Ancient Pompeii's hidden messages, preserved in graffiti

The Ancient Graffiti Project, a digital resource and contextual search engine, has thousands of graffiti from Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Smyrna. Use this interactive search engine to explore graffiti by location, keywords, or drawing type. The graffiti are translated into English. What new discoveries about ancient graffiti can you make?

This edited volume of nine studies explores graffiti from all over the ancient world including Greece, Egypt and Dura-Europos. Each study focuses on the interactions between the graffiti and their physical environments. This volume is an excellent starting point for understanding the differences between ancient and modern graffiti.

In this article, a close study of the graffiti from one house in Pompeii, Benefiel uses her methodology of understanding ancient graffiti in spatial context. She proposes an approach of examining dialogues in the graffiti to understand the authors behind the messages and their motivations.

DiBiasie-Sammons studies graffiti made in charcoal in the Roman city of Herculaneum. Inscriptions of this medium have not been well-studied as few survive today. This is a shame as many of them were once written in an elegant style. Using archival materials from the epigraphist who first recorded the graffiti, DiBiasie-Sammons reconstructs what they once looked like in their original context.

In Ancient Graffiti in Context, Huntley uses a developmental psychological approach to identity graffiti drawings potentially made by children. This study illustrates the enormous potential of applying approaches from other disciplines to the study of ancient inscriptions.

Keegan’s work is an excellent introduction to graffiti from the ancient world. Focusing primarily on Egypt, Greece and Rome, this volume introduces readers to these unique artifacts from antiquity and shows what they can tell us about the people who created these writings.

Just like today, amorous, bawdy, or downright vulgar graffiti were common in antiquity. Varone explores this genre of graffiti and reminds us how some things have not changed in the last 2,000 years.