• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

“Prison Bakery” Discovered In Pompeii Is A Grisly Reminder Of A Darker Aspect Of Ancient History

December 11, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Ongoing excavations at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, Italy, has recently unearthed a darker feature of the city’s past. Archaeologists have found a structure where enslaved people and donkeys were confined and forced to grind grain to make bread, a painstaking process that could take hours.

The bakery-prison, as it is being referred to by the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, was a cramped room with no view of the outside world. Those forced into this space would have had to rely on a few small, barred windows built high into the walls for light.

Advertisement

The room forms part of a house that was recently discovered at the site Regio IX, Insula 10, where work is currently being conducted to secure and consolidate the slopes that form the edges of unexcavated areas of the city of Pompeii.

As is typical in this ancient place, the house was divided into a residential area, which is lavishly decorated with Fourth Style frescoes, a style of art that appeared in the city between 62 BCE and its destruction in 79 BCE, and a “productive quarter”, where domestic work – in this case, the bakery – was carried out.

“[It is] a space in which we have to imagine the presence of people of servile status whose freedom of movement the owner felt the need to restrict,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the Archaeological Park of Pompeii’s Director, said in a co-authored article.    

“It is the most shocking side of ancient slavery, the one devoid of both trusting relationships and promises of manumission, where we were reduced to brute violence, an impression that is entirely confirmed by the securing of the few windows with iron bars.”

Advertisement

The bakery’s millstone is located in the southern part of the central room, and is adjacent to the stable, which is identifiable by the presence of a feeding trough.

Surrounding the millstone are a series of semicircular indentations in the volcanic basalt paving slabs. It was initially thought that these could have been worn into the surface over a long period of time, but it is more likely they were deliberately carved into the floor to guide animals on their repetitive movements.

illustration of slaves and donkey working in the prison bakery, moving the millstone to grind flour

The donkeys were often blindfolded during their work to stop them from getting spooked.

Image courtesy of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii

“Iconographic and literary sources [such as Apuleius’ Golden Ass], particularly the reliefs from the tomb of Eurysaces in Rome, suggest that a millstone was usually moved by a couple consisting of a donkey and a slave. The latter, in addition to pushing the grindstone, had the task of inciting the animal and monitoring the grinding process, adding grain, and collecting the flour.”

The grooves show signs of wear that would have occurred due to the sheer number of hours of endless movement carving into them over the years.

Advertisement

“More than just a groove it reminds us of the gears of a clockwork mechanism, designed to synchronize the movement around the four tightly packed millstones found in this area,” the Archaeological Park of Pompeii said in a statement. 

“In the final analysis,” the director adds, “it is spaces like this that also help us understand why there were those who thought it necessary to change that world and why in the same years Paul, a member of a small religious group, who was later canonised, wrote that it is better to be all servants, ‘douloi’, meaning slaves, not of an earthly master, but rather of a heavenly one.”

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Facebook questions British watchdog’s authority to order Giphy sale
  2. S.Africa’s Zuma seeks to replace prosecutor in arms trial
  3. Indonesia’s new carbon tax signals higher power costs amid calls for clarity
  4. Hot As The Sun? People Are Still Confused About The Titan Implosion

Source Link: “Prison Bakery” Discovered In Pompeii Is A Grisly Reminder Of A Darker Aspect Of Ancient History

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • How To Watch The “Awkward” Partial Solar Eclipse This Weekend
  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version