The Pompeian Musical Instruments in the National Archeological Museum in Naples: An Interdisciplinary Project

Since the beginning of a systematic archaeological activity first in Herculaneum (1738) and then in Pompeii (1748), remains of several musical instruments were discovered in the area around Vesuvius, including tibiae, cornua and percussions of different kinds. These findings were originally collected in the Museum Herculanense in the Royal Palace of Portici and then, since 1816, in what it was called the ‘Real Museo Borbonico’, which in 1860 became ‘National’. But these relics never became a unique collection. Despite a pioneering attempt of cataloguing made by Roberto Melini in the early 2000, there is still no complete list of the musical objects that have reached the museum up to the eighties of the twentieth century (when the ‘Soprintendenza autonoma’ of Pompeii was created and the most recent finds were diverted there). The best-preserved discoveries are now exhibited in a display case in the MANN, but numerous other fragments are currently kept (or hidden) in the deposits, which for some years have been undergoing a major reordering.

A Project with the purpose of documenting, studying, preserving and promoting this repertoire according to an interdisciplinary perspective started last year thanks to the collaboration among the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage of the University of Pavia, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. It is accomplished by the multiple skills of the working team, which includes experts of ancient music as well as conservation scientists and restorers.