*: Ancient (باستانی) text messages

This is a true story from the ancient (باستانی) city of Pompeii in Italy. You could say that people in Pompeii were the first people to text message.

Photo courtesy Kim Traynor

It was August 24th in the year 79. It was a beautiful sunny day. Suddenly (ناگهان), the mountain called Vesuvius started to shake (لرزیدن). You could see a big cloud of smoke (دود), like a big umbrella (چتر), over the mountain.

Image public domain

Fire and rocks began to pour down (ریختن پایین) the mountain. The hot burning rock, called lava (گدازه), was 800 degrees (درجه) celsius! For 36 hours lava and ash (خاکستر) poured (ریختن) over the city. Everything in the city was buried (دفن کردن) under 6 meters of lava and ash. Because of that, everything that day was “held (نگه داشتن) in time”.

About 300 years ago, people began to dig (حفاری کردن) the ground. They wanted to uncover (برملا کردن) the city. Today you can go to Pompeii and see more than 100 stores, homes and buildings from that day when the volcano (آتشفشان) came. You can see how people lived that day. You can see what they were doing and even (حتی) what they were thinking! People who lived in Pompeii wrote notes to each other on the walls of buildings!

Think what your mother would do if she came into your bedroom and saw you writing on the wall! But if you lived in the year 79, your mother would not be mad (خشمگین)!
   Writing on walls was popular, just like text messages are popular today. Writing on the walls, called graffiti, was actually respected (احترام)! People wrote poems to each other. Sometimes a person started a poem, but did not finish (خاتمه دادن) it. He left it for someone else to finish. When people wrote graffiti on the inside of their houses, they would do it very beautifully, like artwork. Sometimes the graffiti was just a message to a friend. But it would be very carefully made around the edge (لبه) of a door or window, for example. It would have beautiful pictures of flowers and animals too.
   One archaeologist (باستان شناس) found this message on the wall of a church: A small problem gets big if you ignore it.
   People loved to write poems. There were even poem contests! But there were many messages about nothing at all . . . maybe like a lot of the text messages people send today. One person was very tired (خسته) of all the silly (احمقانه), unimportant (بی اهمیت) things people were writing and so he wrote: “I’m surprised, poor wall, that you have not fallen down from all the boring (حوصله سر بر) messages written on you!”

Graffiti by Inocente

Today there is a lot of graffiti that is not beautiful. But there are also many examples of very beautiful messages. The picture here was made by a girl named Inocente. When she was young she lived on the streets without a home. She started to make graffiti to show (نشان دادن) that homeless (بی خانمان) people also have a life: they also love beauty, art, and all that is good.