MOUNT VESUVIUS looms large in the story of Pompeii – but the temples of the ill-fated Roman town might have looked to loftier bodies. A survey of 11 temples in the ruins found evidence that at least nine were aligned with the rising of particular stars or with the position of the sun or moon on days of cultural significance.
If confirmed, the discovery could offer one of the best examples to date of the blending of religions in the heyday of the Roman Empire.
Pompeii had been a Greek and Phoenician port of call for hundreds of years before it fell under Roman rule in 80 BC. Buried under volcanic ash from Vesuvius's major eruption in AD 79, Pompeii's well-preserved ruins are famed for the insight they provide into Roman life.
Vance Tiede of research agency Astro-Archaeology Surveys in Guilford, Connecticut, is interested in the way that this insight sometimes contradicts written Roman texts. For instance, a Roman architectural principle states that sacred sites should face west, but not all of Pompeii's temples do so – perhaps because temples in coastal towns were built according to other religious principles. "You had lots of mixtures of cultures trading by sea," says Tiede.
To see if heavenly objects played a role in temple orientation, Tiede combined digital elevation models, satellite images, ground surveys and maps of the past positions of stars.
In work presented last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in National Harbor, Maryland, he showed that most of the temples have potential links to celestial objects important in Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythology.
For instance, in Greek and Roman myth, the hunter Orion was killed by a scorpion. The constellations Orion and Scorpius appear in opposing seasons so seem to chase each other across the sky. Some of Pompeii's temples face the rising of bright stars in these constellations when they first reappear. Other temples face the rising of Phact, a star Tiede links to the Egyptian god Amun.
Nevertheless, it is too early to attribute any significance to these astronomical ties. "Although his approach is serious and technically correct, what he finds is a series of scattered alignments to different stars and moon positions," says Giulio Magli at the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy. "It is easy to match stars with alignments in this way."
Steven Ellis at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio thinks star alignments are plausible. "I have little doubt that the constellations were important in the siting and arrangement of cults," he says.
Tiede says that the next step is to look for astronomical alignments in other Roman towns, particularly those where cultures mingled, to see if they also show evidence of religious mixing.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Hints of Pompeii's cultural melting pot"
- New Scientist
- Not just a website!
- Subscribe to New Scientist and get:
- New Scientist magazine delivered every week
- Unlimited online access to articles from over 500 back issues
- Subscribe Now and Save
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.