Full Breakdown
Cupboard from Pompeii Offers Intimate Glimpse of Ancient Daily Life
By Drooid · · How we work
In this breakdown
01
Discovery of a 2,000-Year-Old Cupboard
Archaeologists uncovered fragments of a wooden cupboard sealed for almost two millennia in a house on Via dell'Abbondanza, one of the busiest streets of ancient Pompeii. The pieces were recovered during systematic excavations of the building’s floor and reassembled to reveal the interior contents that had lain undisturbed since the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.
02
Context of the 79 CE Eruption
When Vesuvius erupted, meters of ash buried the city, preserving its architecture, graffiti and everyday objects in situ. The preservation allows modern scholars to study the material culture of a Roman urban community with unprecedented detail.
03
Objects and Their Significance
Among the recovered items was a necklace composed of at least 24 tiny components—bone, glass paste, earthenware and rock crystal—featuring miniature images of the gods Bes and Mercury, as well as tiny hands, feet, pine cones and grapes. Such necklaces, known as crepundia, were traditionally given to children as protective amulets and rattles, and sometimes retained into adulthood as personal mementos.
Additional finds included tweezers, a small glass perfume or ointment bottle, an incense burner, and a range of bronze, glass and ceramic vessels alongside cooking pots. Lead weights stored in a wooden box led archaeologists to suggest that a resident was involved in trade activities. A woven container held 38 bronze coins, indicating that both monetary assets and sentimental objects were left behind, implying the occupants had no time to retrieve them when the volcano erupted.
04
Verbatim Quotes
- “Pompeii is not just a place of great works of art. It is also a place where the most ordinary objects restore the human dimension of the past,” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said site director