Wow!

As promised, here's my follow-up on the Pompeii exhibit - WOW! We started off in the Omnitheater, where we saw a film on Greece. That was truly amazing. The view was stunning, especially the segments on Santorini. I REALLY would love to visit there. The only downside was the seats - we got there right as the film was starting, & we were stuck in the front row. That wouldn't have been bad, except for the fact our knees were crammed into the railing! Luckily the film was only an hour so we could get the feeling back in our legs!

Then it was off to the Pompeii exhibit. There were TONS of people there. I heard on the news that night that over 300,000 people visited the exhibit in the 6 months it was in Minneapolis, & that this was only the 4th US city to host the exhibit. They had all kinds of artifacts, from bronze & glass jewelry to copper scales & marble statues. They also had some frescoes that the archaeologists had pieced back together, as they were shattered in the pyroclastic flows from the volcano. The last piece of the exhibit was the most fascinating though - the plaster casts of the victims of Pompeii. When the archaeologists began excavating the city, they would find these mysterious voids. So the lead archaeologist began filling them with plaster & making molds. What he found was that these voids were actually where the bodies had been frozen in the ash. Some of these molds were on display - they had a man who was crouched against a wall, his mouth covered with a cloth. There was a man & woman found together, who they assumed were husband & wife. They even had a pig & a dog, testament that it wasn't just people caught in the disaster. It was very haunting, yet fascinating at the same time.

All in all, it was a very good time at the Science Museum, & I was very glad I got to go!