Fomenko & Pompeii (H:FoS? Vol. 1 Ch. 1.13.2)

In this portion, I examine Fomenko addressing Pompeii and its study.

Fomenko’s Sources:

[304] – Иегер (Егер) Оскар. “Всеобщая история”. Тома 1-4. – Издание А.Ф.Маркса. Спб., 1894-1904.

[304] – Jaeger (Jaeger) Oscar. “General history”. Volumes 1-4. – Edition of A.F. Marx. SPb., 1894-1904.

[389] – Классовский В. “Систематическое описание Помпеи и открытых в ней древностей”. – СПб., 1848.

[389] – Klassovskiy V. “Systematic description of Pompeii and antiquities discovered in it”. – SPb., 1848.

[433] – Косамби Д. “Культура и цивилизация древней Индии”. – М., Прогресс, 1968. Английское издание: Kosambi D. “The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline”. – Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1965.

[433] – Kosambi D. “Culture and civilization of ancient India”. – M., Progress, 1968. English edition: Kosambi D. “The Culture and Civilization of Ancient India in Historical Outline”. – Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1965.

[434] – Косидовский З. “Когда солнце было богом”. – М., Наука, 1968. Польское издание: Kosidowski Z. <<Gdy Slon’ce Bylo Bogiem>>. – Warszawa, 1962.

[434] – Kosidovsky Z. “When the sun was god”. – M., Science, 1968. Polish edition: Kosidowski Z. << Gdy Slon’ce Bylo Bogiem >>. – Warszawa, 1962.

[873] – Федорова Е.В. “Латинские надписи”. – М., Изд-во Моск. ун-та, 1976.

[873] – Fedorova E.V. “Latin inscriptions”. – M., Publishing house of Moscow. un-that, 1976.

[1177] – Harley JB and Woodward David. “The History of Cartography. Volume 1. Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean”. – The University of Chicago Press. Chicago & London. 1987.

Finding Pompeii

Claims 1-10

Total: 11

Determined: 7/11 (63.63%)

Supported: 3/7 (42.85%)

Contradicted: 4/7 (57.14%)

Grade: F

Claim 1:

“The excavations of the “ancient” town of Pompeii are a perfect illustration to the problems that arise in the dating of archaeological materials.”

Claim 1 is undetermined.

Claim 2:

“First and foremost, it isn’t clear which year’s eruption destroyed it.”

Claim 2 is undetermined.

As early as 1831, John Auldjo noted that no accurate dating of the pre-1631 eruptions could be done through scientific testing.^[17]

As far as the clarity of which year’s eruption destroyed Pompeii, I haven’t determined if this checks out or not.

Claim 3:

“Apparently, the XV century author Jacopo Sannazaro wrote: “We were approaching the town (Pompeii), and could already see its towers, houses, theatres and temples, untouched by the century [?! – A. F.]” (quoted in [389], page 31).”

Claim 3 is contradicted.

I marked this claim as contradicted because it’s a misuse of the Sannazaro quote.

The quote is somewhat of an English translation of the original Italian quote that Jacopo did write in the 15th century, but it’s from a fictional poem and it’s being misused here by Fomenko to act as if Pompeii was still alive and well in the 1400’s.^{[4], [5, p.190]}

Fomenko’s translation does not seem to be a very good one either. The word for century is nowhere present in the original text. Here follows the original accompanied by two translations:

“E gia in queste parole eramo ben presso alla citta, ch’ ella dicea , della quale e le torri , e le case , e i teatri , e i templi si poteano quasi integri discernere.”
Jacopo Sannazaro^{[5, p.190]}

“And already in these words we were close to the city, which she said, of which the towers, and the houses, and the theatres, and the temples could almost be discerned intact.”
– Google Translate

“And with these words we were almost at the city she described, and its towers, houses, theatres, and temples could be picked out nearly intact.”
– Ingred Rowland quoting Sannazaro^{[6, p.31]}

In Fomenko’s quote, the word “we” is used. This refers to two people from the story, Sannazaro’s alter-ego and a nymph. Both are fictional individuals.

I have not yet checked Fomenko’s source and so it’s difficult to say whether Fomenko did this on purpose or he got duped by his source. If you have access to his source, please let me know so I can expand this portion of the the exam.

Claim 4:

“It is assumed, however, that the town of Pompeii has got destroyed and completely buried after the eruption of 79 A.D.”

Claim 4 is supported.

Claim 5:

“This is why the archaeologists have to interpret Sannazaro in the following manner: “in the XV century some of the buildings of Pompeii were already emerging from the debris” ([389, page 31).”

Claim 5 is undetermined.

I have not yet reviewed Fomenko’s source. It dates to 1848. Is Fomenko’s source an archeologist? Is the source even commenting on Sannazaro? Leaning contradicted.

Claim 6:

“It is thus assumed that Pompeii had been covered by a thick layer of earth, since the ruins of the town were only found in 1748, and the discovery was purely accidental.”

Claim 6 is contradicted.

The ruins were discovered as early as 1689.^[3] Even earlier if we count the late 16th century activities of Domenico Fontana.^[12]

Claim 7:

“Herculaneum was discovered in 1711 ([389], pages 31-32).”

Claim 7 is supported.

I have not yet reviewed Fomenko’s source.

This claim is contested. Some sources say 1711^{[7, p.223], [8]} others say 1709,^{[9], [10]} one even says both.^[11] This contestation aside, it’s close enough that I’m granting it. Depending on what Fomenko’s source says, I may change this conclusion.

Claim 8:

“Nowadays the history of the discovery of Pompeii is related after the documented recollections of that epoch as follows: “during the construction of a canal on the river Sarno (1594-1600), the ruins of an ancient town were found. Nobody had the merest notion it might be Pompeii… Methodical scientific excavations were started as late as 1860 by Giuseppe Fiorelli. However, his method of work was far from the usual scientific standards” ([433], page 49).”

Claim 8 is contradicted and contradicted.

The Sarno canal was constructed by Domenico Fontano in 1592, not 1594-1600.^{[6, p.31]}

Systematic and methodological excavations were being conducted in the 17th century.^[13] I’m not marking this contradicted or giving it a point at all because it’s technically true (Fiorelli did start his excavations in 1860 and did rock the boat of norms), but the quote could be considered misleading.

The citation is not correct, so I negate a point for that. Wherever the quote is from, it isn’t Kosambi. There also doesn’t appear to be any citations related to Pompeii near Fomenko’s [433]. Lastly, the variations of 433 yield no significant results either.

Claim 9:

“The excavations were indeed conducted in a barbaric manner.”

Claim 9 is supported.^[13]

Claim 10:

“”Nowadays it is hard to estimate the damage done by the sheer vandalism of that time… if somebody thought a picture or a figurine wasn’t artful enough or visually pleasing, it would become destroyed and thrown away as trash. Sculpture fragments had been sold as souvenirs, often as statuettes of saints” ([434], pages 224-225).”

Claim 10 is undetermined.

I think the citation is correct but I can’t read Russian fluently so I’m not sure. The part of the book being cited does focus on Pompeii. That’s why I think maybe it could be correct.

What do other sources say about the vandalism and destruction?

Highbrow Pompeii

Claims 11-33

Total: 24

Determined: 5/24

Supported: 5/5

Contradicted: 0/5

Grade: A+

Claim 11:

“Some of these “Christian forgeries” may have been mediaeval originals that did not fit the Scaligerian chronology, and hence wound up sold as souvenirs instead of becoming part of a museum’s collection.”

Claim 11 is undetermined.

Claim 12:

“If one’s cogitation is to be confined within the paradigm of the Scaligerian chronology, the artistic level of the artefacts found in Pompeii is very high indeed – be it frescoes, inlays, or statues.”

Claim 12 is undetermined.

What do art historians have to say about this? Is the artistic level high compared to other works from that time?

Claim 13:

“The state of science is also deemed advanced enough to correspond to that of the Renaissance epoch.”

Claim 13 is undetermined.

Who says this? What’s the source?

Claim 14:

“One of the findings was a sundial with uniform hourly divisions, which were considered a high level of precision even towards the end of the Middle Ages.”

Claim 14 is undetermined.

What source mentions this sundial? How many uniform hourly divisions were there?

The day being split into 24 sections goes back to around 2100 BCE when the Egyptians starting doing it.^[14]

Claim 15:

“This finding was analyzed by N. A. Morozov.”

Claim 15 is undetermined.

Where/when did Morozov analyze this?

Claim 16:

“An “ancient” picture of a part of such a device that had been found on a villa near the town of Pompeii can be seen in fig. 1.47.
Fig. 1.47. “Ancient” mural from the Boscoreale villa near Pompeii. “We can distinctively see a terrestrial globe shown in an approximate perspective. The object was also related to the sundial” ([1177], ill. 4, inset between pages 106-107). Taken from [1177], plate 4.”

Claim 16 is supported.^{[15, p.613]}

The image is correctly cited and the original source does say it’s a globe that has been called a sundial.^{[15, p.613]}

Claim 17:

“V. Klassovsky wrote that “a set of surgical instruments has been discovered that is all the more noteworthy since some of the items have been previously supposed to belong to the modern times, discovered and introduced by the scientific avant-garde of the operative medicine” ([389], page 126).”

Claim 17 is undetermined.

Did Klassovsky say this?

The surgical instruments are commonly compared to modern instruments but I want more specifics on people claiming the instruments from Pompeii were modern.

Claim 18:

“Some of the graffiti art found on the walls of Pompeii is clearly mediaeval in its origin.”

Claim 18 is undetermined.

I think it’s good practice to avoid terms like “clearly”, “obviously”, etc… How is it clearly mediaeval?

Also, is it not possible that mediaeval individuals left graffiti on ancient ruins?

What would be mind-boggling is if they found graffiti dating to a time prior to when the building it’s on dates to.

Claim 19:

“For instance, the picture of a hooded henchman ([389], page 151, qv in fig. 1.48). We see a mediaeval henchman that drags his victim (a man in a cape) onto a scaffold with a rope.”

Claim 19 is undetermined.

Is that really what we’re looking at in that image?

What other references do we have to draw this conclusion?

Claim 20:

“V. Klassovsky tells us this is a “copy from a drawing made on plaster with some sharp object.””

Claim 20 is undetermined.

Claim 21:

“Another drawing that is definitely worthy of our attention is that of a mediaeval warrior wearing a helmet with a visor ([389], page 161, see fig. 1.49).”

Claim 21 is undetermined.

Claim 22:

“These two drawings are but a small part of the Pompeian graffiti that is explicitly mediaeval in its content (qv in the illustrations to [873]).”

Claim 22 is undetermined.

Claim 23:

“One should mark the illustration that one sees on page 44 of [873] (fig. 1.50). Nowadays we are told that it portrays “ancient” gladiators ([873], page 44).”

Claim 23 is undetermined.

Claim 24:

“However, what we see is clearly a mediaeval knight with a visor on his helmet.”

Claim 24 is undetermined.

Are there other examples from the ancient or medieval worlds of graffitied knights?

Claim 25:

“This is well-known military equipment of the Middle Ages.”

Claim 25 is undetermined.

Claim 26:

V. Klassovsky sums up his general impression of the excavations of Pompeii as follows: “I have been amazed many a time… to find that ancient Pompeian artefacts often prove to be spitting images of the objects of a much later epoch” ([389], page 133).”

Claim 26 is undetermined.

Claim 27:

“We also find out that, according to Klassovsky, many of the famous Pompeian inlays bear an amazing resemblance to the mediaeval frescoes of Refael and Giulio Romano in composition, colouring and style ([389], page 171, comment A). To put it simply, they look like mediaeval frescoes.”

Claim 27 is undetermined.

Claim 28:

“An example of such an inlay can be seen in fig. 1.51, ([389], page 172, table XII). This is assumed to be the ancient battle of Alexander the Great and the Persian king Darius (on the right).”

Claim 28 is supported and supported.^[15]

I realized this claim had 2 sentenced too late for me to shift all the following claims up a notch on the number scale.

I give this 2 supported points because it is an example that resembles some medieval art and it is assumed to be a battle between Alexander the Great and Darius.^[15]

Claim 29:

“The inlay was discovered in 1831 and is now in the domain of the National Museum in Naples ([304], Volume 1, pages 232-233).”

Claim 29 is supported.^[15]

Claim 30:

“V. Klassovsky’s comment runs as follows:
“On the floor of the triclinium one sees the famous mosaic from coloured stone, which now crowns the collection of the museum in Naples. The colouring and the technique are unparalleled, the composition may well be compared to the best works of Raphael and Giulio Romano… It is most remarkable indeed that there should be a semblance between the work of the anonymous ancient artist and Raphael’s ‘Battle between Constantine and Maxentius’ in style and the composition of the main group. Certain decorations of the Roman thermae of Titus bear amazing resemblance to some of Raphael’s frescoes as well [sic!].” ([389], page 171)”

Claim 30 is undetermined.

Claim 31:

The Scaligerian history as followed by Klassovsky tries to convince us that all these works of “ancient” art were created in the I century A.D. the latest, and have remained buried until very recently, when the excavations of Pompeii finally began.”

Claim 31 is supported.

Claim 32:

“Raphael, Giulio Romano and other artists of the Renaissance are supposed to have created paintings strongly resembling these “ancient originals” without even having seen them.”

Claim 32 is undetermined.

Claim 33:

“All of this is highly suspicious.”

Claim 33 is undetermined.

Claim X:

“The hypothesis that we put forward is as follows: Pompeii is a mediaeval town of the Renaissance epoch. It has been destroyed by one of the relatively recent eruptions of the Vesuvius. The “ancient” Pompeian artists were contemporaries of Raphael and Giulio Romano, hence the stylistic semblances. Pompeii might have been destroyed and buried by ashes during the well-known eruption of the Vesuvius that occured in 1500 ([389], page 28), or even by the eruption of 1631. See more in CHRON2, Chapter 2.”

No point is awarded for this because it’s just them positing a hypothesis.

Graffiti & Valentis-Nero

Claims 34-39

Claim 34:

“Most of the Pompeian graffiti cannot be used for dating purposes, such as quotidian announcements, slang, etc.”

Claim 34 is undetermined.

Is this true?

Claim 35:

“However, some of the inscriptions explicitly contradict the Scaligerian chronology.”

Claim 35 is undetermined.

Claim 36:

“One of them can be found in [389], and was translated by N. A. Morozov as follows: “The hunt and the decorations of Valentis Nero Augustus the Holy, son of the Holy D. Lucretius Valentis the Immanent, the 28th of March.”

Claim 37:

“We run into a contradiction between the Scaligerian history and actual inscriptions discovered a result of excavations. An emperor with the double name of Valentis-Nero is mentioned here, whereas in Scaligerian chronology these names belong to two different emperors separated by about 300 years.”

Claim 38:

“A longer version of the same “ancient” announcement referring to the pageants of 6-12th April can be seen in [873], No. 73 (see fig. 1.52).”

Claim 39:

“The translation offered by V. Fyodorova in [873], page 74, separates Nero from Valentis, as we had expected.”

Claim X:

“We had no opportunity of checking the authority of both translations.”

This is unverifiable.

Christian Artefacts

Claims 40 & 41

Claim 40:

“Artefacts of the Christian epoch have been found in the “ancient” town of Herculaneum.”

Claim 40 is undetermined.

This claim is currently a matter of debate amongst scholars. A number of scholars have argued that Christian artefacts have been found but there are others who argue against that.^{[16, p.1]}

Due to this ongoing conflict of opinion, I’m leaving this undetermined.

Claim 41:

“In fig. 1.53, for instance, one can see a Christian chapel discovered during the excavations of Herculaneum with a large cross on the wall.”

Claim 41 is undetermined.

This photo is problematic. It doesn’t show the full cross and it doesn’t say where the photo was taken. What site was this in? Where is this artefact now? Until more context is provided, this is undetermined.

References:

[1] – Vol. 1 History: Fiction or Science?. https://chronologia.org/en/seven/1N01-EN-049-070.pdf. Accessed 8 Dec. 2021.

[2] – Fomenko’s source list. https://chronologia.org/lit_nx.html. Accessed 8 Dec. 2021.

[3] – Sorensen, Stephen. Pompeii: Lost for 1,684 Years Or Known Through the Centuries? (2 Nov. 2019). https://ctruth.today/2019/11/02/pompeii-lost-for-1684-years-or-known-through-the-ages/. Accessed 8 Dec. 2021.

[4] – Warburg Institute. “The Arcadian poet: Jacopo Sannazaro”. https://omeka.warburg.sas.ac.uk/exhibits/show/the-invention-of-poetic-landsc/the-arcadian-poet–jacopo-sann. Accessed 17 Feb. 2022.

[5] – Sannazaro, Jacopo. “Arcadia” (Milan, 1806). https://archive.org/details/arcadia1806sann/page/188/mode/2up?q=Sebeto. Accessed 17 Feb. 2022.

[6] – Rowland, Ingrid. From Pompeii: The Afterlife of a Roman Town. The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2014. Accessed 17 Feb. 2022.

[7] – CUP Archive. “annals of politics and culture” (Cambridge, 1901). https://books.google.com/books?id=cPA8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA223&lpg=PA223&dq=herculaneum+discovered+1711&source=bl&ots=lHbzXsTWXw&sig=ACfU3U3iQk3fDS-KQVafc1mAtD9rtAK2-A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjTvIXby4f2AhU9DzQIHQ_iDtMQ6AF6BAglEAM#v=onepage&q=herculaneum%20discovered%201711&f=false. Accessed 17 Feb. 2022.

[8] – Bella Italia. “Herculaneum” (26 May, 2013). https://bellaitaliacampania.blogspot.com/2013/05/herculaneum.html. Accessed 17 Feb. 2022.

[9] – Britannica. “Pompeii: History of excavations”. https://www.britannica.com/place/Pompeii/History-of-excavations. Accessed 17 Feb. 2022.

[10] – SC. “The Discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum: Discovery and Excavation” http://omeka.wellesley.edu/piranesi-rome/exhibits/show/discovery-of-pompeii-and-hercu/discovery-and-excavation. Accessed 17 Feb. 2022.

[11] – “The Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius: Excavations”. https://mtvesuvius-oliviasolia.weebly.com/excavations.html. Accessed 17 Feb. 2022.

[12] – SV. “The Discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum: Pompeii: Initial Discoveries”. http://omeka.wellesley.edu/piranesi-rome/exhibits/show/discovery-of-pompeii-and-hercu/pompeii-initial-discoveries. Accessed 17 Feb. 2022.

[13] – Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. “Pompeii Redsicovery Timeline”. https://omsi.edu/sites/default/files/Pompeii%20Rediscovery%20Timeline.pdf. Accessed 17 Feb. 2022.

[14] – Sorensen, Stephen. “The History of Timekeeping” (10 Jan. 2021). https://ctruth.today/2021/01/10/the-history-of-timekeeping/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.

[15] – Mingoia, Jessica. “Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun, Pompeii” (Smarthistory, 6 Ju. 2021). https://smarthistory.org/alexander-mosaic-from-the-house-of-the-faun-pompeii/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2022.

[16] – Cook, J. G. (2018). Alleged Christian Crosses in Herculaneum and Pompeii. Vigiliae Christianae, 72(1), 1–20. doi:10.1163/15700720-12341330. Accessed 21 Feb. 2022.

[17] – Wiles, Julia. “The Map: Vesuvius, 1832” (History Today Volume 67 Issue 4 April 2017). https://www.historytoday.com/archive/cartography/map-vesuvius-1832. Accessed 24 Mar. 2022.