(ORDO NEWS) — In the ancient city of Sagalassos, an unusual cremation burial was discovered – twice sealed and strewn with curved nails.
Scientists believe that in this way they tried to protect the world of the living from some potentially restless dead.
Sagalassos was founded at the end of the 5th century BC, when the region was part of the Achaemenid Empire.
And by the 2nd century BC, it had become quite an important urban center of the Hellenistic Kingdom of Pergamon.
In 25 BC, Octavian Augustus included it in the Roman province of Galatia – and this was the era of the highest prosperity of the city.
Large public buildings, city squares and streets were built.
There was a pottery production that produced high-quality red-clay ceramics, which was in great demand. In Late Antiquity, the city’s importance declined, but it continued to produce pottery of the same name.
In the 7th century AD, a strong earthquake almost destroyed the city, the population of Sagalassos was greatly reduced, and it became mostly agricultural.
In the XIII century, its fortress was destroyed during the next small-town wars of the Seljuk Sultanate – this was the end of the history of the ancient city.
The ruins of Sagalassos remained untouched until the end of the 20th century, when archaeologists became interested in them.
Archaeologists from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), in which they talk about the unique tomb of the Roman period Sagalassos. This cremation burial was dated to 100-150 AD.
The deceased person (it was an adult man) was cremated and left in the same place – on a cremation pyre. Judging by the location of the skeletal remains, they were not touched at all after being burned.
This practice is not common in the Roman tradition: usually the ashes were collected in an urn and then buried in a grave or placed in a tomb. But the oddities don’t end there.
Someone scattered 41 bent and twisted nails along the edges of the cremation fire.
They could not be used for practical purposes (for example, for fixing a place to make a fire), and their distribution around the perimeter of the fire indicates that the nails were placed there in some particular order.
On top of the still smoldering fire, 24 large flattened bricks were tightly laid. Then the bricks were covered with a thick layer of plaster. The result was a rather massive and well-sealed tomb.
Each of these practices is known individually from Roman-era cemeteries: on-site cremation, tiling or plastering, and the occasional bent nail. But they had never met in the same place before.
The authors of the work suggested that the combination of these funeral methods is designed to protect the world of the living not just from the world of the dead, but from a very specific dead person.
Perhaps the point is in his special lifetime reputation.
At first glance, they buried some not very good person and sealed the tomb as best they could.
The problem is that, in addition to twisted nails, which, according to scientists, are of a ritual nature, quite ordinary grave goods were also found in the grave.
This is a coin of the 2nd century, several small ceramic vessels of the 1st century, two vessels made of blown glass and a still incomprehensible object with a hinge.
Such items are quite common in the burials of the first half of the 2nd century – that is, the “dangerous” dead was buried with certain honors.
The authors believe that the person in this strange cremation grave was most likely buried by the next of kin – and it took them several days to prepare and conduct the funeral ceremony.
Nearby, archaeologists found several more burials from about the same time, but it cannot be said that this is a family cemetery – the remains of a burned person turned out to be unsuitable for DNA analysis.
Perhaps a strange burial was arranged to counteract an unusual or unnatural death. However, the researchers did not find any signs of injury or disease on the bones.
Therefore, they assume that the matter is in the magic that the deceased may have practiced.
And if this witchcraft frightened those around, then their desire to do everything so that the dead man would never return is quite understandable.
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