sahura and its historical significance. The discovery and restoration of the storage spaces is expected to revolutionize the view of the historical development of pyramid structures and challenge existing paradigms in the field.

Electoral graffiti are one of the most common types found on the streets and walls of Pompeii. There are more than 1500 documented examples of political campaign electioneering and slogans painted on the walls of Pompeii. Politicians running for office would hire professional graffiti writers to publicize their names, virtues, campaign promises and endorsements by well-known individuals and professional associations (bakers, goldsmiths, mystery cult members, etc.). They even did negative campaigning via graffiti, claiming an opponent was supported by the drunkards and thieves association, for example.

The political graffiti of Pompeii are so extensive that historians have been able to trace which candidates ran for which office in which elections, who endorsed them, who opposed them, what their platforms were; the real meat-and-potatoes of local electoral politics in a 1st century Roman city.

Now a new discovery has added a fresh dimension to our understanding of how campaigns for political office operated. A series of electoral inscriptions have been discovered inside House X in Pompeii’s Regio IX neighborhood, the same villa where the fresco with the fruit focaccia was found earlier this year. The inscriptions were in the room where the lararium, the home’s altar, was located. This was a fully interior space, not the exterior of the house where passersby would see which candidate the homeowner supported. The presence of the inscriptions indicates campaign promotions took place inside private homes.

The inscriptions are faded and fragmentary, but the remains are legible and promote the campaign of Aulus Rustius Verus, candidate for aedile, the magistrate responsible for public games, markets and the maintenance of sacred and private buildings. Epigraphers translate the longest and clearest two inscriptions as: “I exhort you sincerely to vote for Aulus Rustius Verus, aedile candidate, man worthy of the office.” Verus’ name has appeared before in electoral inscriptions. He owned a grand villa on the Via dell’Abbonzanza and in 73 A.D., a scant six years before the city’s obliteration, he attained the position of duovir, the next step up for aedile and the highest office possible in the city, alongside Gaius Julius Polybius. The graffiti must therefore pre-date 73 A.D.

House X’s owner was clearly a supporter and may have been a relative, friend or freedman of Aulus Rustius Verus’. The house had a professional oven so it was a bakery shop as well as a private home, and bakers were more typically freedmen. Bread was a big political issue in Rome. Roman citizens were given free wheat starting in the 2nd century B.C. and the grain dole was thoroughly entrenched under the emperors. The phrase “panem et circensis” (bread and circuses) was coined by the poet Juvenal around 100 A.D. to decry the decline of civic duty, replaced by the public’s craving for cheap/free bread and entertaining distractions. Verus’ initials appear on a millstone in the atrium that was undergoing renovations when Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. It’s likely that Aulus Rustius was helping to fund the bakery’s renovation, a tidy way to associate his generosity with bread production. This would make the baker his client and therefore bound to support his political endeavors even to the point of putting up billboards in his house.

The lararium also preserved another surprise for archaeologists: the remains of the last offering made on its altar. Analysis determined the sacrifice was dates and figs burned on the altar with olive pits and pine cones as the fuel. (Note: I have burned dried olive pits in a fireplace and they smell just as fantastic as you think they would.) The burned offerings were topped with a whole egg and then the altar covered with a tile.