The Day the Sky Fell

During my visit to Kansas City the first of May, my family took me to Union Station to see the Pompeii Exhibit. Ordinarily, one would have to visit the museum in Naples, Italy to see these artifacts. However, the museum is renovating the wing housing the items so instead of storing them in a warehouse, the Italians boxed them up and sent them on tour to three American cities, including Kansas City.

Pompeii was a wealthy city of 11,000 mostly Roman people. This city, along with several others were located at the base and flanks of Mt. Vesuvius. At the time of the disaster, the volcano had been giving warning of subterranean cataclysm via earth tremors, smoke and steam. In fact seventeen years earlier Pompeii had suffered a major earthquake  they were still recovering from in 79 AD All (Wikipedia has a great article on Pompeii.)

When Vesuvius finally blew her top, Pompeii’s neighboring city of Herculaeneiu and its population were covered with lava but the inhabitants of Pompeii were overcome by poisonous gases which they could not outrun and everything and everyone was covered with a fine ash. According to Wikipedia, 2,000 people died, actually succumbing to heat of 250 degrees rather than suffocation). I'm not sure how the other 9,000 escaped--maybe they were out of town:)

Seeing the actual forms of people trying to protect themselves from the choking ash and heat is extremely sobering as you can tell from this picture of a person praying.

The beauty of the gardens and the pristine condition of the ceramic vases rescued was superb. Because the city was buried under 13-20 feet of volcanic ash the buildings, artifacts and skeletons were preserved almost intact. This gives us a fascinating window into the lives of the Roman world at that time.

Villa Garden

Ceramic vases in near-perfect condition

The entire catastrophe makes me think of the frog that was boiled alive. The people of Pompeii had plenty of warning the area in which they lived was not conducive to their health, but they ignored them,                                                     it, thinking life would go on as it always had.

(This jewelry was found on a woman holding a child along with others who had taken refuge under a stairway--obviously a family of great wealth.)

I was awed by the exhibit but saddened. The plight of those people is a frightening example of doing the ostrich thing—hiding one’s  head in the sand. An ironic  factoid: these folks had just celebrated a feast to the god, Vulcan, the day before Vesuvius blew. Almost makes me think God, the Creator, had finally had enough!