New Research By Shoving a Bed Frame Against the Door, This Pompeii Family Tried to Survive Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption Archaeologists are learning new details about the four individuals’ futile attempt to hide inside an ancient residence called the House of Helle and Phrixus A bed frame shoved against the door served as a makeshift barricade. Pompeii Archaeological Park In 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, spewing ash and small volcanic pellets known as lapilli over the city of Pompeii. Nearly 1,950 years later, archaeologists are still sifting through the layers of debris and making remarkable discoveries about life—and death—in the ancient city. Researchers recently discovered four members of a family, including a child, who attempted to escape the eruption by barricading themselves inside a bedroom, according to a statement from the Pompeii Archaeological Park. Though their efforts were futile, their remains provide remarkable insight into the doomed city’s final moments. When the eruption began, most residents of Pompeii “had no clue what was happening,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the park and co-author of a new study published in the journal Scavi di Pompei, tells the New York Times’ Sara Novak. “Many thought the end of the world had come.” A majority of the 15,000 to 20,000 residents of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum fled and survived the eruption. The four family members were among the roughly 2,000 Pompeians who remained when the city was destroyed. As Helle struggles in the sea, Phrixus reaches out to his sister from atop a flying ram. Pompeii Archaeological Park Archaeologists found the family’s remains in a small but stately residence known as the House of Helle and Phrixus, named after a fresco of the mythological siblings discovered on the dining room wall. In Greek myth, the siblings survive their stepmother’s attempt to sacrifice them to the gods by flying away on a ram with a golden fleece. While Phrixus escapes, Helle falls off the ram into the sea. The fresco captures the siblings reaching out to each other—Helle in the sea, Phrixus on the ram—in a fittingly futile attempt at rescue. The architectural features of the house may have accelerated the family’s demise. Like many Roman houses, the House of Helle and Phrixus featured an open-roofed atrium, intended to aid rainwater collection. But as lapilli fell from the sky during the first phase of the eruption, the rock debris, which reached up to nine feet in some locations, quickly flooded the house through the atrium. At first, the archaeological evidence shows, the four individuals tried to protect themselves by packing into a small room. They even pushed a wooden bed frame against the door, hoping that it would prevent the lapilli from entering.When that failed, the researchers think they pulled back the barricade and attempted to escape. Based on the location of the remains, they only got as far as the triclinium, or dining room. “This house, with its decorations and its objects, shows us people who tried to save themselves,” says Zuchtriegel in the statement, per a translation by La Brújula Verde’s Guillermo Carvajal. “They didn’t succeed, but their story is still here, beneath the ashes.” Over the centuries, the ash preserved the remains of the family, the wooden bed frame and other items, including a bronze amulet known as a bulla and a stash of amphorae filled with garum, a popular Roman fish sauce. Ash and lapilli flooded into through the open-roofed atrium, burying the house in up to nine feet of debris. Pompeii Archaeological Park Researchers don’t know that this particular family owned the House of Helle and Phrixus. The group may have taken refuge there after the owners fled, as Marcello Mogetta, an archaeologist and Roman art historian at the University of Missouri who wasn’t involved in the study, tells the Times. Still, the recovered objects offer a glimpse into Pompeian family life. For instance, the child was likely the one wearing the bronze bulla, as tradition dictated that boys wear such amulets for protection until adulthood. Additionally, traces of masonry materials suggest that the house was under renovation. As Zuchtriegel says in the statement, “Excavating Pompeii means confronting the beauty of art, but also the fragility of life.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.