UNROLLING HISTORY TEXTS FROM THE VILLA OF THE PAPYRI
Pompeii may be the most famous of the towns destroyed by Vesuvius in AD 79, but it is not the only one. Halfway between Pompeii and Naples lies Herculaneum, where eighteenth-century archaeologists discovered a splendid Roman villa, destroyed by volcanic rubble. It was once inhabited by Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, consul in 58 BC and father-inlaw of Gaius Julius Caesar. The excavator, Karl Jakob Weber (1712–1764), is considered a forerunner of scientific archaeology. He was not just a treasure hunter who found a fabulous collection of sculptures, but he also dug tunnels to investigate the house itself. He documented it perfectly.
In a not-too-large room measuring about three metres by three metres, no less than 1826 Over 340 of them are complete and the rest are in various states of damage.
