Archaeologists make 2,000-year-old Pompeii discovery linked to secretive cult and rituals

Archaeologists exploring what Pompeii was like before it was famously destroyed by Mount Vesuvius have made a huge discovery after finding evidence of secret cults and rituals.

It has been almost 2,000 years that the ancient Italian city of Pompeii, near Naples in Italy, was completely destroyed after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Exploding some 21 miles in to the sky, molten rock reigned down on Pompeii and nearby town Herculaneum.

Releasing 100,000 times the thermal energy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both locations were buried under something called pyroclastic surge - huge clouds of hot gas and rock fragment thrown out of the volcano.

The ruins of Pompeii with Mt Vesuvius in the background (Getty Stock Images)

Since then, work has taken place over hundreds of years to rediscover Pompeii and its buried secrets since the ancient city was found again in 1592.

Now, a 'megalography' - word derived from the Greek for 'large painting' - has been discovered in one building buried during the eruption that has hinted at ancient mystery cults relating to the ancient god of wine-making, Dionysus.

The well-preserved painting dating back to the first century BC and has been discovered in a banquet hall of the House of Thiasus in Region IX.

Almost life-sized, it covers three walls of the huge banquet hall with the other wall opening in to a garden.

The paining of the Dionysus cult (Archaeological Park of Pompeii)

The painting shows Dionysus with female followers dancing around him, carrying slaughtered goats and brandishing swords. It has since come to light that it is a rather manic ritual being projected on to the walls, with intoxicated women carrying the insides of the animals on their shoulders.

The paintings have been dated back to between 40BC and 30BC; almost one hundred years before Pompeii was destroyed.

Since the discovery, Italy's Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli has labelled the wall painting 'one-of-a-kind' and 'an exceptional historical document'.

The excavated Pompeii building (Archaeological Park of Pompeii)

He said: "In 100 years, today will be seen as historic because the discovery we are showing is historic.

"Pompeii is an extraordinary testimony to an aspect of life in classical Mediterranean life that is largely unknown."

At the middle of the painting is a companion of Dionysus holding a torch next to a young woman undergoing a secret ritual; reinforcing the longstanding association of Dionysus with transformation and rebirth, concepts central to his cult.

The women in the painting are known as Maenads, which translated as 'to rave and be mad'.

The Dionysus cult at Pompeii (Archaeological Park of Pompeii)

"Maenad expressed the wild, untameable side of women,' said Dr Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

"The woman who abandons her children, the house and the city, who breaks free from male order to dance freely, go hunting and eat raw meat in the mountains and the woods."

And people can actually go and visit the find, with it part of ongoing guided tours as part of the wider excavation site.