The Pompeii Effect...

The casts of the dead at Pompeii contain in their arrested movement the enigma of death. On the morning of the 24 August, A.D. 79, the citizens of Pompeii were going about their affairs, oblivious to the fate that would overtake them that day. By evening the town was buried under metres of volcanic ash and debris from nearby Vesuvius and the victims had been immobilised in the agonising moment of their death. The ash solidified around their bodies and entombed them. The organic matter decayed, and centuries later plaster was used to

fill the spaces where the bodies had been and thereby make casts of them. Thus it is that these Pompeians have literally left an impression of their existence on this earth.

All of us in our different ways of living and the cast we leave behind on dying partake of the Pompeii effect.

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