New Find in Pompeii: a Bakery-Prison for Slaves

Enslaved people ground grain in cramped room with barred windows, say experts
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 8, 2023 12:49 PM CST
New Find in Pompeii: a Bakery-Prison for Slaves
File photo of the ancient city of Pompeii.   (Getty / Milan Sommer)

The discovery of a cramped room with barred windows in Pompeii has revealed what one expert describes as a "most shocking side of ancient slavery." Archaeologists, who found the room in the working quarters of a large house whose living quarters were lavishly decorated with frescoes and marble cartibulum, say enslaved people would've been locked inside and forced to grind grain needed to make bread, per Reuters. The small space, which featured windows with iron bars high up in the walls, offered no view of the outside world, according to the outlet. "It is the most shocking side of ancient slavery ... where we were reduced to brute violence," says Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, per the Guardian.

Zuchtriegel, co-author of a study on the excavation published Friday in the Pompeii Excavations E-Journal, adds it's "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." Enslaved people "made up most of the population" of Pompeii, per the Guardian. Some went on to obtain freedom and great wealth, but most lived a life of incredible hardship. Those working in this bakery-prison would've been separated from the rest of the house. There was no external access to the bakery, made up of four rooms in all, according to the study. Indeed, the only exit led to the main hall of the house, the Guardian reports.

The enslaved people locked inside the room dedicated to grinding grain apparently had company in the form of donkeys. Floor indentations suggest the animals "were forced to walk around blindfolded for hours," per Reuters. The markings are indicative of "the synchronized cycles carried out around the millstones, akin to the gears of a clockwork mechanism," according to EuroNews. A neighboring room served as a stable. The home in Region IX, Insula 10, near the slopes of the ancient city was undergoing renovations at the time Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79, blanketing Pompeii and neighboring settlements in ash and pumice, but was presumably still occupied as the remains of three people were found within the bakery, the Guardian reports. (More Pompeii stories.)

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