Opposite the necropolis of Naqshe-Rustam there is a stone structure, popularly known as the “tomb of Zoroaster”. However, scientific research does not confirm the fact that the founder of the ancient Iranian religion was buried here. According to scientists, this building was an altar for the Zoroastrians, where they performed their ritual ceremonies.
Fire worship - the cult of fire, light and sun - arose in Persia more than 3000 years ago, and in the 7th-7th centuries BC. e. the prophet Zoroaster embodied ancient eastern beliefs and legends into religious and ethical teachings. He presented them in the form of revelations received from the almighty god of light, Ahuramazda, and several centuries later his teachings became the dominant religion of the Sasanian Empire in Iran.
Zoroaster (Zarathustra) preached that everything in the world has two opposite principles: life and death, good and evil, light and darkness, cold and warmth, day and night... Good is personified by the god Ahuramazda, who is opposed by the evil god Ahriman, and goes between them constant struggle. The history of the confrontation between two principles, the creation of the world, the basic principles of Zoroastrianism and all the main prayers that are offered to the god Ahuramazda are contained in the holy book “Avesta”. And Zarathustra himself is considered the creator of the gatas (songs) of the most ancient part of the Avesta.
Zoroastrianism affirmed the belief in the afterlife, in the coming of the Messiah, who, after 12,000 years of struggle between good and evil, will come to people to save the world from destruction. People must also fight evil: according to the teachings of Zarathustra, a person must “think about good, talk about good, do good,” and then everything will end in the victory of the good principle.
Zoroastrianism was an enduring religion and had a great influence on the lives of the peoples who inhabited Iran for almost 14 centuries. In the 7th century, Persia was conquered by the Arabs, and the followers of Zarathustra, who resisted the introduction of Islam, were forced to hide in hard-to-reach areas or flee to other countries. Currently, most of Zarathustra's followers live in India, where they are called Parsis. But wherever Zoroastrians live, they always observe the rituals that existed during the heyday of their religion. For example, they perform rituals of fire worship in special temples, which are usually located on hills.
Parsis believe that of the four elements (earth, water, fire and air), the main one is fire: it is sacred, since it carries the divine principle. The concepts of purity, whiteness, purity, goodness and light are associated with fire. All Zoroastrian services are performed in front of a bowl of fire; the sacred fire burns not only in their temples, but also in their homes.
According to the teachings of the Parsis, we all came from the earth and will return there, but the body of the deceased cannot be buried in the earth, so as not to desecrate it. The earth must bloom and bear fruit, so it must receive the cleansed remains of the deceased. And even more so, one cannot commit the body to fire, which should not be desecrated by touching the deceased. In ancient times, immediately after death, the deceased was transferred to a building called “ked” (house). This name could mean a complex of buildings of a residential estate, or a separate building for a special purpose (for example, “atashked” - a temple of fire), and in a funeral rite it was a special house for the deceased. Funeral “shoes” were built separately for men, women and children, and their sizes were determined so “so as not to touch the head of a standing person, outstretched arms and outstretched legs.” In the villages of Zoroastrians there were collective “keds”, but in the estates of the nobility they were special buildings.
From the “keda”, following certain ceremonies, the corpse was transferred to the “dakhma” (an embankment or round structure), where it was left to be devoured by birds of prey. A year later, the bones, washed by rain and dried by the sun, were considered “clean”: they were taken away and placed in “nauss”. The remains of the nobility were placed in family “nauss”, and the vessels with the remains of ordinary people were buried in the ground.
Ancient Greek writers, reporting on Persian funeral rites, wrote about the preservation of the body and the existence of special tombs for Persian kings. This is confirmed by archaeological monuments - rock-cut or free-standing tombs, as well as tomb towers. Meanwhile, as indicated above, the Avesta ordered that corpses be exposed to elevated places, where they were destroyed by predatory animals and birds. The apparent discrepancy is explained by the fact that the testimonies of ancient Greek writers and archaeological monuments refer to the Persians themselves, and the Avesta talks about the funeral rites of the “magicians.” For example, Herodotus reports that the Persians burn the bodies of the dead with wax and then bury them in the ground, while among the “magicians” the corpses are buried only after they have been torn apart by birds or dogs.
Strabo also wrote about this, reporting that corpses were exposed to be torn to pieces in the northeast of Persia. The same custom existed in the Sassanid era, for example, Agathias noted that the body of the deceased was taken out of the city, where it was eaten by birds and dogs; It was forbidden to place the body in a coffin and bury it, so the bones of the deceased were scattered, and they rotted over time. It was considered a good sign if the body of the deceased was quickly eaten by predators, since dangerously sick people, still alive, were taken out of the city and given bread and a stick so that they could fight off the dogs as best they could.
In the report of the Chinese ambassador Wei-tse, who visited Sogdiana at the beginning of the 7th century, the following story about the local funeral rite was preserved:
“Outside the main city, more than two hundred families live separately, specially engaged in burial. They built a special structure in a secluded place where they raise dogs. When someone dies, they take the body and place it in this structure, where the dogs eat it. They then collect the bones and bury them in a special funeral procession, but do not place them in a coffin.”
In the story of the Chinese ambassador there is also an indication of a special structure - the dakhma, which was the predecessor of the famous Zoroastrian “Towers of Silence”. Parsis believe that after death, a person’s soul hovers in this world for three more days and only then leaves it. For three days the priest prays in a special room where the deceased lies, in front of a bowl with a sacred fire, and on the fourth day he prays in a temple where the body of the deceased cannot be brought. During the service, the priest must wear white clothes, his hair is tucked under a white bandage, and his face is covered with a white cloth right up to his eyes. Priests must be purer than others, so they cannot touch the deceased and perform all required rituals at a distance of one and a half meters from him.
After all the required rites have been performed over the deceased, 16 bearers must deliver the body to the Tower on iron bars. Inside it, from the walls to the center there is a gentle slope, on which there are three burial platforms - separately for men, women and children. In the middle of the “Tower of Silence” there is a well surrounded by a wall. In Bombay, vultures leave only a pile of bones from the deceased in half an hour; in other places where the predatory vultures have hatched, the sun and wind “work.” Then special servants come here to collect the bones and throw them into a well, the depth of which is usually 4.5 meters. Near the well, sometimes four more spare ones are sometimes installed, in case the main well overflows.
The “Tower of Silence” is supposed to be built on a high rock so that it is impossible to see what is happening inside it and so that it does not occupy land that people need. No one dares to enter it except the servants and porters, who must cleanse themselves after visiting the “Tower of Silence.” Both the deceased and those who touched him are cleansed with a liquid called “nirang”. It is prepared according to special recipes and even after several decades remains clean and does not decompose.
To build the “Tower of Silence”, it is necessary to observe a lot of complex rituals, but there are fewer and fewer priests who know them. Therefore, there are few “Towers of Silence” left on earth.
In Estonia, right next to my house, soldiers of the First World War were discovered, from which it turned out to be a wall in one of the local warehouses.
So in Iran I was lucky to visit one of the most unusual cemeteries in the world. The Towers of Silence, also called Dakhme or Kale-e Hamusha, are unique burial places for Zoroastrians.
Followers of one of the world's most ancient religions still live peacefully in Iran. Many of their customs are already more than two and a half thousand years old. For many of us, their cemeteries may seem like a monstrous relic of a distant past. They even look more like fortresses than places of eternal rest.
2.
To understand where we ended up, it’s worth telling a little about this ancient religion, how it managed to survive in Iran and why many of their customs differ significantly from those accepted throughout the world.
3.
Throughout their history, Zoroastrians often had to survive in hostile environments. In different languages of the world there are many names for the followers of this faith - Parsis, coats of arms, Bekhtins, magicians and, probably the most popular - fire worshipers.
By the way, the last name is disparaging. For Zoroastrians, fire is just one of the symbols of light, used as a direction for prayer. In fact, this religion is considered one of the first to accept faith in one God, whom Zoroastrians call Ahura Mazda.
As in the Catholicism we know better, where the dead language Latin is used for prayers and church books, Zoroastrians have their own church language, unused anywhere else, Avestan. It is on it that the Avesta, the Zoroastrian version of the Bible, is written.
Zoroastrianism has many similarities with modern religions - belief in hell and heaven, a single prophet Zarathustra, the desire for universal harmony, truth, goodness and condemnation of lies, violence, degradation, and destruction. The main virtues here are considered to be good thoughts, good words and, accordingly, good deeds.
At the end of human existence, according to Zoroastrians, all of us will experience the purification of the world, when all the dead will be resurrected and go through the judgment seat.
6.
It is difficult not to notice that these ideas were later used by many other religions well known to us. And Zoroastrianism survived in a hostile environment, thanks to the ability to adapt and the strict payment of all taxes that were regularly imposed on them. In essence, they were buying off an opportunity for their religion.
7.
One might say that this religion essentially became the prototype of modern Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but at the same time it did not dissolve in them and did not disappear. But she managed to preserve some very ancient customs. One of them is the method of burying the dead.
The dead body of a person is considered unclean by Zoroastrians and cannot come into contact with earth or water. You can’t burn bodies, because fire is sacred. They came up with an original way to dispose of corpses. Round towers with large wells inside were built on high hills.
9.
Grates were placed above the wells, on which dead bodies were placed. Nearby, vulture birds were kept in cages, which were released, as needed, to feed on human flesh. Over time, the gnawed and sun-dried bones, which were considered cleansed of filth, fell through the grate to the bottom of the well.
This burial method was actively used in Iran until the 70s of the last century, and is still used in India and Pakistan. The Internet is full of creepy pictures of what such active cemeteries look like. Looking at them, it is quite clear why this tradition was banned in Iran.
11.
Now local Zoroastrians bury their dead in concrete graves (it is believed that this way the body also does not come into contact with water and earth), and old cemeteries have become tourist sites. Moreover, the so-called Towers of Silence were often located in very picturesque places.
12.
In Yazd, getting to these buildings, located on the outskirts of the city, is easy. You catch a taxi, say the cherished word “Dakhme” and within half an hour you find yourself in the right place. Here you first need to buy a ticket (about 3 Euros) and only then go to the territory of the huge complex.
13.
In addition to two towers (male and female), the ruins of a small village were preserved here, where religious ceremonies of farewell to the dead were held and clergy lived to keep order in the towers.
14.
The first building we looked into turned out to be a badgir - a ventilation shaft going deep underground. Somewhere there once was a kariz - an underground channel with water coming from the mountains.
15.
The remaining buildings in this village are a rather pitiful sight.
16.
True, traces of repairs are visible here and there. Still, guests come here from all over the world...
17.
Yazd is located in a rocky wasteland. There is very little greenery here, but a lot of dust and rocky cliffs. Even in November, climbing up to the towers is far from an easy path. Without water, if you're not used to it, you might get sick.
18.
At the top of the tower there is a narrow passage with a staircase that was obviously added much later.
19.
There is nothing inside the towers except traces of a well.
20.
This emptiness is frightening and fascinating. In fact, we are already in the kingdom of the dead, with the only difference that there is practically nothing left of them. No names, no surnames, no dates of birth or death. All this means nothing here and there is certainly logic to it.
Life is meant to be lived, and our cult of grave worship hardly means anything to the dead themselves. Yes, and sooner or later nothing remains of almost any grave. Time erases everything, and Zoroastrians simply immediately state this fact, which is difficult to accept in other religions.
Death in their interpretation is not a spectacle for the faint of heart. Imagine the pictures of decomposing bodies, vultures pecking out the eyes and the smell of a terrifying stench - this is enough to try to live life to the fullest and not think about your own death.
21.
From the side of the towers there is an excellent overview of several areas of Yazd. They were not built very recently, but still look very archaic to us.
22.
Most people who come here are retirees from Europe. They usually inspect the remains of the buildings below and ascend to the lower women's tower. This is quite enough for them.
23.
Not everyone goes to the second men's tower. But in vain! The views from there are much larger.
24.
In addition, part of the wall here has collapsed over time. This turned out to be a kind of observation deck. Apparently, this is why there is no oppressive atmosphere in this tower. The walls don't put pressure on the brain, and the filled-in well with bones doesn't look so ominous.
25.
There are many more interesting places associated with Zoroastrianism in Yazd and beyond. You can go to the temple of this religion, where a fire burns that is more than one and a half thousand years old. You can also go to nearby villages, where it will certainly be very interesting to get acquainted with the life of people who have not changed their religion for two and a half thousand years.
26.
Zoroastrianism deserves more attention than we were able to give it on our short trip to Iran. And yet, the Towers of Silence left an unforgettable impression and provided an opportunity to get in touch with the origins of human history, and this alone was worth a trip here...
27.
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Throughout its history, humanity has tried many burial methods. Some of them are familiar to us, but there are also completely exotic options. And meeting some can lead to real horror... and they still exist today.
You can still see these towers in which corpses were placed so that birds could gnaw them.
The religion of the ancient Iranians is called Zoroastrianism; it later received the name Parsism among Iranians who moved to India due to the threat of religious persecution in Iran itself, where Islam began to spread at that time.
The ancestors of the ancient Iranians were semi-nomadic pastoral tribes of the Aryans. In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. They, moving from the north, populated the territory of the Iranian Plateau. The Aryans worshiped two groups of deities: ahuras, who personified the ethical categories of justice and order, and devas, closely associated with nature.
Zoroastrians have an unusual way of disposing of the dead. They don't bury or cremate them. Instead, they leave the bodies of the dead at the top of tall towers known as dakhma or towers of silence, where they are open to being eaten by birds of prey such as vultures, kites and crows. The practice of funerals stems from the belief that the dead are “unclean,” not only physically due to decay, but because they are poisoned by demons and evil spirits that rush into the body as soon as the soul leaves it. Thus, burial and cremation are seen as polluting nature and fire, both elements which Zoroastrians are supposed to protect.
This belief in protecting the purity of nature has led some scientists to proclaim Zoroastrianism as "the world's first ecological religion."
In Zoroastrian practice, such burial of the dead, known as dahmenashini, was first described in the mid-5th century BC. e. Herodotus, but special towers began to be used for these purposes much later, at the beginning of the 9th century.
Towers of Silence in Mumbai, visible from nearby high-rise buildings.
After the carrion birds pecked the flesh from the bones, whitened by the sun and wind, they gathered in a pit-crypt in the center of the tower, where lime was added to allow the bones to gradually deteriorate. The whole process took almost a year.
The ancient custom survives among Zoroastrians in Iran, but dakhmas were considered hazardous to the environment and were banned in the 1970s. This tradition is still practiced in India by the Parsi people, who make up the majority of the world's Zoroastrian population. Rapid urbanization, however, is putting pressure on the Parsis and this strange ritual and the right to use the towers of silence is a very controversial issue even among the Parsi community. But the biggest threat to Dahmenashini comes not from health authorities or public protest, but from the lack of vultures and vultures.
The number of vultures, which play an important role in decomposing carcasses, has been steadily declining in Hindustan since the 1990s. In 2008, their numbers fell by about 99 percent, leaving scientists confused until it was discovered that a drug currently administered to cattle was lethal to vultures when they feed on their carrion. The drug was banned by the Indian government, but vulture numbers have yet to recover.
Due to the lack of vultures, powerful solar concentrators were installed on some towers of silence in India to quickly dehydrate corpses. But solar concentrators have the side effect of scaring away other scavenger birds such as crows due to the terrible heat generated by the concentrators during the day. They also do not work on cloudy days. So a job that took only a few hours for a flock of vultures now takes weeks, and these slowly decomposing bodies make the air in the area unbearable. Some towers of silence, which were originally located on the outskirts of cities, now find themselves in the center of populated areas and have to close because of the smell.
The name Tower of Silence was coined in 1832 by Robert Murphy, a translator for the British colonial government in India.
Zooastrians considered cutting hair, cutting nails and burying dead bodies to be unclean.
In particular, they believed that demons could inhabit the bodies of the dead, which would subsequently desecrate and infect everything and everyone who came into contact with them. The Vendidad (a set of laws aimed at averting evil forces and demons) has special rules for disposing of corpses without harming others.
The indispensable covenant of Zoroastrians is that in no case should one desecrate the four elements - earth, fire, air and water - with dead bodies. Therefore, vultures became their optimal way to remove corpses.
Tower of Silence in India. 
The Dakhma is a rounded tower without a roof, the center of which forms a pool. A stone staircase leads to a platform that runs along the entire inner surface of the wall. Three channels (“pavis”) divide the platform into a number of boxes. The bodies of men were placed on the first bed, the bodies of women on the second, and the bodies of children on the third. After the vultures ate the corpses, the remaining bones were stored in an ossuary (a building for storing skeletal remains). There the bones gradually collapsed, and their remains were carried away by rainwater into the sea.
Only special persons could take part in the ritual - “nasasalars” (or gravediggers), who placed the bodies on platforms.
The first mention of such burials dates back to the time of Herodotus, and the ceremony itself was kept in the strictest confidence.
Later, Magu (or priests, clergy) began to practice public burial rites, until eventually bodies were embalmed with wax and buried in trenches.
Archaeologists have found ossuaries dating back to the 5th-4th centuries BC, as well as burial mounds containing bodies embalmed with wax. According to one legend, the tomb of Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrianism, is located in Balkh (modern Afghanistan). Presumably, such first rituals and burials arose in the Sassanid era (3rd-7th century AD), and the first written evidence of “towers of death” was made in the 16th century.
There is one legend according to which, already in our time, many dead bodies unexpectedly appeared near the dakhma, which local residents from neighboring settlements could not identify.
Not a single dead person fit the description of missing people in India.
Tower of Silence in Yazd, Iran.
The corpses had not been gnawed by animals; there were no maggots or flies on them. The amazing thing about this horrifying discovery was that the hole, located in the middle of the dakhma, was filled with blood for several meters, and there was more of this blood than the bodies lying outside could contain. The stench in this nasty place was so unbearable that already on the approaches to the dakhma many began to feel sick.
The investigation was suddenly interrupted when a local resident accidentally kicked a small bone into the hole. Then a powerful explosion of gas, emanating from decomposing blood, began to erupt from the bottom of the pit and spread throughout the entire area.
Everyone who was at the epicenter of the explosion was immediately taken to the hospital and quarantined to prevent the spread of infection.
The patients developed fever and delirium. They frantically shouted that they were “stained with the blood of Ahriman” (the personification of evil in Zoroastrianism), despite the fact that they had nothing to do with this religion and did not even know anything about dakhmas. The state of delirium turned into madness, and many of the sick began to attack the hospital medical staff until they were subdued. In the end, a severe fever killed several witnesses to the ill-fated burial.
When investigators later returned to that place, dressed in protective suits, they discovered the following picture: all the bodies had disappeared without a trace, and the pit of blood was empty.
The rites associated with death and funerals are quite unusual and have always been strictly observed. According to the Avesta, a person who died in winter is given a special room, quite spacious and fenced off from the living rooms. The corpse may remain there for several days or even months until the birds arrive, the plants bloom, hidden waters flow and the wind dries up the earth. Then the worshipers of Ahura Mazda will expose the body to the sun.” In the room where the deceased was located, a fire should be constantly burning - a symbol of the supreme deity, but it was supposed to be fenced off from the deceased with a vine so that demons would not touch the fire.
Two clergymen had to be constantly at the bedside of the dying person. One of them read a prayer, turning his face to the sun, and the other prepared the sacred liquid (haoma) or pomegranate juice, which he poured for the dying person from a special vessel. A dying person should have a dog with him - a symbol of the destruction of everything “unclean”. According to custom, if a dog ate a piece of bread placed on the chest of a dying person, the death of their loved one was announced to the relatives.
Two Towers of Silence, Yazd, Iran. For men on the left, for women on the right.
Wherever a Parsee dies, there he remains until the nassesalars come for him, with their hands immersed up to their shoulders in old sacks. Having placed the deceased in an iron closed coffin (one for everyone), he is taken to the dakhma. Even if the one taken to Dakhma were to come to life (which often happens), he would no longer come into the light of God: the nassesalars would kill him in this case. Whoever has once been defiled by touching dead bodies and visited the tower, it is no longer possible for him to return to the world of the living: he would defile the entire society. Relatives follow the coffin from afar and stop 90 steps from the tower. Before the burial, the ceremony with the dog for fidelity was carried out again, right in front of the tower.
Then the nassesalars bring the body inside and, having taken it out of the coffin, place it in the place allocated for the corpse, depending on gender or age. Everyone was stripped naked, their clothes were burned. The body was secured so that animals or birds, having torn the corpse to pieces, could not carry away and scatter the remains in the water, on the ground or under trees.
Friends and relatives were strictly prohibited from visiting the towers of silence. From dawn to dusk, black clouds of fattened vultures hover over this place. They say that these orderly birds deal with their next “prey” in 20-30 minutes.
Currently, this ritual is prohibited by Iranian law, so representatives of the Zoroastrian religion avoid desecration of the earth by burial in cement, which completely prevents contact with the earth.
In India, towers of silence have survived to this day and were used for their intended purpose even in the last century. They can be found in Mumbai and Surat. The largest one is over 250 years old.
Relatives of the deceased in the tower of silence.
Burial process in the Tower of Silence, India.
Even now you can see these towers in which corpses were placed so that birds could gnaw them
The religion of the ancient Iranians is called Zoroastrianism; it later received the name Parsism among Iranians who moved to India due to the threat of religious persecution in Iran itself, where Islam began to spread at that time.
The ancestors of the ancient Iranians were semi-nomadic pastoral tribes of the Aryans. In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. They, moving from the north, populated the territory of the Iranian Plateau. The Aryans worshiped two groups of deities: ahuras, who personified the ethical categories of justice and order, and devas, closely associated with nature.
Zoroastrians have an unusual way of disposing of the dead. They don't bury or cremate them. Instead, they leave the bodies of the dead at the top of tall towers known as dakhma or towers of silence, where they are open to being eaten by birds of prey such as vultures, kites and crows. The practice of funerals stems from the belief that the dead are “unclean,” not only physically due to decay, but because they are poisoned by demons and evil spirits that rush into the body as soon as the soul leaves it. Thus, burial and cremation are seen as polluting nature and fire, both elements which Zoroastrians are supposed to protect.
This belief in protecting the purity of nature has led some scientists to proclaim Zoroastrianism as "the world's first ecological religion."
In Zoroastrian practice, such burial of the dead, known as dahmenashini, was first described in the mid-5th century BC. e. Herodotus, but special towers began to be used for these purposes much later, at the beginning of the 9th century.
After the carrion birds pecked the flesh from the bones, whitened by the sun and wind, they gathered in a pit-crypt in the center of the tower, where lime was added to allow the bones to gradually deteriorate. The whole process took almost a year.
The ancient custom survives among Zoroastrians in Iran, but dakhmas were considered hazardous to the environment and were banned in the 1970s. This tradition is still practiced in India by the Parsi people, who make up the majority of the world's Zoroastrian population. Rapid urbanization, however, is putting pressure on the Parsis and this strange ritual and the right to use the towers of silence is a very controversial issue even among the Parsi community. But the biggest threat to Dahmenashini comes not from health authorities or public protest, but from the lack of vultures and vultures.
The number of vultures, which play an important role in decomposing carcasses, has been steadily declining in Hindustan since the 1990s. In 2008, their numbers fell by about 99 percent, leaving scientists confused until it was discovered that a drug currently administered to cattle was lethal to vultures when they feed on their carrion. The drug was banned by the Indian government, but vulture numbers have yet to recover.
Due to the lack of vultures, powerful solar concentrators were installed on some towers of silence in India to quickly dehydrate corpses. But solar concentrators have the side effect of scaring away other scavenger birds such as crows due to the terrible heat generated by the concentrators during the day. They also do not work on cloudy days. So a job that took only a few hours for a flock of vultures now takes weeks, and these slowly decomposing bodies make the air in the area unbearable. Some towers of silence, which were originally located on the outskirts of cities, now find themselves in the center of populated areas and have to close because of the smell.
The name Tower of Silence was coined in 1832 by Robert Murphy, a translator for the British colonial government in India.
Zooastrians considered cutting hair, cutting nails and burying dead bodies to be unclean.
In particular, they believed that demons could inhabit the bodies of the dead, which would subsequently desecrate and infect everything and everyone who came into contact with them. The Vendidad (a set of laws aimed at averting evil forces and demons) has special rules for disposing of corpses without harming others.
The indispensable covenant of Zoroastrians is that in no case should one desecrate the four elements - earth, fire, air and water - with dead bodies. Therefore, vultures became their optimal way to remove corpses.
The Dakhma is a rounded tower without a roof, the center of which forms a pool. A stone staircase leads to a platform that runs along the entire inner surface of the wall. Three channels (“pavis”) divide the platform into a number of boxes. The bodies of men were placed on the first bed, the bodies of women on the second, and the bodies of children on the third. After the vultures ate the corpses, the remaining bones were stored in an ossuary (a building for storing skeletal remains). There the bones gradually collapsed, and their remains were carried away by rainwater into the sea.
Only special persons could take part in the ritual - “nasasalars” (or gravediggers), who placed the bodies on platforms.
The first mention of such burials dates back to the time of Herodotus, and the ceremony itself was kept in the strictest confidence.
Later, Magu (or priests, clergy) began to practice public burial rites, until eventually bodies were embalmed with wax and buried in trenches.
Archaeologists have found ossuaries dating back to the 5th-4th centuries BC, as well as burial mounds containing bodies embalmed with wax. According to one legend, the tomb of Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrianism, is located in Balkh (modern Afghanistan). Presumably, such first rituals and burials arose in the Sassanid era (3rd-7th century AD), and the first written evidence of “towers of death” was made in the 16th century.
There is one legend according to which, already in our time, many dead bodies unexpectedly appeared near the dakhma, which local residents from neighboring settlements could not identify.
Not a single dead person fit the description of missing people in India.
The corpses had not been gnawed by animals; there were no maggots or flies on them. The amazing thing about this horrifying discovery was that the hole, located in the middle of the dakhma, was filled with blood for several meters, and there was more of this blood than the bodies lying outside could contain. The stench in this nasty place was so unbearable that already on the approaches to the dakhma many began to feel sick
The investigation was suddenly interrupted when a local resident accidentally kicked a small bone into the hole. Then a powerful explosion of gas, emanating from decomposing blood, began to erupt from the bottom of the pit and spread throughout the entire area.
Everyone who was at the epicenter of the explosion was immediately taken to the hospital and quarantined to prevent the spread of infection.
The patients developed fever and delirium. They frantically shouted that they were “stained with the blood of Ahriman” (the personification of evil in Zoroastrianism), despite the fact that they had nothing to do with this religion and did not even know anything about dakhmas. The state of delirium turned into madness, and many of the sick began to attack the hospital medical staff until they were subdued. In the end, a severe fever killed several witnesses to the ill-fated burial.
When investigators later returned to that place, dressed in protective suits, they discovered the following picture: all the bodies had disappeared without a trace, and the pit of blood was empty.
The rites associated with death and funerals are quite unusual and have always been strictly observed. According to the Avesta, a person who died in winter is given a special room, quite spacious and fenced off from the living rooms. The corpse may remain there for several days or even months until the birds arrive, the plants bloom, hidden waters flow and the wind dries up the earth. Then the worshipers of Ahura Mazda will expose the body to the sun.” In the room where the deceased was located, a fire should be constantly burning - a symbol of the supreme deity, but it was supposed to be fenced off from the deceased with a vine so that demons would not touch the fire.
Two clergymen had to be constantly at the bedside of the dying person. One of them read a prayer, turning his face to the sun, and the other prepared the sacred liquid (haoma) or pomegranate juice, which he poured for the dying person from a special vessel. A dying person should have a dog with him - a symbol of the destruction of everything “unclean”. According to custom, if a dog ate a piece of bread placed on the chest of a dying person, the death of their loved one was announced to the relatives.
Wherever a Parsee dies, there he remains until the nassesalars come for him, with their hands immersed up to their shoulders in old sacks. Having placed the deceased in an iron closed coffin (one for everyone), he is taken to the dakhma. Even if the one taken to Dakhma were to come to life (which often happens), he would no longer come into the light of God: the nassesalars would kill him in this case. Whoever has once been defiled by touching dead bodies and visited the tower, it is no longer possible for him to return to the world of the living: he would defile the entire society. Relatives follow the coffin from afar and stop 90 steps from the tower. Before the burial, the ceremony with the dog for fidelity was carried out again, right in front of the tower.
Then the nassesalars bring the body inside and, having taken it out of the coffin, place it in the place allocated for the corpse, depending on gender or age. Everyone was stripped naked, their clothes were burned. The body was secured so that animals or birds, having torn the corpse to pieces, could not carry away and scatter the remains in the water, on the ground or under trees.
Friends and relatives were strictly prohibited from visiting the towers of silence. From dawn to dusk, black clouds of fattened vultures hover over this place. They say that these orderly birds deal with their next “prey” in 20-30 minutes
This post will introduce us to a far from common method of disposing of the bodies of dead people, which until recently was practiced in Iran and India, and is still practiced in some places. We will talk specifically about getting rid of the body, since you have most likely never heard of such a custom. We do not recommend viewing these photos to overly impressionable people.
You can still see towers like this, in which the corpses of the dead are placed so that birds can gnaw them.
The religion of the ancient Iranians is called Zoroastrianism; it later received the name Parsism among Iranians who moved to India due to the threat of religious persecution in Iran itself, where Islam began to spread at that time.
The ancestors of the ancient Iranians were semi-nomadic pastoral tribes of the Aryans. In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. They, moving from the north, populated the territory of the Iranian Plateau. The Aryans worshiped two groups of deities: ahuras, who personified the ethical categories of justice and order, and devas, closely associated with nature.
Zoroastrians have an unusual way of disposing of the dead. They don't bury or cremate them. Instead, they leave the bodies of the dead at the top of tall towers known as dakhma or towers of silence, where they are open to being eaten by birds of prey such as vultures, kites and crows. The practice of funerals stems from the belief that the dead are “unclean,” not only physically due to decay, but because they are poisoned by demons and evil spirits that rush into the body as soon as the soul leaves it. Thus, burial and cremation are seen as polluting nature and fire, both elements which Zoroastrians are supposed to protect.
This belief in protecting the purity of nature has led some scientists to proclaim Zoroastrianism as "the world's first ecological religion."
In Zoroastrian practice, such burial of the dead, known as dahmenashini, was first described in the mid-5th century BC. e. Herodotus, but special towers began to be used for these purposes much later, at the beginning of the 9th century.
Towers of Silence in Mumbai, visible from nearby high-rise buildings.
After the carrion birds pecked the flesh from the bones, whitened by the sun and wind, they gathered in a pit-crypt in the center of the tower, where lime was added to allow the bones to gradually deteriorate. The whole process took almost a year.
The ancient custom survives among Zoroastrians in Iran, but dakhmas were considered hazardous to the environment and were banned in the 1970s. This tradition is still practiced in India by the Parsis, who make up the majority of the world's Zoroastrian population.
Rapid urbanization, however, is putting pressure on the Parsis and this strange ritual and the right to use the towers of silence is a very controversial issue even among the Parsi community. But the biggest threat to Dahmenashini comes not from health authorities or public protest, but from the lack of vultures and vultures.
The number of vultures, which play an important role in decomposing carcasses, has been steadily declining in Hindustan since the 1990s. In 2008, their numbers fell by about 99 percent, leaving scientists confused until it was discovered that a drug currently administered to cattle was lethal to vultures when they feed on their carrion. The drug was banned by the Indian government, but vulture numbers have yet to recover.
Due to the lack of vultures, powerful solar concentrators were installed on some towers of silence in India to quickly dehydrate corpses. But solar concentrators have the side effect of repelling other scavenger birds such as crows due to the terrible heat generated by the concentrators during the day.
They also do not work on cloudy days. So a job that took only a few hours for a flock of vultures now takes weeks, and these slowly decomposing bodies make the air in the area unbearable.
Some towers of silence, which were originally located on the outskirts of cities, now found themselves in the center of populated areas and had to be closed due to the smell.
The name Tower of Silence was coined in 1832 by Robert Murphy, a translator for the British colonial government in India.
Zooastrians considered cutting hair, cutting nails and burying dead bodies to be unclean.
In particular, they believed that demons could inhabit the bodies of the dead, which would subsequently desecrate and infect everything and everyone who came into contact with them. The Vendidad (a set of laws aimed at averting evil forces and demons) has special rules for disposing of corpses without harming others.
The indispensable covenant of Zoroastrians is that in no case should one desecrate the four elements - earth, fire, air and water - with dead bodies. Therefore, vultures became their optimal way to remove corpses.
Tower of Silence in India.
The Dakhma is a rounded tower without a roof, the center of which forms a pool. A stone staircase leads to a platform that runs along the entire inner surface of the wall. Three channels (“pavis”) divide the platform into a number of boxes. The bodies of men were placed on the first bed, the bodies of women on the second, and the bodies of children on the third.
After the vultures ate the corpses, the remaining bones were stored in an ossuary (a building for storing skeletal remains). There the bones gradually collapsed, and their remains were carried away by rainwater into the sea.
Only special persons could take part in the ritual - “nasasalars” (or gravediggers), who placed the bodies on platforms.
The first mention of such burials dates back to the time of Herodotus, and the ceremony itself was kept in the strictest confidence.
Later, Magu (or priests, clergy) began to practice public burial rites, until eventually bodies were embalmed with wax and buried in trenches.
Archaeologists have found ossuaries dating back to the 5th-4th centuries BC, as well as burial mounds containing bodies embalmed with wax. According to one legend, the tomb of Zarathustra, the founder of Zoroastrianism, is located in Balkh (modern Afghanistan). Presumably, such first rituals and burials arose in the Sassanid era (3rd-7th century AD), and the first written evidence of “towers of death” was made in the 16th century.
There is one legend according to which, already in our time, many dead bodies unexpectedly appeared near the dakhma, which local residents from neighboring settlements could not identify.
Not a single dead person fit the description of missing people in India.
Tower of Silence in Yazd, Iran.
The corpses had not been gnawed by animals; there were no maggots or flies on them. The amazing thing about this horrifying discovery was that the hole, located in the middle of the dakhma, was filled with blood for several meters, and there was more of this blood than the bodies lying outside could contain. The stench in this nasty place was so unbearable that already on the approaches to the dakhma many began to feel sick.
The investigation was suddenly interrupted when a local resident accidentally kicked a small bone into the hole. Then a powerful explosion of gas, emanating from decomposing blood, began to erupt from the bottom of the pit and spread throughout the entire area.
Everyone who was at the epicenter of the explosion was immediately taken to the hospital and quarantined to prevent the spread of infection.
The patients developed fever and delirium. They frantically shouted that they were “stained with the blood of Ahriman” (the personification of evil in Zoroastrianism), despite the fact that they had nothing to do with this religion and did not even know anything about dakhmas. The state of delirium turned into madness, and many of the sick began to attack the hospital medical staff until they were subdued. In the end, a severe fever killed several witnesses to the ill-fated burial.
When investigators later returned to that place, dressed in protective suits, they discovered the following picture: all the bodies had disappeared without a trace, and the pit of blood was empty.
The rites associated with death and funerals are quite unusual and have always been strictly observed. According to the Avesta, a person who died in winter is given a special room, quite spacious and fenced off from the living rooms. The corpse may remain there for several days or even months until the birds arrive, the plants bloom, hidden waters flow and the wind dries up the earth. Then the worshipers of Ahura Mazda will expose the body to the sun.” In the room where the deceased was located, a fire should be constantly burning - a symbol of the supreme deity, but it was supposed to be fenced off from the deceased with a vine so that demons would not touch the fire.
Two clergymen had to be constantly at the bedside of the dying person. One of them read a prayer, turning his face to the sun, and the other prepared the sacred liquid (haoma) or pomegranate juice, which he poured for the dying person from a special vessel. A dying person should have a dog with him - a symbol of the destruction of everything “unclean”. According to custom, if a dog ate a piece of bread placed on the chest of a dying person, the death of their loved one was announced to the relatives.
Two Towers of Silence, Yazd, Iran. For men on the left, for women on the right.
Wherever a Parsee dies, there he remains until the nassesalars come for him, with their hands immersed up to their shoulders in old sacks. Having placed the deceased in an iron closed coffin (one for everyone), he is taken to the dakhma. Even if the one taken to Dakhma were to come to life (which often happens), he would no longer come into the light of God: the nassesalars would kill him in this case.
Whoever has once been defiled by touching dead bodies and visited the tower, it is no longer possible for him to return to the world of the living: he would defile the entire society. Relatives follow the coffin from afar and stop 90 steps from the tower. Before the burial, the ceremony with the dog for fidelity was carried out again, right in front of the tower.
Then the nassesalars bring the body inside and, having taken it out of the coffin, place it in the place allocated for the corpse, depending on gender or age. Everyone was stripped naked, their clothes were burned. The body was secured so that animals or birds, having torn the corpse to pieces, could not carry away and scatter the remains in the water, on the ground or under trees.
Friends and relatives were strictly prohibited from visiting the towers of silence. From dawn to dusk, black clouds of fattened vultures hover over this place. They say that these orderly birds deal with their next “prey” in 20-30 minutes.
Currently, this ritual is prohibited by Iranian law, so representatives of the Zoroastrian religion avoid desecration of the earth by burial in cement, which completely prevents contact with the earth.
In India, towers of silence have survived to this day and were used for their intended purpose even in the last century. They can be found in Mumbai and Surat. The largest one is over 250 years old.
Relatives of the deceased in the tower of silence.
Burial process in the Tower of Silence, India.
