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## Nine in the Garden: The House of the Cryptoporticus Group
The nine individuals found in the garden of the House of the Cryptoporticus, of whom casts were made for four, represent one of the larger groups of victims found together at Pompeii. The house itself is named for the underground cryptoporticus — a vaulted underground corridor — that connected its lower levels and served as a cool walkway and storage space.
The nine people apparently gathered in the garden as the eruption progressed, perhaps seeking the relatively open space of the exterior rather than the enclosed rooms of the house. Of the nine, four were preserved as plaster casts; the others are known from skeletal remains without corresponding casts — either the voids in those cases were not recognized or filled, or the remains were recovered and recorded without casting.
The embracing pair — the two individuals whose posture of mutual contact gave rise to decades of interpretation as sisters or a mother and daughter — were among this group. They were found together with their arms around each other, or in postures close enough to be described as embracing, in a scene that has generated more interpretive attention than perhaps any other pair of Pompeii victims.
The 1914 discovery of this group preceded the development of any of the modern scientific tools that would eventually be applied to it. The interpretation of the pair as female, and as sisters or a mother and daughter, was the interpretation available from visual examination of the casts and was consistent with the archaeological common sense of the time. It was adopted in published accounts, repeated in guidebooks, and eventually became the standard description attached to the pair in interpretive materials.