Sepulcrum Mamiae

About

Pompeii's city council granted this prime plot to Mamia, a public priestess, so she could build her tomb in the form of a semicircular stone bench facing the road. Her inscription records that she paid for a temple to the emperor's Genius in the forum, generosity the decurions repaid with this burial site by public decree. Archaeologist Karl Weber uncovered it between 1758 and 1764. Vesuvius had buried it under ash in 79 CE, thirty-eight years before this map's date.

What happened here

Roman burial is a family matter conducted in public. The dead are carried out of town, cremated or laid in the ground, and mourned with formal noise; the funeral of anyone important is a procession with masks of the ancestors carried by hired men. The tomb that follows is designed to be read by strangers on the road: name, age, offices, sometimes a trade shown in relief, often a line addressed directly to the passer-by. Ordinary people appear here as they nowhere else — a baker with his ovens carved on the front, a freedman naming the woman he could finally marry, a child's age given in days. Anniversaries bring the family back with food and wine.

Sources

• https://pompeiisites.org/en/exhibitions-and-events/mamia-en/