After the devastating earthquake in Bam, expert teams were sent to Bam Citadel to investigate the extent of the damage. During these assessments, archaeologists came across an amazing cemetery not on the ground, but among the fences and walls of Bam Citadel; The ancient cemetery seems to have been used only for children.

This strange discovery created a lot of ambiguity in the Iranian archeological community and even dragged the feet of foreign explorers; But what was the matter? Why were the bodies buried in the walls of the citadel? Why were only children buried in the walls? And Why did no one ever follow the case and the flow of the children’s cemetery was completely silenced?

Terrible discovery

In the days when the victims of the Bam earthquake were still hot, news was heard that shook everyone again. This time there was an ancient discovery ; A discovery that revealed a lesser-known part of the dark past of Bam’s historic citadel. The horrific earthquake of 1382 buried not only thousands of people under rubble; It also raises people from their graves. These new risers carried the mystery of apprehension; But it was as if no one wanted to listen to their secret!

Narges Ahmadi was the  first archaeologist to hit children’s bones on the rubble of the Bam citadel wall . He and his colleagues were among the team members who went to Bam Citadel to investigate the extent of the damage. It was clear from the beginning that these bones did not belong to animals; Rather, they belong to man.

Subsequent investigations revealed that these were the remains of children buried in the walls during unknown periods. Astonished by the discovery, archaeologists later discovered other bone fragments at the top of the wall, which also belonged to young children.

^{Aerial view of Bam Citadel}

Archaeologists, who were still documenting and sampling the finds, said all the skeletons belonged to children between the ages of one and five. At the beginning of announcing this news, the press and output pages of news agencies and news websites were filled with various headlines such as “riddle knot in the hands of mummies”, “ambiguity about the discovery of a body in Bam citadel”, “discovery of children’s mummy in the fences of Bam citadel” and … شد. However, for reasons unknown, no further news or reports of this discovery were ever published.

The news boycott sparked bizarre rumors. Some media outlets and news agencies published contradictory reports, citing experts and officials . Some media outlets reported the discovery of new bodies in Bam Citadel to add to the crime scene, while others went so far as to claim that the bodies of infants were found with plastic cords and hospital sheets.

Meanwhile, a government news agency claimed to have obtained images showing children being buried in the citadel after the Bam earthquake. Some speculate that the bodies were one to six years old; But very soon, Kerman cultural heritage officials took action and vehemently denied all the news. Strange photos were also published in cyberspace, which at first glance, turned out to be fake. The news was apparently due to a misunderstanding on one of the news websites.

A group of people and officials in Bam, who were deeply affected by the news, called for legal action and legal action. Finally, one of the news agencies reported that the bodies may have belonged to children who were left under rubble during the earthquake and were buried here. However, it would not have been possible to substantiate this speculation without conclusive evidence.

What was the story?

Archaeologists first found a handful of bones within the citadel walls; However, with the subsequent follow-up, the number of bodies reached 12 and finally 68 children. The way children were buried in the ruins of the citadel caused many of them to be completely mummified and remain healthy. Most of these burials were performed on the outer fences of Bam Citadel, especially on the western and eastern sides.

These children were buried in the walls of the citadel in three ways, dating back to at least a few hundred years ago:

• In the first type, the younger children were completely embedded in the walls, and in fact, it was the case that the wall bricks were used instead of the coffin.

• In the second type, part of the clay was removed and children were placed on top of it.

• And In the third type, the bodies were placed in pits after the walls were demolished. The third type of burial probably dates back to the period when the Bam citadel was no longer inhabited; Because later burials were done at the foot of the walls instead of on the wall.

The historical citadel of Bam is an ancient building which is also called as the largest brick structure in the world. This huge building with an area of ​​more than 180,000 square meters, was built in the fifth century BC. The 2,500-year-old citadel of Bam has been used since ancient times until the middle of the thirteenth century. Despite the fortifications and high walls, the citadel was such that when the entrance gate was closed, no human or animal could enter it.

The inhabitants of the citadel, despite having access to water wells, gardens, pastures and domestic animals, were able to make a living without leaving the citadel for a long time. This had caused the Bam Citadel to protect its inhabitants well at different times in history.

^{View of Bam Citadel in the movie “Tatar Desert (1976)” directed by Valerio Zorlini}

Despite the numerous facilities provided in the old city of Bam, the cemeteries were outside the citadel; For this reason, at the beginning of the discovery of the bodies of children, one of the first speculations was that these bodies may belong to the siege of the citadel by Agham Mohammad Khan Qajar. During this long siege, many people in the city, especially the young and the old, lost their lives due to famine and disease, and the people had no choice but to bury the bodies inside the citadel. It was assumed that two years after the earthquake experts published a paper on “Argnamh”, Journal Bam raised .

The story took on even more terrifying dimensions. In the same days, workers digging in the Hosseiniyah area discovered three adult skulls ; But as excavations continued, no bodies were found, and in more frightening specimens, at least in a few cases, archaeologists were suspected of burying children alive.

 In fact, in at least two cases it was as if the children were alive at the time of burial; Because one of the children was holding the ground with his hand and the other child was even able to tear his shoe.

As difficult as it is to imagine this terrifying scene; But from ancient times until the last century, due to little knowledge about some diseases, many were buried by accident . The most famous example is Alexander the Macedonian burial Bhqydhy some researchers, after catching a rare autoimmune disease to imagine the past, live in the grave has been laid .

Xenon (Byzantine emperor) and Danes Scotus (Scottish philosopher) are other celebrities who were buried alive. The number of random burials was so high that bells were placed on coffins so that anyone who was buried alive could be notified. Therefore, it is possible that these two children were unknowingly buried alive.

Not only was the knot of the story untied; But new ambiguities were added

Various speculations have been made about the age of these burials. In one case, some believed that the burials date back to the period after the restoration of the Bam citadel fence, which covers the period after the Afghan invasion (late Safavid period) to the Qajar period.

At this time, there were fewer clashes in Bam citadel. At the time of the discovery, cultural heritage experts predicted that the burials were entirely Islamic. According to these experts, the bodies of children related to the period after the siege of Bam Citadel may have been handed over by Agham Mohammad Khan Qajar; The period when people were forced to bury their dead in fences. However, this was not the case and both assumptions were rejected.

On some of the shrouds, there are patterns that are completely contrary to Islamic law. The assumption of an emergency burial was soon rejected. In 2008, a team of five archaeologists examined the mummies of 26 children. However, the results of this group were never published in the media until not only the knot of the story was untied; But new ambiguities were  added .

^{A painting depicting the sacrifice of children in the presence of Moloch, a Phoenician god}

Preliminary studies by these researchers completely refuted the theory of emergency burial; Because there was no news of a hasty burial; Rather, the bodies of the children were buried quite regularly. Experts date some of these burials to the Safavid period and some to more than 2,000 years ago.

Most of these children were about six months old, and all of them were buried in a wrapped cloth in different directions and places of the citadel fences; But religious experiments revealed a strange point: All children were boys.

Due to the fact that exposure to hot weather causes natural mummies to disintegrate, all the bodies were put back in the fences after studies and sampling, and became thatched.

Later the results of genetic tests showed that most of the children are of Indian and European descent; But in the meantime, for some unknown reason, all the investigations came to a standstill, and after that, no other report or news about the Bam Citadel Children’s Cemetery was published.

At the same time, news from the Japanese archaeologists had been published after the discovery of the cemetery’s officially official cultural heritage of the area had requested.

The request of the Japanese delegation of archaeologists was accepted and a group of Japanese explorers immediately arrived in Bam and began an independent investigation; But at the time of writing, no information has been obtained from Japanese archaeologists.

Japan, along with Italy, is one of the largest sponsors of the Bam Citadel restoration project. A plan that is still ongoing.

Some burials date back to the Safavid period and some more than two thousand years

However, why the news of the children’s cemetery was kept silent is another mystery. Mary Naimi archeology that discovered the bodies of his closely watched and they had been shot, the silence of the authorities in this regard due to “a kind of self-consciousness” and that as was  as if everyone had decided not to say anything.

Perhaps because of the proximity of the story of this discovery to the horrific earthquake in Bam, it was decided to keep the news silent for at least a while so as not to further weaken the morale of the bereaved people of Bam. This assumption is somewhat plausible; But why did no one ever follow this discovery after that?

Did those who wanted to pursue the matter, despite obstacles, sensitivities, audits and confusions among the labyrinths of the bureaucracy, give it to the rivals, or has the case of this investigation been inadvertently forgotten? These are obvious questions that only the relevant authorities  can answer.

^{The painting “Sacrifice of Isaac” by Caravaggio, the great Italian Baroque painter}

However, at least as far as we know, such burials have never been seen in any other archeological site in the world. Therefore, allocating research funding for such a unique topic could not be a difficult task. In fact, to this day, no bodies have been buried inside the walls in any other historical site.

It is true that many bodies were buried in the Great Wall of China; But none of the burials had a specific order or rule; Rather, many of these were the bodies of the unfortunate workers who lost their lives while building the Great Wall of China and later turned themselves into building materials .

The skull tower of the Aztecs was more like a large niche and had a purely ritual aspect and in many cases the heads of prisoners of war were placed in the middle after being sacrificed.

In this respect, the cemetery standing in the citadel of Bam is completely unique, at least in terms of current archaeological records, and can reveal new leaves from lesser-known periods of ancient Iran.

The date of the burials is another conundrum for which we have no answer at the moment, as no additional testing and analysis has ever been performed or the results have not been announced. Aside from the discussion of the antiquity of the mummies, why did the archaeologists not find the bodies of adults in this area? Why were none of the children girls? At a time when children were dying for various reasons, were they officially buried within the walls? ‌ If so, why only boys were buried within the walls? Were there any homicides or were boys sacrificed in the past?

Sacrificing children or drawing a homicide?

Of course, no crime is more heinous than child murder ,  and child abuse hurts even the most ruthless and cruel people; But in ancient times, until a few centuries ago, infanticide was common and widely accepted in various societies. Pedophilia was often carried out with the aim of controlling the population or killing weak or disabled children and saving resources.

In some cultures, unwanted children were left to die; But in some communities, babies were also killed. Inserting a needle into a mortar and suffocating it was a common method of killing exposed infants, which has been used to this day.

In the Stone Age cultures, child murder was very common; It is estimated that between 15% and 50% of children were killed during the Neolithic and Middle Ages. After that, in ancient times, except among the ancient Egyptians and Jews, child murder continued to be practiced in various societies, including the Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Chinese, Japanese, and others.

Child murder was completely banned in Europe and the Middle East in the first millennium.

Christianity and Islam were among the religions that outlawed child murder.

Constantine the Great and Valentinian I in the fourth century banned child murder throughout the Roman Empire. With the rise of Islam in the seventh century AD, child murder was banned throughout the Arabian Peninsula and later in other parts of the Islamic world.

During the Ming Dynasty between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, genocide was common in China and Mongolia. Although child murder is banned in most countries of the world, it still exists in various forms in underdeveloped countries.

While pedophilia has taken many forms in the past, one of the most common methods has been sacrifice . Carthage was very infamous in ancient times for sacrificing children; But in no historical period has child murder been as intense as in pre-Columbian American civilizations.

^{A scene of child sacrifice among the people of the Chimo civilization, a civilization that previously ruled the vast territory, including present-day Peru.}

Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of 140 children in northern Peru who were allegedly killed . Another finding found the skeletons of 42 children in Mexico, most of whom had been sacrificed to Talaluk, the Aztec god of rain.

In these child sacrifice rituals, most of the victims were healthy and beautiful boys about 6 years old. The skeletons of these children often show clear signs of various abscesses or bone infections; Problems that made innocent victims cry for a long time.

Talaluk, the mighty god of the Aztecs, needed the tears of children to wet the earth; For this reason, if the children did not cry enough, the priests would pull their fingernails to cry and wet the ground with their tears.

The Aztecs believed that if they could not please Talaluk, he would not rain and would leave their lands dry and barren, eventually leading to famine.

The Incas also sacrificed children in special ceremonies. One of the famous archeological discoveries related to these victims the mummy known as “Khvanya” or “lady Mpatv” relates that in 1995 in the highlands of northern Peru was discovered . Juanita was probably killed by a stick or any other sharp point on her skull. Another method of sacrificing children was to drink poison or leave them in the harsh conditions of the cold and low altitudes of the mountains, in this last example the victims lost consciousness and eventually died of frostbite.

It is as if everyone has decided not to say anything

Sacrifice of infants was also common among the Maya. The Maya considered infants to be ideal gifts to the gods because of their strong connection to the spirit world. It is also believed that in Mayan culture, parents themselves offered their children to be sacrificed to temple priests.

While it was difficult to care for the children, the parents often happily took their children to the high priests for sacrifice; Because they believed that their lives would continue in the spirit world.

Sacrificing infants and children at certain times was preferred; Including in critical times such as famine and drought. There is ample evidence of child sacrifice around the world; Including children buried in pottery or ceramics; Like the remains of children discovered in the burnt city of Sistan.

There are many motifs of child sacrifice on pottery and inscriptions; But although child sacrifice has been practiced in different parts of the world at different times, there is little evidence of human sacrifice in Iran, whether children or adults.

^{An excerpt from Mendoza’s diary, one of the most authentic surviving documents from Aztec culture depicting human sacrifice}

Human sacrifice in ancient Iran is one of the most controversial issues. Herodotus tells very strange stories about the sacrifice of man by the Scythians. The Scythians were a nomadic Iranian tribe that ruled large areas of Central Asia in pre-Achaemenid times.

The famous Greek historian states in his report that when one of the kings of Scythia passed away, his savage servants, from cooks, servants, dignitaries and attendants to even horses and many of his tools, were buried with him. Moreover, in the first year of the king’s death, fifty of his best servants and servants were strangled, and after being mummified, they were mounted on fifty mummified horses and buried around the king’s tomb. According to Herodotus, the Scythians did the same with the captives.

Unlike adult sacrifice, child sacrifice is hardly acceptable in ancient Iran; In particular, it seems far-fetched to sacrifice human beings in any way in the religion of Mazdisna, where the Prophet completely forbade violence against animals; But if such a religion exists in Iran, it must have survived from religions older than Zoroastrianism or from neighboring cultures such as Mesopotamia.

In the chronicles of human sacrifice in ancient Iran, we come across only one example that goes back to the story of Xerxes’ expedition to Greece and Asia Minor, and Herodotus describes it in his seventh book. The Greek historian writes about this:

Xerxes’ troops crossed the bridge at the famous point of the road. It is the land of the Adren tribe, and when it turned out that the place was also called Nehrah, neither the native boys nor the nine girls were buried alive for a vow. This is the custom of the Persians, and I have heard that Amsteris, the wife of Xerxes, did the same thing in his old age, sacrificing fourteen sons of Persian nobles as charity and longing for his life.

The point that makes us doubt Herodotus ‘account is that it is well known from historical records that Darius the Great (Xerxes’ father), as a precondition for alliance with Hamilcar, the king of Carthage, asked him to stop the practice of human sacrifice in his lands. Therefore, his son could not have followed a custom against his father, and even if such an innovation had been introduced in his time, there must have been other documents about him.

Since Herodotus himself never claimed to be an eyewitness, and all of his narrations are based on second-hand sources and oral narrations, the story may or may not have been more or less intrusive.

We also have archeological discoveries in the burnt city.

Archaeological evidence from the burnt city  suggests  that sacrifices were common in the ancient city. The discovery of mass graves in the city’s diverse cemetery is evidence of this claim. In one specimen, six skeletons were placed in a circle in a circular shape.

However, if we accept these very controversial cases and human sacrifice has been common in Iran for some time, with the spread of Zoroastrianism and the subsequent arrival of Islam in Iran, fewer examples remain.

In Iran, different ethnic groups with different religions and religions have always lived together.

The old city of Bam is no exception to this rule. Perhaps a group of people sacrificed and buried children in special ceremonies; Rituals performed as a minority were performed in complete secrecy and often in the middle of the night under the light of torches and lanterns.

In this ceremony, as many examples of it existed in ancient cultures until the early twentieth century in Oceania and until recently in Uganda, only certain priests and individuals were present; For this reason, there is no evidence of it, and only archeological discoveries of this kind, which suddenly cause an ancient tradition, of which there is no precedent, to emerge from nowhere and to the astonishment of all historians and researchers.

It is from here that archaeologists find the role of detectives to uncover the secret of an ancient or official crime by putting together clues left from the crime scene.

If the old adage is true that “every secret will be revealed one day”; Therefore, we must wait one day to hear the secret of the children of Bam Citadel Cemetery.