Pompeii Awakened: A Story of Rediscovery

by Judith Harris

The rediscovery of the Roman cities overwhelmed by the rage of Vesuvius is one of history's most extraordinary adventure stories. Pompeii Awakened revels in that adventure, and tells of the re-emergence of a long-vanished cosmopolis which profoundly inspired a later age - from its arts and architecture to its science, sex and religion. When Herculaneum, Pompeii' s sister in disaster, was located in 1709, that first discovery launched a frenzied scramble for buried treasure. Then in 1755 Pompeii too rose from its crust of volcanic rock, and the science of archaeology was born. Whereas Herculaneum had artistic, political and philosophical impact, the later discoveries at Pompeii spoke rather of domesticity - of cuisine and household architecture, tools, gardens and religion. To this day it is the only site to show what daily life was like in antiquity. However, the full story of Pompeii consists not just in its uniquely preserved classical villas and votives, but in the powerful response it evoked in the European cultural imagination. Here are the English, whose wealth, wet weather and classical education fostered a passion for Naples and its rediscovered cities.
We read of Sir William Hamilton discussing priapic cults with his near neighbour, the dilettante Richard Payne Knight, and of how the famous love affair of Emma Hamilton and Admiral Nelson saved the Heculaneum papyri from the French. Here too are the hosts who arrived from across Europe, and then from America - engineers and artists, dreamers and poets, photographers and cinematographers, whose reconstructions and remembrances of Pompeii have never ceased to resonate. Judith Harris brings the doomed city vibrantly to life. Pompeii breathes again through her account of the diverse people who sifted through its remains to catch a glimpse of themselves in the past. From the poetic souls who found a majestic melancholy in Pompeii's shatttered walls , to the tub-thumping Victorian preachers who denounced the city as akin to Sodom and Gomorrah, Pompeii Awakened uncovers many fascinating stories - of sex, science, love and death. The author has spoken to experts on three continents, flown over Pompeii in a hot-air balloon, delved into ancient diaries and descended deep underground to assess the latest discoveries of a lost world .
As the sleeping city re-awakens in her hands, Pompeii casts its spell once more, bewitching those who seek to unearth its buried secrets.

Genres: History, Italy, Nonfiction, Classical Studies, Art, Archaeology

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Rome-based writer and lecturer, Judith Harris was born in Bay Village, Ohio, and attended Northwestern University, from which she was graduated with honors in English in 1961. Further studies were of fine arts at the Cleveland Art Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, and of French literature at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
After working three years as a reporter for the Cleveland Press, she entered the U.S. Information Agency under the legendary Edward R. Murrow and, following six months in Washington, D.C., was sent to Rome, Italy, where she attained the rank of Attaché of Embassy in the cultural division. At the time women officers in the U.S. diplomatic service could not be married, by law, and so after five years she resigned to marry and raise two children.
She also returned to journalism, working primarily as a freelance journalist and regular contributor to, among others, the London Evening News, Reuters news agency, Time magazine, and the Wall Street Journal. She has worked on special assignments for the London Observer, the New York Times, NBC TV and BBC TV, and for RAI radio she conducted a regular program on Italian culture for twenty-five years.
Her articles on archaeology have appeared in Archaeology magazine, Archaeology Odyssey, and Biblical Archaeology and, on cultural and other topics, in Newsday, The New Republic, and, most recently, Italy italy, Internazionale and ARTnews. She speaks French and Italian.
Among the memorable personalities she has interviewed are novelists Gore Vidal, William Styron, Alberto Moravia, Leonardo Sciascia and Georges Simenon; actors Isabella Rossellini and Peter Ustinov; composer Giancarlo Menotti; the ballerina Carla Fracci; a Red Brigades gun runner, an extremely sinister Mafia boss, Italian President Sandro Pertini, a Taliban guerrilla leader, an Iranian Minister of Health, a Turkish arms dealer, and actress and ambassador Shirley Temple.
Her most interesting jobs otherwise were tracking opium traders in Pakistan, working for a caterer in Cleveland while in high school and serving as an editorial assistant to an historian of 19th century French economics, Prof. William Jaffe. For her research into terrorism she was included in the George Foster Peabody Award for Broadcast Journalism. Judith Harris writes a regular blog for www.i-italy.org.

Reviews

[Victor Sonkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subject of the book is interesting and necessary, but it is full of horrible mistakes to such an extent that it's very difficult to trust it in the parts where you cannot check the truth of the statements. I mean, it's good that the story of rediscovery is written in a coherent and full way, and it's cited everywhere; but CAVEAT LECTOR.

[mary jane cryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Judith Harris knows her subjects very, very well for she has been writing about Italian archaeology and politics, on site from Rome, for four decades. When we first met in 1979 (she interviewed me for her international RAI radio program) we both agreed that next to teaching history in Rome, writing about archaeology in Italy was one of the most interesting positions possible. There was never a dearth of material since every day it seemed some new discovery was being made or a new site unearthed .
In the case of Pompeii, the site has been “found” and excavated over and over again: from the times of Renaissance architect Domenico Fontana to archaeologists working under Murat’s supervision and then under Mussolini’s regime.
The book tells of the tribulations and triumphs of excavating in tunnels and open air pits under the various Neapolitan, French, Spanish, and finally Italian, governments.
What was found fuelled the excitement and was reflected in the arts and literature throughout the educated world. The excavations brought to light wondrous marble statuary, papyrus scrolls, painted villas and all they contained including the pornographic artefacts, ithyphallic figures and frescoes which so shocked the genteel Victorians.
Harris has put all her expertise scouting out archaeological news into “Pompeii Awakened” to produce a dazzling chronological story. She explains the importance of the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum in a way that will make serious archaeology buffs happy as well as Italophiles and curious visitors.

The book introduces a huge cast of characters ranging from Padre Antonio Piaggio , the patient unroller of papyrus scrolls, the thick headed, lazy Neapolitan royals, the superficial Emma Hamilton and her cuckolded husband William who loved volcanoes as much as her Attitudes, William Gell of the Dilettanti Society and Lord Bulwer-Lytton whose “Last Days of Pompeii” affected the way the excavations were perceived worldwide for generations afterwards.
Harris brings them all to life and tells the part each played in the story, as well as revealing their faults and foibles. But since the 1860’s when Giuseppe Fiorello devised the method of revealing the shapes of human bodies with plaster casts the main characters have been the people who inhabited the buried cities themselves and the overshadowing, ever present threat of the slumbering Vesuvius.

Harris narrates how, until the unification of Italy, foreign as well as Italian archaeologists worked on the site and--often against the wishes of the Neapolitan court--divulged the findings at an international level. Especially during the 18th century, local officialdom was particularly obtuse.

[Reva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice review of excavations and progress at Pompeii and other sites around Vesuvius, notable for its final section on work currently being done at a site north of Pompeii covered not by the eruption of 79 but by a later eruption, a site with a building vast enough to be at least be suggested to have belonged to Hadrian, I believe. She also covers the years between 80 and the 1400's very well. Easy read on an academic subject.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear writing, page-turner, accessible history, really brought Pompeii alive for me before my trip there. This book was educational and very satisfying.

[Kate Gardner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book not about Pompeii pre-AD 79, but about the rediscovery of the town since 1748. Harris tracks the uncovering of Herculaneum and Pompeii up to the present day – a story that encompasses much of the political history of Europe over the same years and the development of modern archaeology. This book is really good and packed with fascinating tidbits.

What Harris makes abundantly clear is that the history of the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum is heavily affected at every stage by who was ruling the Naples region – a situation that changed frequently. She also details how destructive the early excavations were. The first digs were funded by the local royal family and they ordered the workmen to strip out everything that looked valuable, without any record being kept of what was taken from where. Tunnels were dug in straight lines straight through ancient walls and then filled back in with dirt. It’s quite upsetting.

These excavated artefacts were given as gifts to visiting dignitaries; sold to raise funds for the royal family (or equally often privately sold by whichever friend of the royal family was put in charge of the excavations); and stolen as the spoils of war. As such they were dispersed around the world. Some items have since been returned to Italy’s museums, primarily the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (which we visited the day before Pompeii) and some are still being studied in universities using methods that just weren’t available hundreds of years ago.

Read my full review: http://www.noseinabook.co.uk/2019/02/...

[Mary Ellen Barringer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough accounting of Pompeii, Herculaneum and surrounding areas. A little dry in the writing, yet engaging.