Sangiuliano, Zuchtriegel hail new Pompeii finds

ROME. KAZINFORM Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano and Pompeii Director Gabriel Zuchtriegel on Monday hailed the latest discoveries at Pompeii: the skeletons of two women and a child aged between 3 and 4 who had sought shelter in a bakery from the eruption that buried the ancient Roman commercial town in layers of lavic ash and pumice, as well as two frescoed walls featuring mythological scenes - Apollo and Daphne in one and Poseidon and Amymone in the other - near an atrium in the Regio IX, occupying the central part of Pompeii.

«These continual finds make us understand how much remains to be uncovered at Pompeii,» said the minister, ANSA reports.

«Now we are happily concluding the Great Pompeii Project, and I compliment the director, but we have already discussed about how to follow it up».

Zuchtriegel said «the discovery of the three victims of the eruption put together a team made up of archaeologists, anthropologists, seismologists, and archaeo-botanists who are working together to get the most data from these finds.» He said the three «did not die from the direct effects of the eruption but due to the collapse of buildings during the first phase of the eruption, probably because of the earthquakes that accompanied it.

»Precisely because the Great Pompeii Project was such a great success, we want to go further and avert returning to a situation where we need extraordinary funding, working instead in the viewpoint of sustainability and conservation of the patrimony«.