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Salt Man / Saltman Mummies (Zanjan, Iran)

MrRING

MrRING

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Third Salt Man discovered in northwestern Iran
TEHRAN, Jan. 17 (MNA) --

The remains of a skeleton of a man were recently discovered at the Chehrabad salt mine near Zanjan in northwestern Iran. The third Salt Man’s body was buried under a two-ton rock, Amir Elahi, the director of the excavation team at the mine, said on Monday.

Several items such as a leather sack full of salt, a clay tallow burner, two pairs of leather shoes, and two cow horns were also discovered near the skeleton, added Elahi.According to the director of the Zanjan Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department, Yahya Rahmati, the Salt Man was killed and buried by the two-ton rock, severely damaging the skeleton, but the items discovered beside him are in excellent condition.

“The newly discovered leather sack was full of crystals of salt and was completely tightened. This indicates that the owner was about to carry it out of the mine, but was suddenly crushed by the heavy rock, leaving him no chance to escape,” he added. “The discovery of the remains of the skeleton near the rock proves the theory about a mine collapse at a specific time,” he said, adding that although the three skeletons were discovered close to each other, more studies are required to accurately date the remains.

He also announced that two more old tunnels, which were the major passages of the mine, were discovered during the recent excavation.The second Salt Man was discovered at the Hamzehlu salt mine near Zanjan. The remains of the skeleton are almost perfect, and they include parts of the skull, jaw, both arms, as well as the left and right legs and feet.

Several pieces of wool cloth and a piece of a straw mat with a unique style of weaving were also discovered beside the second Salt Man. The remains are currently being kept at the Zanjan Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department. The second skeleton was found 30 to 40 meters from the place where the first Salt Man was discovered.

The first Salt Man, a miner whose body was preserved by the salt, lived over 1700 years ago. He was also a man between the ages of 35 and 40. His remains are currently being kept in a glass case at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.

The first Salt Man’s withered face stares into the distance. He has long white hair and a beard and was discovered wearing leather boots and with some tools and a walnut in his possession.
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mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=149500
Link is dead. The MIA news item can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080607122825/http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=149500
 
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And a fat lot of good that walnut did him .... tragic really!
 
Additional Salt Man / Saltman mummies were discovered during the years following this thread's initiation. This online article describes the situation as of 2011.
SALT MEN OF IRAN
Article created on Tuesday, June 7, 2011

In the winter of 1993, miners came across a body with long red hair and a beard, and associated artefacts, in the Chehrabad salt mines located to the west of the city of Zanjan, Iran. They found the remains of a body, a lower leg still inside a leather boot, three iron knives, a pair of woollen trousers, a silver needle, sling, parts of a leather rope, a grindstone, and even a walnut. The body had been buried in a tunnel approximately 45 metres in length.

As the years went by a further five corpses, including a teenager and a woman, were discovered in the salt mine.

SaltMan.jpg

Recently isotopic analysis was carried out on five of the salt-preserved bodies which are now dated to between 4th century BCE through to the 4th century CE. In an attempt to identify the geographical origins of these people, researchers from the Department of Environmental Sciences, Università Ca’ Foscari in Italy, matched osteological samples from various sites in Iran and those from the salt mine bodies. It was possible for them to hypothesise that two of the “mummies” may have come from the Tehran/Qazvin Plain region (local to the salt mine), and a further two appear on isotopic grounds to have come from the northeast of Iran or the Turkmenistan steppes. The fifth appears to have come from further afield. ...

Three of the salt men date back to the Parthian (247 BCE-224 CE) and Sassanid (224-651 CE) eras, while all other human remains discovered at the site go back to the Achaemenid Dynasty (550-330 BCE). A sixth ‘salt man’ has been left in place due to the lack of equipment necessary for its preservation.

These are important finds and include 300 pieces of fabric, some of them with designs, that have been found on or near the mummies. The salt appears to have also retained the dyes used in the fabrics.

There is still much work to be done on both the preserved remains and the site itself and in 2008 the Ministry of Industries and Mines cancelled the mining permit for the Chehrabad Salt Mine. So for now, the site is safe for further study.
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FULL STORY:
Past Horizons: Adventures in Archaeology (Defunct Website)
Accessible via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013103...m/index.php/archives/06/2011/salt-men-of-iran
 
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The Atlas Obscura article cited above includes this tangential tidbit:

Stanford University’s folklorist Adrienne Mayor thinks there may be another layer to the already intriguing story of the salt men. She thinks the mummies may be the origin of the ancient myth of the satyr. “Obviously satyrs are mythic creatures,” Mayor said, but pointed out that the heads of the humans who had been preserved in the salt bear “a striking resemblance to ancient Greek and Roman depictions of satyrs.”

Classical images of satyrs are indeed similar looking, with similar hair and beards, snub noses and protruding jaws. “I think it’s very likely that an ancient discovery of a similarly preserved ‘salt man’ in northwestern Iran is the basis for St. Jerome’s account of the ‘satyr’ preserved in salt and examined by the Emperor Constantine and numerous other curious visitors in Antioch,” Mayor writes.
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Oh, thats interesting.

And of course, the Persians were the enemy, it would be amusing to portray them as vulgar hairy folk.

(The Kings Eye part in Aristophanes `Archanians` is a delightfully silly scene)
 
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