(ANSA) - Rome, February 1 -
The origins of the famed buried city of Pompeii
have emerged from years of excavations, an
international conference in Rome was told
Thursday.
The first Pompeii was not built
by the Romans or even by the Greeks who preceded
them, but by an ancient people called the
Samnites, Pompeii heritage Superintendent Piero
Guzzo told a packed audience of archaeologists
and scholars.
Wielding photos of
inscriptions, votive offerings and even entire
buildings, Guzzo said "a new season of studies
has begun". "For the first time we have come to
understand how Pompeii was born and not just how
it died," Guzzo told a three-day conference here
on ten years of work by archaeologists from all
over the world.
"The most exciting
discoveries were the frescoed buildings with
precious mosaics, still perfectly intact, dating
back to the Samnite foundation of the city in
the Third Century BC," Guzzo said.
"The
fresco in the so-called House of the Centaur is
one of the oldest found at Pompeii or indeed the
whole of Italy," said Fabrizio Pesando of
Naples' Oriental Institute.
"The true
Pompeii is not the Roman one that was buried by
Vesuvius in 79AD," Pesando said.
"Its
golden age was in the Second Century BC, as
shown by these buildings," he
said.
"Pompeii has become, once again, a
great laboratory for
research".
(ANSA) - Rome, February 1 -
The origins of the famed buried city of Pompeii
have emerged from years of excavations, an
international conference in Rome was told
Thursday.
