1872 Antique Engravings (3) - "Towers of Silence" or Open Graves near Tehran

Description: Three antique engravings on a single page relating to Iran and published in Harper's Weekly dated May 25, 1872 entitled as follows: "The Shah's Palace at Terehan" "Exterior of a Parsee Burial-ground near Teheran" "Interior of a Parsee Burial-ground near Teheran" These open air burial grounds known as "Towers of Silence" are now outlawed - see history below Good condition. Related and unrelated text to the reverse. These are original antique prints and not reproductions . Great collectors item for the historian - see more of these in Seller's Other Items which can be combined for mailing at no additional cost. Note: International mailing in a tube is expensive ($16.50). The quoted international rate assumes the page is lightly folded at the text and mailed in a reinforced envelope Tower of SilenceFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to navigationJump to searchFor other uses, see Tower of Silence (disambiguation).This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Tower of Silence" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)Part of a series onZoroastrianismAtar (fire), a primary symbol of ZoroastrianismshowPrimary topicsshowDivine entitiesshowScripture and worshipshowAccounts and legendsshowHistory and cultureshowAdherentsshowRelated topics Religion portalvteInterior view of DakhmaEarly 20th century drawing of the Dakhma on Malabar Hill, Bombay.A dakhma (Persian: دخمه), also known as the Tower of Silence, is a circular, raised structure built by Zoroastrians for excarnation–that is, the exposure of human dead bodies to the elements for decay in order to avert contamination of the soil with the corpses.[1][2][3] Carrion birds, usually vultures and other scavengers, would typically consume the flesh and the skeletal remains would have been left in the pit.[1][2]Zoroastrian exposure of the dead is first attested in the mid-5th century BCE Histories of Herodotus, but the use of towers is first documented in the early 9th century CE.[1][2] The doctrinal rationale for exposure is to avoid contact with Earth, Water, or Fire, all three of which are considered sacred in the Zoroastrian religion.[2][3]One of the earliest literary descriptions of such a building appears in the late 9th-century Epistles of Manushchihr, where the technical term is astodan, "ossuary". Another technical term that appears in the 9th/10th-century texts of Zoroastrian tradition (the so-called "Pahlavi books") is dakhmag, for any place for the dead.Contents1Rationale2History3Architectural features4In current times4.1In Iran4.2In India5See also6References7Further readingRationale[edit]Zoroastrian tradition considers human cadavers and animal corpses (in addition to cut hair and nail parings) to be nasu, unclean, i.e. potential pollutants.[1][2][3] Specifically, the corpse demon (Avestan: nasu.daeva) was believed to rush into the body and contaminate everything it came into contact with,[3][4] hence the Vīdēvdād (an ecclesiastical code "given against the demons") has rules for disposing of the dead as safely as possible.[1] Moreover, the Vīdēvdād requires that graves, and raised tombs as well, must be destroyed.[1]To preclude the pollution of the sacred elements: Earth, Water, and Fire (see Zam and Atar respectively), the bodies of the dead are placed at the top of towers and so exposed to the sun and to scavenging birds and wild dogs.[1][2][3] Thus, "putrefaction with all its concomitant evils... is most effectually prevented."[5]History[edit]Main articles: Ancient Persia and Zoroastrians in IranZoroastrian ritual exposure of the dead is first known of from the writings of the Ancient Greek historian Herodotus (mid-5th century BCE), who observed the custom amongst Iranian expatriates in Asia Minor.[2] In Herodotus' account (Histories i.140), the Zoroastrian funerary rites are said to have been "secret", but were first performed after the body had been dragged around by a bird or dog. The corpse was then embalmed with wax and laid in a trench.[6]:204While the discovery of ossuaries in both Eastern and Western Iran dating to the 5th and 4th centuries BCE indicates that bones were isolated, that this separation occurred through ritual exposure cannot be assumed: burial mounds,[7]where the bodies were wrapped in wax, have also been discovered. The tombs of the Achaemenid Emperors at Naqsh-e Rustam and Pasargadae likewise suggest non-exposure, at least until the bones could be collected. According to legend (incorporated by Ferdowsi into his Shahnameh), Zoroaster himself is interred in a tomb at Balkh (present-day Afghanistan).Writing on the culture of the Persians, Herodotus reports on the Persian burial customs performed by the Magi, which are kept secret. However, he writes that he knows they expose the body of male dead to dogs and birds of prey, then they cover the corpse in wax, and then it is buried.[8] The Achaemenid custom is recorded for the dead in the regions of Bactria, Sogdia, and Hyrcania, but not in Western Iran.[9]The Byzantine historian Agathias has described the Zoroastrian burial of the Sasanian general Mihr-Mihroe: "the attendants of Mermeroes took up his body and removed it to a place outside the city and laid it there as it was, alone and uncovered according to their traditional custom, as refuse for dogs and horrible carrion".[9]Towers are a much later invention and are first documented in the early 9th century CE.[10]:156–162 The funerary ritual customs surrounding that practice appear to date to the Sassanid Era (3rd–7th CE). They are known in detail from the supplement to the Shayest ne Shayest, the two Rivayat collections, and the two Saddars.Architectural features[edit]The central pit of the (now-defunct) tower of silence at Yazd, Iran.The modern-day towers, which are fairly uniform in their construction, have an almost flat roof, with the perimeter being slightly higher than the centre. The roof is divided into three concentric rings: the bodies of men are arranged around the outer ring, women in the second ring, and children in the innermost ring. Once the bones have been bleached by the sun and wind, which can take as long as a year, they are collected in an ossuary pit at the centre of the tower, where–assisted by lime–they gradually disintegrate, and the remaining material–along with run-off rainwater–runs through multiple coal and sand filters before being eventually washed out to sea. The ritual precinct may be entered only by a special class of pallbearers, called nusessalars, a contraction of nasa.salar, caretaker (-salar) of potential pollutants (nasa-).In current times[edit]In Iran[edit]Tower of Silence near Yazd, Iran. The building is no longer in use.An early 20th century photograph of an Iranian tower of silence.In the Iranian Zoroastrian tradition, the towers were built atop hills or low mountains in desert locations distant from population centers. In the early twentieth century, the Iranian Zoroastrians gradually discontinued their use and began to favour burial or cremation.The decision to change the system was accelerated by three considerations: the first problem arose with the establishment of the Dar ul-Funun medical school. Since Islam considers unnecessary dissection of corpses as a form of mutilation, thus forbidding it, there were no corpses for study available through official channels. The towers were repeatedly broken into, much to the dismay of the Zoroastrian community. Secondly, while the towers had been built away from population centers, the growth of the towns led to the towers now being within city limits. Finally, many of the Zoroastrians found the system outdated. Following long negotiations between the anjuman societies of Yazd, Kerman, and Tehran, the latter gained a majority and established a cemetery some 10 km from Tehran at Ghassr-e Firouzeh (Firouzeh's Palace). The graves were lined with rocks and plastered with cement to prevent direct contact with the earth. In Yazd and Kerman, in addition to cemeteries, orthodox Zoroastrians continued to maintain a tower until the 1970s when ritual exposure was prohibited by law.

Price: 10 USD

Location: Los Angeles, California

End Time: 2024-09-14T01:32:20.000Z

Shipping Cost: 4.5 USD