EXHUMING A CITY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 66, 7 March 1908, Page 4

EXHUMING A CITY.

The Italian Government announces that the excavation of the buried city Herculaneum will be begun at once. The work will be carried out- by tie; Italian Government with Italian funds, and the advice of eminent foreign archaeologists will lie gratefully accepted. Thn, the proposal made by Professor Waldstein, of Cambridge University, that the exea cations should lie supervised by an international committee, 's linally negatived. The artistic treasures which should, be unearthed are expected to prove far richer than those already discovered in the buried city of Pompeii, where Roman houses have been uncovered. with manuscripts., fragments of Ho >i newspapers, frescoes, and innumerable other relics of human life 1800 yea:s The difficulty in (be way of excavations in the past has been the fa t that the surface of tho deposit which covers the ancient city is covered wiih modem villages. These have gradual!*spread and grown, thus hampering Ih,' explorer.

live .nib's lr Xapies, close to "the -M.'diu'.ii m. It was a great and populous ,-ily iii Honian times, but if was totally destroyed, with the neighbouring city of Pompeii, in A.l). 7<H, V a terrible eruption of Vesuvius. A poo',village afterwards sprang up on the site, but this was also overwhelmed lull second eruption i„ 47J A.]). The ancient ,-ily now lies 111 to 1(10 feel: di-p under a mass „( | ilVi , m ,\ volcanic dusi. compacted by ages. But the velv calamity which destroyed it preserved for fillnre generations ii, treasures. But. for Pompeii, thiit buried city which has been exhumed in Ihe past' 101 l veals, no one would have known what a Roman town looked like, or how the Romans of the first century lived.