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# A Pompeii Woman’s Perfume Bottle Emerges From a Buried Cupboard
- URL: https://romanempiretimes.com/pompeii-woman-perfume-bottle-childhood-charms/
- Published: 2026-11-09T08:29:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-09T08:28:59.000Z
- Description: Tweezers, a glass scent bottle and childhood charms survived in a Pompeii cupboard, alongside 38 bronze coins and a small box of lead weights.
- Author: George Liapis
- Tags: Roman Empire News, pompeii, Roman women, perfumes, Roman cosmetics, Roman jewellery, Crepundia

A glass perfume bottle, bronze tweezers and a collection of miniature charms have emerged from the remains of a cupboard in Pompeii. The objects were stored with household vessels, money and a small box of weights in a home on Via dell’Abbondanza, one of the ancient city’s principal streets.

The Pompeii Archaeological Park published the excavation team’s findings on 29 October 2026\. The personal-care equipment has led the researchers to associate part of the collection with a woman, although the implements also had medical uses. The cupboard brings together possessions connected with grooming, domestic work and the protection of children.

Among its contents were 24 pierced ornaments made from several materials. Found with traces of a cloth bag, they are interpreted as a probable necklace of childhood amulets. The researchers suggest that such objects could have been kept into adulthood, preserving a connection with an earlier stage of life.

![Bronze and ceramic vessels beside a marble pilaster in the excavated room of the Pompeii house.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/aa/80/aa80281a-abce-4f35-865f-05153c8cc335/content/images/2026/11/pompeii-cupboard-discovery-vessels-tunnel-area.jpg)

Vessels and other finds recovered in the area disturbed by a later tunnel in the House of Cornelius Maximus (IX 11, 7). Courtesy of [Parco Archeologico di Pompei](https://pompeiisites.org/comunicati/larmadio-di-una-donna-che-non-torno-piu/?ref=romanempiretimes.com).

## A cupboard traced in the volcanic ash

The discovery comes from house IX 11, 7, traditionally called the House of Cornelius Maximus. Its façade was excavated in 1912, and the name derives from inscriptions once visible around the entrance. The new report considers that attribution doubtful; the recent excavation examined rooms behind the previously exposed frontage.

Work took place during a restoration and accessibility project beside the Insula of the Chaste Lovers. In one room, archaeologists identified the impression left by a large wooden *armarium*, or cupboard, in the volcanic deposit. Its two arms occupied a corner, each extending approximately 2 metres (6.6 feet).

The roof struck the cupboard as a pyroclastic flow entered the room during the eruption of AD 79\. Shelves collapsed and objects shifted, while volcanic material preserved impressions of the furniture. Later tunnelling disturbed the centre of the room, leaving the cupboard’s outer area and some lower contents in place.

![The outline of the cupboard’s base in volcanic deposits at the foot of yellow and black painted walls.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/aa/80/aa80281a-abce-4f35-865f-05153c8cc335/content/images/2026/11/pompeii-cupboard-imprint-painted-room.jpg)

The impression of the cupboard’s base in the corner of the room, beneath its surviving painted walls. Courtesy of [Parco Archeologico di Pompei](https://pompeiisites.org/comunicati/larmadio-di-una-donna-che-non-torno-piu/?ref=romanempiretimes.com).

## Perfume and the tools of personal care

The glass vessel is a tubular *balsamarium*, a small container associated with perfumes or ointments. It belongs to a group that includes bronze tweezers and a slate slab used for preparing or mixing pigments. These finds provide a specific household setting for the [perfume vessels of the Roman world](https://romanempiretimes.com/the-aroma-of-rome-perfumes-of-power-pleasure-and-prestige/).

Two worked-bone spatulas were also recovered among material displaced within the room. One is plain, while the other has an end shaped like a finger. The report connects them with cosmetic use, adding to the range of [Roman cosmetics and grooming tools](https://romanempiretimes.com/beauty-in-ancient-rome/) represented by the assemblage.

![A slender pale bone spatula with a carved finger-shaped end lying in the excavation soil.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/aa/80/aa80281a-abce-4f35-865f-05153c8cc335/content/images/2026/11/pompeii-finger-ended-bone-spatula.jpg)

A bone spatula with a finger-shaped end, recovered in the room containing the cupboard. Courtesy of [Parco Archeologico di Pompei](https://pompeiisites.org/comunicati/larmadio-di-una-donna-che-non-torno-piu/?ref=romanempiretimes.com).

The cupboard also held an incense burner, pottery jars, cooking vessels and fine tableware. One small drinking vessel has a surface decorated with overlapping pinecone-like scales. A bronze lamp and bronze containers were found nearby among objects displaced by the later tunnel, whose excavation had rearranged part of the original deposit.

## Twenty-four charms in a torn cloth bag

The miniature objects were found in the cupboard’s southern arm. Made from faience, bone, glass paste and rock crystal, they all have suspension holes. Their subjects include the deities Bes and Mercury, hands, feet, pinecones or bunches of grapes, beads and an animal knucklebone. One pendant takes the form of a winged sandal.

![A small green and yellow pendant shaped like a winged sandal, held between a person’s fingers.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/aa/80/aa80281a-abce-4f35-865f-05153c8cc335/content/images/2026/11/pompeii-winged-sandal-charm-pendant.jpg)

A winged-sandal pendant from the group of **crepundia*, photographed during excavation. Courtesy of [Parco Archeologico di Pompei](https://pompeiisites.org/comunicati/larmadio-di-una-donna-che-non-torno-piu/?ref=romanempiretimes.com).

The team identifies the group as *crepundia*: small ornaments and amulets associated with childhood, play, protection and personal identity. The arrangement is interpreted as a probable necklace. The report places it alongside other Pompeian groups of amulets and the wider Roman practice of keeping small objects with protective or personal significance.

Traces of cloth survived among the pendants. From their position at different levels, the excavators reconstruct a bag slipping and breaking when its shelf collapsed. Sediment containing textile traces was lifted for laboratory examination, where microscope photography recorded the weave before further specialist study of the surviving material.

![Several small pierced ornaments, including a shell and coloured pendants, lying separately in the excavation soil.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/aa/80/aa80281a-abce-4f35-865f-05153c8cc335/content/images/2026/11/pompeii-childhood-charms-excavation-layer.jpg)

Small ornaments from the group of childhood amulets, or **crepundia*, as they lay in the excavation deposit. Courtesy of [Parco Archeologico di Pompei](https://pompeiisites.org/comunicati/larmadio-di-una-donna-che-non-torno-piu/?ref=romanempiretimes.com).

## Childhood possessions kept into adult life

The report proposes that the charms had been received in childhood and retained later in life. It compares the group with amulets from a cupboard in Pompeii’s House of Helvius Severus and with a wooden chest from the House of the Garden. Those collections likewise combine small ornaments made from different materials.

A further comparison comes from an adult woman’s burial in the Porta Nocera cemetery. Small pendants of amber, rock crystal, glass and hard stone were placed with the cremated remains after burning. For the researchers, this provides a relevant Pompeian example of objects associated with childhood continuing to accompany an adult.

In Plautus’s comedy *Rudens*, childhood trinkets help Palaestra recover her family identity. Before the contents of her little casket are examined, she recognises the container and addresses the parents from whom she has been separated. Her words connect the objects with the hope of finding them again:

> “O my parents, here do I keep you locked up; here have I enclosed both my wealth and my hopes of recognizing you.” — Plautus, *Rudens* IV.4, 1144–1145.

The new cupboard joins household and funerary evidence for the personal lives of Roman objects. Related combinations appear in our account of [cosmetics, jewellery and protective charms at Chersonesus](https://romanempiretimes.com/annion-family-tombs-roman-era-chersonesus/). At Pompeii, the cloth bag preserves the immediate connection between the small ornaments and the furniture in which they were stored.

## A basket of coins beside a box of weights

On the lowest level, archaeologists recovered traces of a wooden box with a bronze fastening. It contained eight lead weights, six fitted with iron handles. Their different sizes and weights suggest possible professional or commercial use, placing economic activity alongside the household and personal possessions represented elsewhere in the cupboard.

Nearby lay a cluster of 38 bronze coins inside a small woven basket. Most were struck under Nero, with issues dated between AD 64 and 67\. Two older, heavily worn pieces were also present. The report interprets the group as a modest reserve, perhaps intended for everyday expenditure.

The basket was so fragile that its recovery required a specially prepared support. Researchers avoided preliminary consolidation to preserve the material for analysis. Microscopic examination identified plant tissue, while comparison with other ancient basketry suggested the possible use of esparto fibres. The surviving base also retained evidence of its weaving technique.

![Lead weights in the foreground, a cluster of bronze coins to the left and an iron furniture fitting farther back in the excavation.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/aa/80/aa80281a-abce-4f35-865f-05153c8cc335/content/images/2026/11/pompeii-lead-weights-bronze-coins-furniture-foot.jpg)

Lead weights, bronze coins and an iron furniture foot found in the cupboard area. Courtesy of [Parco Archeologico di Pompei](https://pompeiisites.org/comunicati/larmadio-di-una-donna-che-non-torno-piu/?ref=romanempiretimes.com).

## Painted rooms interrupted by the eruption

The cupboard stood in a room interpreted as a dining space, decorated with yellow wall panels above a black lower zone. Birds, peacocks, panthers and marine motifs appear within the painted scheme. The report attributes the decoration to the workshop known as the painters of Via di Castricio.

Unfinished ceiling surfaces indicate that work was under way when the eruption interrupted the building’s use. In an adjoining room, vessels had been stored on a mezzanine. One North African oil amphora contained 117 small rodent-bone fragments, representing at least two young animals, probably wood mice.

The finds preserve several activities within the same home: preparing the body, storing food and vessels, keeping small change and safeguarding personal ornaments. The money and charms remained in the cupboard when the building was destroyed. Whether the occupants escaped or died in the catastrophe remains an open question in the excavation report.

#### 🏛️ Sources used:

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Chiara Comegna, Saverio De Rosa, Domenico Esposito, Younes Naime, Giuseppe Scarpati and Ausilia Trapani, “Lo scavo di una domus nell’insula IX 11: il rinvenimento di un armarium con crepundia,” E-Journal degli Scavi di Pompei 2026, no. 11 (29 October 2026).](https://pompeiisites.org/wp-content/uploads/E-Journal%5F2026%5F11%5FArmadio.pdf?ref=romanempiretimes.com)

  
[Plautus, Rudens, IV.4, translated by Henry Thomas Riley, The Comedies of Plautus, vol. 2 (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913), Perseus Digital Library.](https://beta.perseus.tufts.edu/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0119.phi017.perseus-eng2:4.4/?ref=romanempiretimes.com)