“But only a replica – more an ‘anti-body’ than a real body.” “It wasn't long before one bright spark saw that if you poured plaster of Paris into that void, you got a plaster cast that was an exact replica of the body,” she added. “As the flesh, internal organs and clothing gradually decomposed, a void was left – which was an exact negative imprint of the shape of the corpse at the point of death.” “The material from the volcano had covered the bodies of the dead, setting hard and solid around them,” Beard wrote. What could they have been? In fact, these were the real “bodies” of the citizens of Pompeii – not the ashy models we’re used to seeing today, but the voids in the lava where, once upon a time, some poor victim’s shape held the lava open long enough for it to cool around their corpse.
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