The Buried Books of Herculaneum: Part 8

...approximately 400 scrolls had been opened and read, with approximately one in ten of those written in Latin as opposed to Greek. This fact, in agreement with popular ancient Roman culture, suggested that a still-buried Latin library probably existed within the house. If so, it is still there...

Part 7 of this series continues the story of the excavations of Herculaneum, as we seek to unravel the answer to the Novel Travelist mystery: Why was the Villa dei Papyri never fully excavated?

Here, at last, we conclude this story.

***SPOILER ALERT***

This true Buried Books of Herculaneum mystery is detailed in fiction in The Vesuvius Isotope. Inevitably, in presenting the answers to this Novel Travelist Mystery, I also give away some of the punch lines of the novel. Readers interested in The Vesuvius Isotope are encouraged to stop reading here until they have completed the novel. You may order your copy on Amazon (print or Kindle version,) BarnesandNoble.com (Nook version) or Kobo.com (Kobo version.) Or purchase a SIGNED copy at www.kristenelisephd.com.

And without further delay, please consider yourself forewarned that from this point forward, there are spoilers.

*****

Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and the first decades of our new millennium, the Villa dei Papiri excavations have been reopened and halted again several times. There have been three predominant obstacles in the way.

The first is the constant flooding and poisonous gases of the ancient ruins, which lie several feet below sea level. It seems modern technology can extract thirty-three trapped miners from beneath several meters of pure rock, but has not entirely found a solution to these conundrums. I suspect that this issue is only secondary to the others below.

Villa dei Papiri, floor plan of Carlo Weber, ~1750

The second hurdle to completing the excavations is the location of the Villa dei Papiri, which is - quite mysteriously - now contested. The first map of the villa was generated in the 1700s by Carlo Weber. Weber’s contemporaries were amazed at its accuracy and detail, and the exact locations of each room within the villa were undisputed for two hundred years. Until today.

The most recent effort to excavate the Villa dei Papiri was initiated in the 1990s. Following the reliable maps of Karl Weber, an excavation crew bored into the belvedere, or pavilion, first described by Weber’s men in the 1700s. It was during this excavation that the crew discovered that Weber had only identified the uppermost story of the building. In fact, there were three levels to the sprawling villa.

Then the modern crew changed their minds. Weber’s original map of the villa was declared erroneous. The tunnels were filled back in, and the Villa dei Papiri has been inaccessible ever since.

Resina, Italy, provence of Ercolano

The third - and largest - obstacle is the modern town of Ercolano, which now sits directly on top of the ruins of Herculaneum. Ercolano happens to be Italian crime territory.

The town is the hub of camorra, the Naples Mafia. But unlike Sicilian Mafia which is largely centralized, camorra operates as a loosely tied network of families or clans. Because there is no centralization, the individual members of the camorra network – much like those of al Qaeda – are much more difficult to flush out and prosecute.

The landowners of Ercolano - mostly camorra bosses - repeatedly block the excavations of Herculaneum, demanding exorbitant sums of money for even a cursory, non-disruptive, dig.

The tension between camorra and the government has been increasing dramatically since 2010. That was when a new, massive eruption of Mount Vesuvius was predicted to occur within the next eight years. This eruption could destroy the ruins of Herculaneum and the Villa dei Papiri forever.

The situation is becoming desperate. Many of the buildings of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as many of the major historical sites of Naples, have begun to crumble. Some of this is attributable to natural wear-and-tear, and some not.

On February 15, 2013, a corruption probe into the most recent excavation of Herculaneum was announced. This had been the dig that revealed the second and third stories of the Villa dei Papiri, just before the maps of Karl Weber were declared erroneous and the excavation halted.

Two weeks later, arson destroyed a prominent Naples museum. Camorra was highly suspected. No charges were ever filed. For story and video, click here.

On March 18, 2013, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera ran a report detailing the crumbling of more than 200 Naples churches.  For story and images, click here.

And so the rift continues between archeologists, the Italian government, and the ubiquitous camorra. But there is hope.  On February 16, 2013, just one day after the corruption probe was announced, restoration of some of the fragile sites of Pompeii was initiated.

With hope, we may one day be able to read the priceless Buried Books of Herculaneum.

"The Villa of the Papyri is unfinished business." - Judith Harris, Pompeii Awakened

This blog post explores a non-fictional theme or locale that is incorporated in The Vesuvius Isotope, a new novel by Kristen Elise. Buy The Vesuvius Isotope on Amazon.

When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the twenty-first century.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children. 

The Buried Books of Herculaneum: Part 7

Vittorio Emanuele

King Big-Nose was placed back on the throne for a third time, at which time he traded some of the scrolls to Britain’s King George IV in exchange for a giraffe. The English again tried a chemical softening process to unwind them. Again, the scrolls were ruined. No more had been unearthed...


Part 6 of this series continues the story of the excavations of Herculaneum, as we seek to unravel the answer to the Novel Travelist mystery: Why was the Villa dei Papyri never fully excavated?

Here we continue this story. To read the story from the beginning, click "Novel Travelist Mystery: Buried Books" on the right hand side of this page. Then scroll down to the bottom and start with Part 1.

*****

By 1870, Naples was in shambles following a long succession of Ferdinand’s offspring, all of whom were as incompetent as he. The king that finally ended this legacy was Vittorio Emanuele, who brought about the Unification of Italy that has remained to this day. Emanuele was the first king of a united Italy in over a thousand years.

Under Emanuele, the technique of plaster casting of human bodies was developed, along with the plaster casting of root systems that permitted a complete reconstruction of Pompeii's agriculture-based economy.

Plaster cast of human body from Pompeii

Also under Emanuele, the church and state divided. The fledgling unified Italian state used every weapon imaginable to defeat the Catholic Church. The secularism of ancient Rome proved to be an invaluable one and sparked a new interest in the ruins of Pompeii. Emanuele and the architects running renewed excavations posed—literally with shovels in hand—for the recently developed medium of film. The perfectly preserved slice of ancient Rome that was Pompeii inspired an Italian nationalism never seen before.

This set the stage perfectly for a young journalist coming to power as Italian premier in 1927. Benito Mussolini exploited the nationalist fervor that was sweeping the nation and developed a cult that tightly associated Roman antiquity with Italian racial superiority. And according to Il Duce, the ruins of Pompeii held the archaeology to prove it.

Mussolini and Hitler

The ancient Eastern good luck symbol that was found repeatedly in the ruins was picked up by Mussolini’s German counterpart. Hitler’s hijacking of it as the symbol for his political party tarnished the swastika globally and forever.

By the end of World War II, Pompeii and Herculaneum had been excavated, bombed, and excavated some more. But the Villa dei Papiri remained mostly submerged. By that time, approximately 400 scrolls had been opened and read, with approximately one in ten of those written in Latin as opposed to Greek.  This fact, in agreement with popular ancient Roman culture, suggested that a still-buried Latin library probably existed within the house.

If so, it is still there.

To be continued in part 8, August 29...

Author's Note: Part 8 will conclude the Buried Books of Herculaneum Novel Travelist Mystery, a non-fictional theme explored in my new novel, The Vesuvius Isotope. WARNING! PART 8 WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS for the novel. Readers of this blog series who are interested in the novel are encouraged to pick up a copy and read it before August 1.

This blog post explores a non-fictional theme or locale that is incorporated in The Vesuvius Isotope, a new novel by Kristen Elise. Buy The Vesuvius Isotope on Amazon.

When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the twenty-first century.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children. 

The Buried Books of Herculaneum: Part 6

Napoleon Bonaparte

Maria Carolina became a close friend of Padre Piaggio. She safeguarded the papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum throughout the extensive fallout in Naples from the French Revolution, and she successfully kept them from the hands of the pillaging Napoleon Bonaparte – for a while...

Part 5 of this series continues the story of the excavations of Herculaneum, as we seek to unravel the answer to the Novel Travelist mystery: Why was the Villa dei Papyri never fully excavated?

Here we continue this story.

*****

In 1765, excavations at Herculaneum were halted in favor of excavating Pompeii.  Two years later, young Ferdinand came of age and officially became King of Naples and the Two Sicilies.  Ferdinand quickly became so unpopular among his subjects that they began to refer to him publicly as “King Big-Nose”.

His estranged queen, Maria Carolina, had befriended Padre Piaggio, the Vatican calligrapher tenaciously working to unroll and translate the papyrus scrolls from the Herculaneum villa. Carolina wholeheartedly supported this effort, despite – or perhaps because of - a complete lack of interest by her husband.

Then a world event utterly personal to Maria Carolina would interrupt.

Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI of France

Louis XVI of France was overthrown and beheaded. Shortly thereafter, Louis’ queen would also fall to the guillotine. Carolina’s outrage was two-fold. First, the infamous queen Marie Antoinette had been her younger sister. Second, Napoleon was now marching toward Naples.

As Napoleon’s army approached, Piaggio succeeded in transcribing and publishing the first papyrus scroll from Herculaneum. Maria Carolina packed up the scrolls, her husband, and her lover and fled to Sicily, leaving Piaggio behind to continue his work in private. After pillaging what the Royal family had left behind in Naples, Napoleon’s interest in the ruins of Herculaneum escalated to obsession almost overnight.

It was clearly something of Egyptian origin that had caught his eye. What, exactly, this might have been is explored in my new novel, The Vesuvius Isotope.

From Naples, Napoleon headed directly to Egypt, and from there back to France. He immediately established a new French Institute of Egyptian Studies in Cairo whose highest priority tasks included the translation of the newly discovered Rosetta Stone, a commemoration of the 9th year of reign of Egyptian Pharaoh Ptolemy V.

Meanwhile, after Napoleon’s army had moved on, Carolina and her entourage returned to Naples. Having been abandoned by her lover and having always hated her husband, she threw herself into a restoration project that went hand in hand with brutal repression of anyone she deemed a pro-French traitor. Executions were held weekly in Piazza del Mercato, the Market Square of Naples.

Napoleon returned to Naples again in 1806. This time, the papyrus scrolls were left behind for him to seize.

Fortunately for history, the kingdom of Naples was granted to Napoleon’s sister Caroline and her husband. And Caroline took an interest in the scrolls. Caroline raised the wages of workmen unrolling the scrolls and funded the hiring of additional

The Battle of Actium

apprentices. When Napoleon became emperor, she sent him her prized scroll as a gift. It described in detail the Battle of Actium and the fall of Cleopatra and Mark Antony.

Then Napoleon was defeated.

King Big-Nose was placed back on the throne for a third time, at which time he traded some of the scrolls to Britain’s King George IV in exchange for a giraffe. The English again tried a chemical softening process to unwind them. Again, the scrolls were ruined. No more had been unearthed.

To be continued in part 7, August 1...

This blog post explores a non-fictional theme or locale that is incorporated in The Vesuvius Isotope, a new novel by Kristen Elise. Buy The Vesuvius Isotope on Amazon.

When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the twenty-first century.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children. 

The Buried Books of Herculaneum: Part 5

Maria Carolina of Austria

Excavations at Herculaneum were forcibly halted in favor of ongoing efforts at Pompeii, and so the secrets contained within the Villa would once again be forced to wait. Charles’ mother Elisabetta, the woman who had first initiated the work, died...

Part 4 of this series continues the story of the excavations of Herculaneum, as we seek to unravel the answer to the Novel Travelist mystery: Why was the Villa dei Papyri never fully excavated?

Here we continue this story.

*****

Despite the recent lack of interest in Herculaneum, one man remained enthusiastic about the papyrus scrolls recovered from the ash. Vatican calligrapher priest Padre Piaggio was the first to attempt unwinding the scrolls from the Villa dei Papiri without destroying them.

Piaggio's device, Naples Archeological Museum

Piaggio’s infinite patience and sense of innovation produced a mechanical device, now located in the Naples Archeological Museum, that could at long last unwind the scrolls, at a rate of one half-inch per day. It is this device that first appeared in Part 1 of this series.

Slowly and painstakingly, Padre Piaggio eventually succeeded in being the first to unroll one papyrus document from beneath the ruins of Herculaneum. This single act took four years.

Piaggio continued unrolling additional scrolls and he set to diligently copying their text. The former Vatican calligrapher produced remarkably faithful reproductions of the text despite its condition, and also despite the fact that he neither spoke nor read modern, let alone ancient, Greek.

Translation of the content was equally difficult. The papyrus was in such terrible condition, and so many pieces had been lost, that much of the author information and content was either missing or misunderstood. Indeed, several entire scrolls were literally translated backward in their entirety, and it was only many, many years later that this mistake was even recognized as such.

Flattened papyrus scroll from Herculaneum

King Charles III's son Ferdinand came of age in 1767 and became the arrogant, ignorant boy-king of Naples - an event that would no doubt have represented the final nail in the coffin of Herculaneum and the Villa dei Papiri had it not been for one unlikely variable.

Her name was Maria Carolina, and she would become Ferdinand’s queen despite her loudly voiced opinion on the matter: “You might as well cast me into the sea.” Maria Carolina was the elder sister of a girl who would become known to history as Marie Antoinette, and whose notorious fate would only intensify Maria Carolina’s hatred of all things French.

Maria Carolina became a close friend of Padre Piaggio. She safeguarded the papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum throughout the extensive fallout in Naples from the French Revolution, and she successfully kept them from the hands of the pillaging Napoleon Bonaparte – for a while.

To be continued in part 6, July 4...

This blog post explores a non-fictional theme or locale that is incorporated in The Vesuvius Isotope, a new novel by Kristen Elise. Buy The Vesuvius Isotope on Amazon.

When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the twenty-first century.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children. 

The Buried Books of Herculaneum: Part 4

Floor plan of the Villa dei Papiri by Carlo Weber ca 1750

Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero and friend of King Charles, became the first to attempt opening the papyrus scrolls as they emerged from within the villa.  A self-proclaimed "gifted" and "extraordinary" alchemist, di Sangro used mercury in an effort to soften the charred, brittle papyrus.  The mercury dissolved the scrolls, and many of them were lost...


Part 3 of this series continues the story of the excavations of Herculaneum, as we seek to unravel the answer to the Novel Travelist mystery: Why was the Villa dei Papyri never fully excavated?

Here we continue this story.

*****

Four years after Charles succeeded to the throne, he married.  His father, King Philip V, had sought a French bride for his first born in a feeble effort to cling to the French throne.  Queen Elisabetta’s wishes prevailed, however, and Charles married Prussian Princess Maria Amalia, who had grown up in the very Austrian palace containing the first statues excavated from Herculaneum - the three veiled females and the statue of Cleopatra.

Meanwhile, the second factor involved in bringing Herculaneum to light was the Enlightenment itself.  The Grand Tour was in full swing, and the aristocratic travelers known to Italians as “milordi” – “my lords” – came from far and wide throughout Europe.  Rome was a quintessential stopping point, and then Naples as well.

As rumors of the ancient treasures began making their way across Europe, increasing numbers of Grand Tourists became determined to see the ruins for themselves, as well as to purchase the multiple replicas of Herculaneum booty that were suddenly all the rage.  Artists who could faithfully reproduce these coveted artifacts found abundant work in Naples.

Camillo Paderni Print, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library

One such artist was Camillo Paderni, who was both fascinated by the flawlessly frozen cross-sections of ancient Roman life and appalled that these cross-sections were being so brutally destroyed.  As he toured the excavation sites, Paderni produced image upon image of the world formerly unbeknownst to the public.  He also began writing letters of complaint about excavation leader Alcubierre.

Another of Alcubierre’s critics was Johann Joachim Winckelmann.  Antiquarian and well-respected writer, Winckelmann’s scathing commentaries brought the methods of Alcubierre into the light and into posterity, observing that Alcubierre knew “as much of antiquities as the moon knows of crabs.”

In 1750, Alcubierre was pulled to a different post and replaced by Karl Weber, who produced the first true maps of the Villa dei Papiri and its surroundings as well as the many tunnels now leading through the area.  Approximately 1100 additional scrolls were found under Weber, and King Charles himself was fascinated with them, until the inevitable fate of monarchy politics intervened.

King Charles’ father Philip, the King of Spain and of the two Sicilies, had died in 1754.  By 1759, Charles could no longer shirk his responsibility to the kingdom, and he reluctantly left for Spain.  Governing in Naples in his stead was a temporary stand-in until Charles’ spoiled, eight-year-old son Ferdinand could come of age.  Excavations at Herculaneum were forcibly halted in favor of ongoing efforts at Pompeii, and so the secrets contained within the Villa would once again be forced to wait.

Charles’ mother Elisabetta, the woman who had first initiated the work, died.

To be continued in part 5, June 6...


This blog post explores a non-fictional theme or locale that is incorporated in The Vesuvius Isotope, a new novel by Kristen Elise. Buy The Vesuvius Isotope on Amazon.

When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the twenty-first century.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children. 

The Buried Books of Herculaneum: Part 3

Philip V and Elisabetta Farese in 1743

When the booty was gone, they filled in the holes, and with no interests whatsoever in art, no such field as archeology and no apparent concept of historical preservation, there were no real records of the find.  The story might have stopped right there, had it not been for a succession of women as ambitious as Cleopatra herself...

Part 2 of this series begins the story of the excavations of Herculaneum, as we seek to unravel the answer to the Novel Travelist mystery: Why was the Villa dei Papyri never fully excavated?

Here we continue this story.

*****

Twenty-five years after d’Elboeuf abandoned the site, two factors converged to revive the excavations of Herculaneum.  The first was the ascension of a new reigning king of Naples – or rather, the true monarch - his mother.

In 1734, Naples fell under control of the “Spanish” royal dynasty controlling the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, of which neither king nor queen was actually Spanish or Sicilian.  Philip V was the French grandson of Louis XIV and was raised at the court of Versailles with aspirations of the French crown.  Instead, he was granted the lesser Spanish one.  Throughout his nominal reign, Philip suffered from a severe depression that left him categorically incapacitated most of the time.  And so his kingdom was managed by the queen.

Philip’s wife Queen Elisabetta was an Italian princess descended from the Medici dukes of Florence and the Farnese dukes of Lombardy.  On the day she rode into Madrid to marry Philip, she was greeted by Philip’s official mistress, whom Elisabetta ordered arrested and deported on the spot.  This set the tone for their marriage.

Elisabetta instated the first born son from her marriage with Philip upon the throne of Naples as the new King of Campania.  The prince was eighteen-year-old Charles.  While Charles nominally ruled the kingdom, it was his mother, Italian-born Medici Queen Elisabetta who became determined to convert the run-down, poverty- and disease-infested cesspool that was Naples into “the Florence of the South.”  And this she did, funding her ambitious endeavors by taxing the Catholic Church on its land.  As the Church was the largest landholder in Campania, tax revenues tripled.

San Carlo Opera House, Naples, 1737

Elisabetta used the newly acquired funds to build three new palaces, a royal opera house, a prison, hospices, a cemetery and a number of factories.  The palaces were intended for museums as well as for royal residences; she also set the course to transfer a vast number of pieces from the priceless Farnese collection into Naples.

At the same time, she ordered that the neglected Herculaneum excavations be resumed in hopes of finding further additions.

Under the official direction of Charles and the unofficial direction of Elisabetta, the vast cities of Herculaneum and the recently discovered Pompeii were systematically plundered.  The efforts were led by a Spanish artillery engineer, Captain Rocque Joachim Alcubierre, whose sole mission was to find everything of monetary value and pluck it from the earth.  As he exhausted one source of the buried treasure, he would delve unthinkingly into the next, backfilling each prior section with dirt from the new one.

It was under Alcubierre that the Villa dei Papiri was discovered.

Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero and friend of King Charles, became the first to attempt opening the papyrus scrolls as they emerged from within the villa.  A self-proclaimed "gifted" and "extraordinary" alchemist, di Sangro used mercury in an effort to soften the charred, brittle papyrus.  The mercury dissolved the scrolls, and many of them were lost.

To be continued in part 4, May 9...


This blog post explores a non-fictional theme or locale that is incorporated in The Vesuvius Isotope, a new novel by Kristen Elise. Buy The Vesuvius Isotope on Amazon.

When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the twenty-first century.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children. 

The Buried Books of Herculaneum: Part 2

"The Villa of the Papyri is unfinished business.  In consideration of the immense income from Vesuvian sites, excavators have considerable margin of choice.  Their priorities could extend to completion of the excavation of the Villa of the Papyri, halted largely due to piranha-like demands for payment for expropropriated lands."

- Judith Harris, Pompeii Awakened

In Part I of this Novel Travelist Mystery, I presented the following question: Why was the Villa dei Papyri never fully excavated?  The predominant answer to this question is detailed within the murder mystery that develops in The Vesuvius Isotope.  A hint is above.  Please allow me to explain.

The answer to this mystery begins in 1709, the year the Villa dei Papyri was rediscovered after nearly two thousand years beneath the ash.  Naples and surrounding regions were under Austrian rule.  Like so many of the world’s most amazing discoveries, the lost city of Herculaneum was rediscovered by accident.  While digging a well, a feat accomplished in 1709 by leading a heavily yoked ox in a circle, a farmer began unearthing marble.

The farmer began selling the fragments, and one of his earliest prospective customers was Emanuel d’Elboeuf, the French prince commanding the Austrian cavalry.  Eager to complete his own summer residence, the task that had brought him to shop for marble in the first place, d’Elboeuf confiscated the poor farmer’s well on behalf of the Austrian government.  He began digging in earnest, and three female statues were unearthed.  They were quickly followed by a statue of Cleopatra.  The statues were claimed as property of the Austrian government and placed in the king’s garden in Vienna.

D’Elboeuf and his workers pillaged the building he had drilled into until it was stripped clean.  When the booty was gone, they filled in the holes, and with no interests whatsoever in art, no such field as archeology and no apparent concept of historical preservation, there were no real records of the find.  The story might have stopped right there, had it not been for a succession of women as ambitious as Cleopatra herself.

To be continued in Part 3, April 11...


This blog post explores a non-fictional theme or locale that is incorporated in The Vesuvius Isotope, a new novel by Kristen Elise. Buy The Vesuvius Isotope on Amazon.

When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the twenty-first century.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children. 

The Buried Books of Herculaneum: A Novel Travelist Mystery

The instrument that unravels a 2000-year-old scroll

In a glass case within the Naples Archaeological Museum is an instrument that resembles an old, battered loom.  Long, knotted strands of a charcoal-colored substance hang suspended from it.  The cluster looks more like meat curing in a slaughterhouse than what it actually is.  It is paper.

This display is dedicated to the Villa dei Papyri, an ancient Roman residence buried and immaculately preserved in the 79AD eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.  The villa just happened to be owned by the father-in-law of Julius Caesar.

Inside the Villa dei Papyri was a large library containing approximately two thousand papyrus scrolls.  Since their discovery in the 1700s, scientists and historians alike have repeatedly undertaken the unwinding of these precious artifacts.  Once unwound, they are still legible.  

A papyrus scroll from the Villa dei Papyri

In addition to the large Greek library already uncovered, it is believed that there was probably an entire section of the library dedicated to works written in Latin, which of course may have included those of Julius Caesar himself.  It may also contain the works of Octavian, the great nephew of Caesar and his sole heir, who went on to become the first Roman Emperor, Augustus.  And the Villa dei Papyri may contain the writings of Caesar's lover and the mother of his only known son: Cleopatra, the enigmatic, powerful, multilingual, highly educated queen from whom no single writing has ever been discovered.  

But if these works do exist, they are still buried.

The majority of the villa was never fully excavated.  Over the centuries, the treasure within has been sought by the likes of King Charles of Campania, Napoleon Bonaparte and Benito Mussolini.  Tunnels have been excavated and then back-filled.  The villa has been bombed, excavated, and bombed again.  But the majority of the library remains intact, beneath meters of hardened ash from Mount Vesuvius.

I pose here the question: why?  Why, when the Villa dei Papyri may be one of the most important archeological finds, and resources, in European history?  Why, when many other areas of Herculaneum have been fully excavated for centuries?  Why, when today's technology can readily bore into the depths of the Earth?  

You are invited to join us in solving this Novel Travelist Mystery: Why was the Villa dei Papyri never fully excavated?  On March 14, 2013, I will present part 2 of this mystery, in which I will begin to reveal my own hypotheses and the rationale behind them.

Look here for clues:

The Naples Archeological Museum, Naples, Italy
The Getty Villa, Malibu, California
The Greco-Roman Museum, Alexandria, Egypt
Pompeii Awakened, by Judith Harris

This blog post explores a non-fictional theme or locale that is incorporated in The Vesuvius Isotope, a new novel by Kristen Elise. Buy The Vesuvius Isotope on Amazon.

When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the twenty-first century.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego, California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children.