Perhaps the most famous of natural disasters, if not the most deadly, is the volcanic destruction of Pompeii in 79 A.D. Famous because we have an eyewitness account from Pliny the Younger whose uncle Pliny the Elder died in the eruption, and because the remains of the city and its companion Herculaneum have been rising from oblivion ever since the eighteenth century. Among the many discoveries are remarkable wall paintings, surgical instruments, and astonishing plaster casts of human beings – men, women, and children—captured in their final moments.
Literally thousands of books have been written about Pompeii, scholarly tomes and novels, from Edward Bulwer-Lytton to Robert Harris. It has also inspired operas, fictional movies, documentaries, and entrepreneurial tours. Does the world need yet another book about Pompeii? The answer is “Yes!”
The Buried City is the elegantly translated and beautifully illustrated work, originally published in German, written by the site’s most recent director. Born in 1981, educated in classical studies at Berlin’s Humboldt University, Zuchtriegel came to Pompeii in 2021 from his position, further south, at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Paestum. His selection benefited from a 2015 change in Italian regulations that finally allowed foreigners to take up prestigious museum jobs. That did not stop 140 professors and curators signing a petition against his appointment – too young, too inexperienced, they claimed. One wonders if they also objected to his German nationality. (Since 2023, the regulation change is being walked back under the right-wing Meloni government.) But Zuchtriegel does not tell us that miserable story until near the end of his book, more with bemusement than rancor.
Some of Zuchtriegel’s critics complain that his enthusiasm for communicating the archeological finds to a wider public is facile popularizing; and they fret over his desire to grant greater access to the sites for risking damage to ancient stones or injury to visitors. He believes that if the public purse supports digging into the past though archeological endeavor, then the public deserves to know, understand, and contemplate the findings in a way that allows for human connection. That agenda welcomes the multidisciplinary approach to interpretation that goes beyond the bare findings of stones and bones to include written sources and the technological traditions of farming, cooking, and building.
His book is a captivating blend of history, guide, and memoir. Each chapter explores the interpretation of a recent discovery that evokes life in those fateful days and connects it to our own reality. A series of frescoes brings alive Roman interpretations of Greek myths. The small size of dwellings invites a reconsideration (upwards) of estimates of the city’s population and the vast number of casualties. A slave bedroom speaks of the fear and daily suffering of those who were unable to flee. A pre-eruption grave with an intact skeleton challenges assumptions about changing burial and religious practices. The looting of the site in the immediate aftermath of the disaster made an impact on what is found and not found now.
Pompeii reminds us that mass casualties are a terrifying yet constant feature of human existence. Wikipedia offers a list of natural disasters by chronology and death toll. Volcanoes, earthquakes, tornados, and tsunamis cannot be prevented, but now many can be predicted, warnings provided, relief prepared. But other “unnatural” disasters result from deliberate human action, especially in war; a disturbing realization that led two doctors – a Russian (Evgeny Chazov) and an American (Bernard Lown) — to create the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. They reasoned that medicine could do nothing faced with the mass casualties of an atomic bomb; medicine must therefore prevent it.
Humanity is also responsible for climate change. As I write, Nepal is grappling with a sudden flash flood that has suffocated several villages with thousands missing and dead, buried in dense mud and clay, just as the victims of Pompeii were entombed in volcanic rock. Will the lost eventually be recovered as plaster casts in some remote archeological future? Could this disaster have been predicted and lives saved, as some are now suggesting? And in connecting the horror of two thousand years ago to our own time, will we use our growing understanding of those brutally arrested lives to fully embrace our responsibility to adapt to and restore the waning health of our planet?
The Buried City: Unearthing the Real Pompeii
Gabriel Zuchtriegl
Translated by Jamie Bulloch, University of Chicago Press, 2025.
Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum from Wiki Commons
