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07 September 1999
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The
Parthian coffin is made of reddish brown clay broken by plaster patches.
From above it seems to form an oval pinched at one end to a narrow point.
From the side it looks like a slipper with a hole for the lid in the
location where the ankle would leave the shoe.
(Click
to enlarge)
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Unearthed
in 1927 during the University’s excavations at Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, about
20 miles south of modern Baghdad, the Parthian slipper coffin went unnoticed in
the basement of the Kelsey Museum until summer 1998. It was then, more than 70
years after its initial discovery, that the coffin was discovered again—this
time by Will Pestle, a research assistant at the Museum.
Among
the stacks of handwritten field notes and diaries left by the original
excavators, Pestle had found only a brief mention of a small coffin containing
the remains of two infants. Pestle and Museum Registrar Robin Meador-Woodruff,
located the coffin looking nothing like they expected. “The coffin’s shape
is reminiscent of a ballet slipper,” Pestle says, “narrower at one end than
the other, with a hole in the wide end to accommodate the lid.”
When
the small circular lid was removed, the coffin revealed a jumble of bones piled
along with peanut shells, cotton, straw packing material and pieces of paper
with both English and Arabic script. “This was evidence that the contents had
been disturbed,” Pestle says.
The
mix revealed unburned human skeletal remains that contradicted the field notes.
The coffin contained four individuals, none of whom was an infant. Pestle
determined that one of the individuals was 12–15 years of age and possibly
male, a second 6–8 years of age and of indeterminate sex. Pestle determined
the third individual to be 4–6 years of age and of indeterminate sex and the
fourth to be an adult male.
Pestle
says the coffin lacks any obvious decoration, in contrast to coffins found at
other Parthian sites. But under raking light, Pestle did find incised lines on
both the lid and the top that formed symbols of an unknown nature. He dates the
coffin at about 143 BCE–48CE.
One
unanswered question raised by Pestle’s examination of the coffin and its
contents is why so many individuals were present in such a small funerary
container. “Perhaps the individuals here interred were part of a family
group,” Pestle says, “or they may have been siblings.” Still, Pestle
speculates, there could have been a reburial of these individuals, or the
primary inhabitant of the coffin could have been exposed for the purpose of
“defleshing” prior to burial and when the remains returned to the coffin,
fragments of other individuals were mistakenly included.
“While
all of these are possibilities,” Pestle says, “a definitive answer is almost
impossible to formulate.”
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