Incredible images of 2,500-year old mummies buried deep underground in a salt mine have preserved their bodies just as they died.
The so-called Salt Men of Iran were believed to have been mining for salt when the mine collapsed, burying them alive.
Their horrifying remains are frozen with mouths open, capturing their final screams as they died.
Archaeologists first thought the Salt Men dated to around 550-330BC, around the time of Persia’s Achaemenid Dynasty, the first empire to rule over the region.
But a new study suggests humans may have started to use the salt mine almost 4,000 years before that.
Of the eight mummified Iranian Salt Men now unearthed, most date back to the age of the Achaemenid empire, which ruled as far as Egypt to the west and the Indus River Valley to the south east, in areas that are now part of Pakistan and India.
At the height of this dynasty’s reign, according to the new study, ‘the Achaemenid mine was abandoned after a mining catastrophe that cost the lives of three miners.’
Salt mining operations did not resume for nearly two centuries after the collapse.
But the silver lining of the catastrophe was that the mummies provided researchers with the sharpest pictures yet of ancient human activity at the site.
Paleo-pathologist Dr Lena Öhrström and her study co-authors from the University of Zurich’s Mummy Studies Group explained: ‘In the case of the salt mummies, the mummification process was induced by salt.
‘The resulting dehydration inhibits bacterial growth and arrests decomposition.’
Looking back further than the salt mine disaster has proved tricky, because the huge ‘salt dome’ deposit accessed by this mine was likely used by several groups over centuries.
Their new study pulled together data from 18 nearby archaeological dig-sites, dating ‘from prehistory to the Islamic period,’ hoping to determine how far back in human history the salt mining and extraction first began.
The first Iranian Salt Man (Salt Man 1) was discovered in the winter of 1993: he was a remarkably well-preserved severed head with long white hair and a beard, as well as a gold earring in his left ear.
Carbon-14 dating of the head indicated that Salt Man 1 lived during the early years of the Sassanian Dynasty from 220–390 AD.
This so-called Sassanid period was the last of the Persian empires to rule before the Muslim conquests of the 7th century.
Salt Man 1’s left lower leg, severed in a boot, was eventually discovered nearby in a separate ‘rescue excavation’.
Researchers have been able to determine that an elaborate, possibly export-driven and empire-managed mining operation was in effect during this period.
The site’s other most famous mummy, Salt Man 4, was a teenage miner preserved in almost his entirety as he braced for his life in fear amid the mining collapse.
Salt Man 4 dates back to the earlier Achaemenid empire’s version of the salt mine, where he was buried in the circa-400 BC catastrophe that shut the mine down for centuries — making him, researchers said, ‘an icon of the excavations in Chehrābād’.
The study explains: ‘This is due first to his excellent preservation. The mummy is fully dressed in woollen trousers, a tunic, leather shoes and a cape made of fur.
‘Silver earrings were found on his right and left ears; two clay pots with paste-like content, and a knife, were found on his body.’
The iconic mummy’s discovery in 2004, in fact, helped to spearhead renewed funding for the current cultural protections and excavation work at the site.
No less significantly, carbon isotope studies of Saltman 4’s remains indicated that he was likely ‘a stranger to the area, displaying a relatively recent non-local diet’.
Taken with the other findings, the discovery that this ‘apprentice aged’ miner came came from a distant land, has bolstered the case that the Chehrābād salt mine had become a sophisticated imperial mining operation as early as the Achaemenid era.
‘Unfortunately, there are few written sources concerning salt-exploitation in northwestern Iran during the timespan considered here, and none for the Achaemenid and Sasanian periods,’ the researchers noted in their new study.
But the wider context gleaned from these mummies and other artifacts, alongside distant evidence elsewhere of salt taxes and storage across in Persia’s far-flung empires, they argued, ‘may indicate institutional involvement’.
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