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Buried deep in the Villa dei Papiri, covered by the molten lava of Vesuvius, lies one of the finest libraries of the ancient world. But excavation may destroy more than it saves

They look like lumps of coal, and when the Swiss military engineer and his team who first explored the buried town of Herculaneum in the 18th century encountered them, that was how they were treated: as ancient rubbish, to be dumped in the sea.

But before being hit by a cascade of molten volcanic rock at more than 400C (the so-called pyroclastic flow that inundated the town), these now-blackened and nondescript objects were part of the library of the grandest villa in the town, where the father-in-law of Julius Caesar was regaled with the epigrammatic gems of his in-house Epicurean philosopher, Philodemus.

They were the papyri on which the ancient world preserved its literature, as the tunnelling archaeologists of 250 years ago belatedly understood. Some 1,800 have so far been recovered, and although both papyrus and ink were carbonised, modern thermal imaging techniques have made it possible to decipher them, with the help of a considerable amount of computing muscle.

Half have already yielded their secrets. None are likely to enter the best seller lists: mostly they are works of Epicurean philosophers, like Philodemus, the one-time resident of the villa. Indeed, although he died a century before Vesuvius’s disastrous eruption, the papyri discovered so far may well have come from his private library. But experts suspect that only a fraction of the papyri inside Villa dei Papiri (”the Villa of Papyri”), as it is known, have been discovered. New excavations in the 1990s revealed two more previously undiscovered floors to the villa, below those already explored. But because the entire villa is encased in tufo, the tough stone that results when the pyroclastic flow hardens, a major task of engineering and archaeology is required to find what more remains to be brought to the surface.

A group of classical scholars is now calling for excavations inside the Villa of Papyri to be resumed without delay. Thanks to the fluke of its preservation within the inferno of the eruption, this is by far the oldest extant library in the world. And nobody has a clue what is in it. It is known that its owner when Philodemus was alive was Lucius Calpurnius Piso Cesoninus, a senator and a wealthy, cultured figure who entertained Roman high society down here at his fabulous country pad by the sea. The villa was full of beautiful vases and statues and other works of art, many of which are now in a museum in Naples.

It is highly probable that Piso also possessed a large library, as became someone of his wealth and culture: not merely the works of Epicurean philosophy that reflected the special interest of Philodemus, but all the other works, Greek and Roman, with which a man of his civilised tastes could be expected to be familiar: the plays of the Greek tragedians, for example, or the dialogues of Aristotle, or Livy’s History of Rome. And given the freakish survival of Philodemus’s collection, it is argued, the rest of the library may be in a similar condition: carbonised but accessible. The figure that has been suggested as the likely cost of bringing them back to civilisation is between €20m (£13.6m) and €30m. But the prize, Robert Harris, author of the novel Pompeii, and the scholars argue could be quite literally priceless: our knowledge of the literature of the ancient world could double overnight, with this single excavation.

But at the Villa of the Papyri all is quiet: no drills or jackhammers batter at the villa’s tufo shell, no new mines are being bored through the rock, no teams of volunteers sift spoonful by spoonful through the recovered debris.

In fact there is nothing going on here at all.

The villa was built a couple of hundred yards away from the town of Herculaneum, set apart from it along the beach that the eruption of 79AD destroyed. Today it occupies a site adjacent to the ruins of the ancient town, separated from it by a seedy lane lined on one side with old tenements and newer but already shabby-looking apartment blocks strung with washing. Groups of British and American and French tourists pad about through the ruins of Herculaneum, which looks like a fragment of Grozny after the Red Army had been battering it for a couple of years.

The tightly packed houses, shops, temples and taverns are built of diagonally set, cream-coloured stones: all are roofless and with weeds and wild flowers sprouting from the walls, though structurally they look in remarkably good shape.

But nobody pads around the Villa dei Papiri site: it is only open for groups with special permission. When I visited this week it was completely deserted. Behind a high concrete entranceway and massive steel gate, more befitting a municipal refuse site than an important ancient monument, what remains of the Villa of the Papyri is wrapped in its rock-encrusted sleep.

And now the scholars are demanding to know why. Last year they formed the Friends of Herculaneum Society, and with Robert Harris have begun lobbying for excavation to begin again as soon as possible.

Professor Robert Fowler, professor of Greek at Bristol University and a trustee of the new society, said: “Everyone thinks it is possible that there is more to be found, because of the very peculiar, one-sided nature of the library as so far discovered: this is one of the great country houses of one of the great Roman potentates. Where are the other philosophers? Where are the Greek poets? Where are the Latin books? If you were under siege by a volcano, would your first priority be to get the books out? We have an obligation to finish the excavation.”

Robert Harris said: “The promise and potential there is immense. This is the wellspring of Western civilisation. There could be the lost dialogues of Aristotle down there, the lost plays of Sophocles, poems of Catullus - it’s just priceless. Anything that could be done to get it out should be done. It’s irresponsible to leave it in the hope that it could be got out in 50 years.

“It’s a battle to keep people interested in history and ancient history in particular. And this is a great story, it captures the imagination of people.

“It’s a thrilling thing that stirs the imagination. The sad fact is that the preservation of what’s already been excavated is essential, but it’s not sexy. I hope both can be done.”

So why aren’t the archaeologists and engineers busy burrowing under the Villa of the Papyri now, as we speak, to bring this hypothetical treasure to the light? The essential reason is contained in a paradox: under present circumstances, the only way to ensure the survival of whatever may emerge from the villa is to leave it exactly where it is, encased in rock.

Suppose new excavations were to start tomorrow, and next year half a dozen lost tragedies of Sophocles, say, were brought to light. Once the spectral imaging technology had got to grips with them, their survival for eternity would be guaranteed; a year or two after that one would be able to buy the Penguin Classics translations in any bookshop.

But what about all the other stuff that would inevitably emerge at the same time as the precious lumps of carbonised papyrus? Because the library, if it exists, will not be uncovered in isolation. Everything interred with it will come to light too.

Herculaneum is unique in that the mantle of rock that encased the town preserved not only the sort of things that can be found in sites all over the world, such as stone and pottery, but organic material as well: papyrus, but also wood, cloth, rope.

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, the director of the British School in Rome and of the Herculaneum Preservation Project, said: “The ancient town is in a great pit beneath the modern town, and it was preserved by the molten rock like a fly trapped in amber. This is one of the very few excavations in the world where organic material has been so extensively preserved - wood, papyrus, cloth, rope, mostly wood that was carbonised by the pyroclastic flow. Things that survived include furniture, cupboards, beams, doors.”

Herculaneum in this respect is very different from the more celebrated Pompeii, which receives 10 times as many visitors. “At Pompeii you have the feeling of a bare skeleton, impressive for its scale but with too little intimate detail. But in Herculaneum you walk round a corner and come upon a little tavern with a wooden wine rack, storage loft and back office with sliding doors,” Mr Wallace-Hadrill said.

“A villa of this quite exceptional magnificence evidently had many treasures other than its papyri, including other types of documentation (wooden tablets with legal transactions and records) and an abundance of other organic materials, including grain and foodstuffs, fabric and wooden furniture.”

But with rain, polluted air and pigeon droppings assailing the site daily, that unique organic fabric is crumbling fast.

“The Herculaneum site was mostly excavated in the 1930s,” Mr Wallace-Hadrill said. “Now it’s undergoing a conservation crisis - it’s crumbling away. It’s hard to believe if you didn’t see it with your own eyes. Really beautiful fresco decoration flaking off, lumps of plaster that have come away lying at the bottom of walls. We’ve got a whole team of people trying to halt the worst - it’s an emergency first aid job, taking it area by area. It’s an enormous undertaking. If it had been properly maintained it wouldn’t be such a huge problem.

“Stuff falls off the walls in great chunks. It’s like in the scene from the Fellini film Roma where they discover a Roman villa and open the door and this vivid fresco fades in front of their eyes. It’s one thing to bring an ancient town back to life by excavation. But to keep this delicate ‘reborn’ patient alive is a massive challenge. The people who built Herculaneum didn’t build for millennia any more than we do today - they built to last 20 years or so. The staggering thing is the quality of the Roman mosaics that have survived despite what’s been done to them.

“Because of this conservation crisis, I’m almost indifferent on the subject of the papyri. I feel terribly strongly that you’ve got to concentrate on the acute problems of today, rather than what you could do in the ideal circumstances. Ancient cities that have been buried and preserved, are incredibly rare - we can’t afford to throw them away. Let’s get our heads around what’s to be done to preserve it. It’s tremendously important.”

Neither Mr Wallace-Hadrill nor Bristol University’s Robert Fowler have the final say in the matter, of course: Herculaneum’s fate is in the hands of the Superintendent, Professor Piero Guzzo. Listening keenly to the arguments is David Woodley Packard, the American billionaire philanthropist, a scion of the Hewlett-Packard dynasty, whose Packard Humanities Institute is committed to funding the site’s development. Initially on the side of those who argue for a rapid new start to excavation, he too has come round to the view that the first priority is to stop the existing site from disintegrating further. His institute has already spent $2m (£1.1m) doing that.

Mr Packard told the Art Newspaper: “When the Italians decide it is time to resume excavations at the Villa of the Papyri, our foundation expects to be in a position to offer appropriate financial support.”

We can imagine the master of the Villa dei Papiri, grasping the stanchions of a galley offshore from Herculaneum on that nightmarish day in August AD79 and gazing back in horror as the eruption column of Vesuvius slowly collapsed and a cascade of molten rock engulfed his home. He could have had no doubt that all was lost, his fragile papyrus library and everything else.

Two thousand years later, the disaster has turned out to be a miracle. But the only way to ensure that the contents of his home, miraculously spared, will not quickly crumble to nothing is to keep them in their rocky womb a little longer.

“We want you to recognize that Iran is a clear and present danger to the United States of America and Israel. And… that it’s time for our country to consider a military pre-emptive strike against Iran if they will not yield to diplomacy,” says Pastor John Hagee, a popular television preacher and head of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), an organization that he founded in February 2006.

That was said, of all places, on the steps of the Capitol during a Christian Zionist summit in July 2007. Among some 4,500 listeners, there were prominent representatives of the U.S. ruling elite: on the Republican side, presidential candidate John McCain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and former Republican House majority leader Tom DeLay; among the Democrats, Senator Joseph Lieberman was in attendance. Israel was represented at the rally by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“When 50 million American evangelicals unite with 5 million American Jews, you know it is a match made in heaven,” the preacher said. In response, Sen. Lieberman said of the preacher: “I would describe Pastor Hagee with the words the Torah uses to describe Moses: he is an ‘Eesh Elo Kim,’ a man of God because those words fit him; and, like Moses he has become the leader of a mighty multitude in pursuit of and defense of Israel.” 

Who are the “Christian Zionists”? They are a variety of Protestant “fundamentalists” who interpret current events literally as prophesies fulfilled, in accordance with Biblical prophecy, and interpret the prophetic texts as describing inevitable future events. They prefer the most literal interpretation, as proposed back in the 19th century by Briton John Darby, who said there would be no Second Coming of Christ until the Jews returned to the Holy Land.

When Israel was “recreated” in Palestine in 1948, the Darby followers came to the conclusion that that had happened exactly “according to the Scripture.” Literalists like Hagee have since continued to replace historiography with theology. From these theological “heights,” they imagine themselves to be political strategists and rulers of destinies in the world: after all, “in accordance with the Scripture,” Abraham’s posterity should possess the entire Holy Land - from Mesopotamia to Turkey to Egypt.

Ironically, the literalists do notbother to ask whether the Israelis need such an Israel in the first place. They - i.e.: Christians waiting for the Second Coming of Christ in accordance with the Apocalypse prophesies - need a great and indivisible Israel. Jesus returns at the end of the seven years (Tribulation) to destroy The Antichrist (The Beast) and his armies at the Battle of Armageddon, outside of Jerusalem. It is for this battle that the pastor - dubbed “Texas Taliban” by some commentators - is urging the U.S. to prepare. 

Needless to say, Good is represented by Israel and the U.S., and Evil, by all of Israel’s enemies - i.e., Pales­tinians, Arabs, Muslims, and especially Shiite Iran. “The head of the beast of radical Islam in the Middle East is Iran and its fanatical president, Ahmadinejad,” Hagee intoned. “Ahmadinejad believes if he starts a world war, the Islamic messiah will mysteriously appear and produce a global Islamic theocratic dictatorship. It’s 1938 all over again. Iran is Germany. Ahmadinejad is Hitler and Ahmadinejad, just like Hitler, is talking about killing the Jews.”

According to the pastor, the principal force of Evil will be Russia, a sponsor of Muslim terrorists and supplier of nuclear weapons to Iran. It makes no difference to the preacher that the Soviet Union was Hitler’s main opponent and was also the first state to recognize Israel, or that many Israelis come from Russia or that modern Russia itself is fighting against Muslim extremists (”Russia is all over the Middle East in an antagonistic position against the United States… Iran’s nuclear weapons have been produced with Russian scientists. The Islamic Arabs are using the Roadmap to Peace to accumulate as much of Israel’s territory they can get.”)

Whatever the case, the battle will end in a decisive victory for the forces of Good, and the theocratic Jewish state with be restored with the center in Jerusalem, to which all other kings and tsars will go cap in hand. Alas, after such a triumph, the pastor runs into problems: what about the Jews who are waiting for their Messiah, not Jesus Christ? According to the pastor, Jews have not as yet converted to Christianity simply because they have not seen Jesus Christ. But during His Second Coming to Jerusalem, they will finally be able to see Him with their own eyes, and they will bow to him. 

“Thank you for the honor,” said Rabbi Michael Lerner, who was invited by TV host Bill Moyers to his show to discuss the activity of Christian Zionists. “First, you want to get the Jewish people involved in Arma­geddon,” he said, “and then you confront the winners with a no-win choice: convert to our faith or you’ll burn in hell.” From the rabbi’s perspective (and Rabbi Lerner is also editor of Tikkun, a Jewish journal of

politics, culture and spirituality), Chris­tian Zionists such as Hagee do a great disservice to Israel and all Jews.

At this point it turns out that a “holy alliance” between 50 million American Christians and 5 million American Jews is more of a dream than reality. In spite of the fact that there are quite a few Jews among the neo-cons who started the war in Iraq, the majority of American Jews vote against Bush.

Even in Israel itself, it is unlikely that many people would fall for the “holy alliance.” After all, Hagee is even opposed to the Road Map for Peace and a two-state concept, favors the continued colonization of the West Bank, and is against any concessions being given to the Palestinians.

There are just as many problems with the 50 million Americans. Presumably to counterbalance the dispute between the rabbi and the pastor, Moyers invited Dr. Timothy P. Weber, another evangelist, on the show. Unlike Hagee, Dr. Weber is a real historian, the author of “On the Road to Armageddon: How Evan­gelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend.” Although Dr. Weber considers himself to be an evangelist, he is far from being a Zionist. According to Dr. Weber, Christian Zionists are not Christians in the first place, nor do they represent the majority of Christian evangelists. They believe in the Second Coming of Christ, but do not intend to play up to Israel. They simply follow Christ’s teachings, campaigning for peace and justice.

Dr. Weber pointed out that during the Cold War era, literalists portrayed the Soviet Union as northern Gog in confrontation with American Magog. At that time, Iran was not even a blip on the biblical preachers’ radar screen, but now they are trying to fit Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s policy into a biblical scenario.

There is no reason to believe that Christian Zionists represent the majority of American Christians, but Hagee, without any doubt, represents a belligerent trend in U.S. policy, which has yet to run out of steam. According to recent Time and CNN polls, one-third of Americans believed that after 9/11, the end of the world was near at hand, while 36 percent take biblical prophesies literally.

Apart from religious fanatics like Hagee, there are also other advocates of a “holy alliance” in the United States. For example, Daniel Pipes, the son of the well known Russia expert Richard Pipes, who is a specialist on the Middle East and a neo-con, said: “Other than the Israel Defense Forces, America’s Christian Zionists may be the Jewish state’s ultimate strategic asset.”

On the other hand, such intellectuals as Rabbi Lerner and Dr. Weber are very well aware that the source of America’s good will with respect to Israel is the shared origin of Christian biblical culture. Therefore, while challenging the Christian Zionists’ right to be called Christians, they do not condemn evangelicals in general. They acknowledge that Islam as one of the three great religions that originated from ancient Judaic monotheism. They are concerned that the influence of fundamentalists and fanatics in all three religions distorts their spiritual foundations.

When Moyers referred to Ahma­dinejad’s bellicose remarks about Israel and recalled that some Muslims believe in the return of the Mahdi,

a kind of messianic figure who will turn the world Islamic, Rabbi Lerner condemned all fanatics and said: “The alternative is to create a different world view. And this is the problem that the United States and those of us who are liberals or progressives in the United States and in the Western world have not been able to articulate an alternative world view. This is partly because we have become so secular and no longer understand that there is some spiritual foundation to the yearnings of people all over the world for something other than global capitalism, for something other than the globalization of selfishness.”

Well said. But while sensible people are creating an alternative world view, it would probably be a good idea to recall that the U.S. Constitution has clearly separated religion from government. Of course, Pastor Hagee is free to say whatever he likes in his parish. But when he does that on the steps of the Capitol with the obvious goal of influencing U.S. policy, he violates not only the law, but the very spirit of the American Constitution.

By Vladislav Krasnov, president, the Russian American Goodwill Associates (RAGA)
 

JERUSALEM - Israeli archaeologists digging in an east Jerusalem parking lot have uncovered a 2,000-year-old mansion they believe likely belonged to Queen Helene of Adiabene, a minor but exceptional character in the city’s history.

The remains of the building were unearthed just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, underneath layers of later settlement that were themselves hidden until recently under the asphalt of a small parking lot.

The dig site is in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan, built on a slope that houses the most ancient remnants of settlement in Jerusalem and is known to scholars as the City of David.

The building, which includes storerooms, living quarters and ritual baths, is by far the largest and most elaborate structure discovered by archaeologists in the City of David area, which was home 2,000 years ago almost exclusively to the city’s poor. The contemporary Jewish historian Josephus Flavius, who penned detailed descriptions of Jerusalem, mentions only one wealthy family that lived there - the family of Queen Helene.

According to Josephus and Jewish texts, Helene was from a royal clan that ruled Adiabene, a region now in northern Iraq. Along with her family, she converted to Judaism and came to Jerusalem in the first half of the first century A.D.

Helene merited grateful mention in the Mishna, the written version of Judaism’s oral tradition, where she is praised for her generosity to Jerusalem’s poor and for making contributions to the Second Temple, the center of the Jewish faith, which was just a few hundred meters uphill from her house. She was buried in an elaborate tomb not far away.

Today there is a downtown Jerusalem street named for her.

There is a “high probability” that the mansion belonged to Helene’s family, simply because no other building comes close to matching the historical description, Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Doron Ben-Ami said at a news conference announcing the discovery Wednesday.

Built when Jerusalem was capital of the Roman-ruled territory of Judea, the building was destroyed along with the temple and the rest of the city when Roman legions quelled a Jewish revolt nearly two millennia ago, he said.

Diggers at the site discerned that the massive stones of the second floor had been purposely toppled onto the arches of the first, causing the house to collapse, he said, and in the ruins they found ceramic shards and coins dating to the time of the Jewish revolt against Rome.

“This amazing structure was destroyed with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.,” Ben-Ami said.

Aren Maier, an archaeology professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, said Ben-Ami’s hypothesis about the house’s famous resident was a good one, because no similar building has yet been found anywhere nearby.

“If he did find a massive building of this kind, of course you can’t say for sure, but it’s certainly logical,” Maier said.

ROME (Reuters) - An at a dig in Herculaneum, Italian archaeologists said on Tuesday, hailing it as the most significant piece of wooden furniture ever discovered there.
 
The throne was found during an excavation in the Villa of the Papyri, the private house formerly belonging to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, built on the slope of Mount Vesuvius.

The name of the villa derives from the impressive library containing thousands of scrolls of papyrus discovered buried under meters (yards) of volcanic ash after the Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79.

Restoration of the throne is still ongoing with restorers painstakingly trying to piece back together parts of the ceremonial chair.

While other wooden objects have been dug out in nearby Pompeii, experts have never before found such a significant ceremonial piece of furniture. Previously such pieces have only been observed in paintings or made of marble.

“The find of ancient wooden furniture is not an absolute novelty in Herculaneum or Pompeii. Organic materials in fact were preserved in these cities because of the peculiar way in which they were submerged by the Vesuvius volcanic mud,” said the head of the dig, Maria Paola Guidobaldi.

“But we have never found furniture of such a significant structure and decoration,” Guidobaldi said.

Little is known about how the throne would have been used but the elaborate decorations discovered on the chair celebrate the mysterious cult figure of Attis.

The most precious relief shows Attis, a life-death-rebirth deity, collecting a pine cone next to a sacred pine tree. Other ornaments show leaves and flowers suggesting the theme of the throne is that of spring and fertility.

The cult of Attis is documented to have been strong in Herculaneum the first century AD.