A bakery where slaves were imprisoned and exploited to produce bread has been discovered in the ruins of Pompeii in what has been described as the most shocking example of slavery in the ancient Roman city.
The cramped bakery with small windows covered with iron bars was part of a house that emerged during excavations in the Regio IX area of the Pompeii archaeological park in the south. Italy.
The discovery provides more evidence about the daily life of Pompeii’s enslaved people, who are often forgotten by historical sources, but who made up the bulk of the population and whose hard labor shaped the city’s economy as well as the culture and structure of the supported Roman civilization.
The house was presumably undergoing renovation work when it was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79. But the remains of three victims were found in one of the bakery’s rooms in recent months, suggesting the house still had residents.
Marks used to coordinate the movement of enslaved workers and blindfolded animals were found on the bakery floor. The house is divided into a living area decorated with lavish frescoes, and the bakery, where slaves were forced to grind the grain needed to produce bread. The bakery was cut off from the outside world, with the only exit leading to the main hall of the house.
“It is, in other words, a space in which we have to imagine the presence of people with servile status, whose freedom of movement the owner felt the need to limit,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the Pompeii archaeological park , said. “This is the most shocking side of ancient slavery, the one without relationships of trust and promises of manumission, where we are reduced to brute force, an impression completely confirmed by the security of the few windows with iron bars.”
In 2021, a room inhabited by enslaved people, with three wooden beds, a chamber pot and a wooden chest, was found in what was a sprawling villa in Civita Giuliana, a suburb of ancient Pompeii. The remains of two victims, believed to be a master and a person he enslaved, were found a year earlier in the same villa.
The partially mummified remains, including hair and bones, of a former addict who rose through the ranks was found in a grave at the necropolis of Porta Sarno, one of the main gates to Pompeii, in 2021. The tomb is believed to date from the decade before the city was obliterated.
An exhibition dedicated to the enslaved people of Pompeii will open on December 15 at the archaeological park.
