LONDON — The horse, a purebred, was wearing a bronze-plated military saddle and ready to go when Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the ancient city of Pompeii in A.D. 79. The horse, too, was covered in pumice and ash.

Almost 2,000 years later, archaeologists unearthed the immobilized horse, along with the remains of two others, in the remnants of a stable attached to a sumptuous suburban villa in Civita Giuliana, outside the walls of what remains of Pompeii, the Archaeological Park of Pompeii said in a statement on Monday.

The horses are among a growing list of archaeological treasures dug up at the Pompeii site, discovered in the late 16th century. This year, Pompeian excavations have found a shrine with wall paintings that hint at Roman life in the first century; the skeleton of a man who had fled the volcanic eruption only to be buried by a rock; and a well-preserved fresco in a house on the Via del Vesuvio depicting the mythological rape of Leda, the queen of Sparta, by Zeus in the form of a swan.

The horses probably perished soon after the volcanic explosion, with their frozen postures suggesting they had been unable to wrest free. The saddled horse and its elaborate harness were discovered over the summer, the archaeological park statement said.