Scaphism, a horrible torture method allegedly used in Persia

Scaphism, a horrible torture method allegedly used in Persia

History is not short on horrible tortures. I listened to a lengthy podcast about it once. The guy focused on fire since according to him, it was one of the most common of the horrible ways to kill people.

The interesting (rather than horrifying) part about it though was he said that most cultures that used torture. Like fire. Most of the time (not all of the time) there was good evidence of leniency'.  You might be dead before being burned for instance.

It was enough that the public thought you had been tortured to death when they saw your body. Of course l could be misremembering and history was a

mighty long time and took place in a bunch of different places.

Breaking on the wheel was almost exclusively practiced in the Holy Roman Empire (roughly the same territory as modern Germany) and the kingdom of the Franks (modern France). Britain had plenty of other horrible things to do to you

instead - boiling for poisoners, burying alive for sodomy and bestiality, pitchcapping for, uh, being Irish. And of course plenty of other less glamorous mutilations which don't have a specific name.

A little more details about this torture method, from this.website.

"It's important to note that no tangible proof of scaphism exists. But also, after more than two millennia, any human remains or evidence of the torture would have been long destroyed. As it stands, the first historical mention of scaphism was in the works of Greek-Roman philosopher Plutarch. Plutarch himself had seen such an execution after a soldier named Mithridates killed Cyrus the Younger, the brother of King Artaxerxes Il.

While Mithridates had

stopped Cyrus from overthrowing the king and Artaxerxes was grateful, Artaxerxes demanded he keep this a secret and tell others it was he who had slain Cyrus." "Plutarch wrote that the king "decreed that Mithridates

should be put to death in boats; which execution is after the following manner: Taking two boats framed exactly to fit and answer each other, they lie down in one of them the

malefactor that suffers, upon his back."

Then, covering it with the other, and so setting them together that the head, hands, and feet of him are left outside, and the rest of his body lies shut up within, they offer him food, and if he refuse to eat, they force him to do it by pricking his eyes; then, after he has eaten, they drench him with a mixture of milk and honey." Plutarch detailed how this mixture was also poured on the victim's face which blistered in the sun as the days-long torture continued. Initially, only flies would be drawn to the victim.

As the prisoner defecated in the enclosed boats and vomited, however, vermin emerged to crawl inside their orifices."When the man is manifestly

dead, the uppermost boat being taken off, they find his flesh devoured, and swarms of such noisome creatures

preying upon and, as it were, growing to his inwards, wrote Plutarch. "In this way Mithridates, after sufferi

seventeen davs. at last expired."

"Joannes Zonaras further detailed the horrors of scaphism in the 12th century (...) Zonaras also explained that the boats were firmly nailed together to guarantee there was no escape. "Next they pour a mixture of milk and honey into the wretched man's mouth, till he is filled to the point of nausea, smearing his face, feet, and arms with the same mixture, and so leave him exposed to the sun" he wrote." This is repeated every day, the effect being that flies, wasps, and bees, attracted by the sweetness, settle on his face and... torment and sting the wretched man.

Moreover his belly, distended as it is with milk and honey, throws off liquid excrement, and these putrefying breed swarms of worms, intestinal and of all sorts."While it seemingly couldn't get worse, executioners would allegedly pour additional heaps of milk and honey onto the prisoner's soft tissues - namely, their genitals and anuses. Small insects Would then flock to these areas to feed, and worse,

infect the wounds with bacteria. Those infected wounds would invariably begin to leak pus and spur the arrival of maggots that would also breed inside their body while

delivering even more diseases. It was at this point that vermin such as rats would arrive to gnaw on the dying

victim and force their way inside."

Many scholars have since suggested that the practice was entirely fabricated. After all, the first historical

mention of this ghastly act emerged centuries after Mithridates' supposed execution. Furthermore, that account just so happened to be witnessed by a

philosopher who traded in engaging prose.

Despite its reputation as a medieval

instrument of torture, there is no

evidence of the existence of iron

maidens before the early 19th century. There are, however, ancient reports of

the Spartan tyrant Nabis using a similar device around 200 B.C. for extortion and murder. The Abbasid vizier Ibn al-Zayyat is said to have created a 'wooden.Oven-like chest that had iron spikes" for torture, which would ironically be used during his own imprisonment and execution in 847.

Wolfgang Schilds, a professor of criminal law, criminal law history, and philosophy of law at the Bielefeld University, has argued that putative iron maidens were pieced together from artifacts found in museums to create spectacular objects intended for (commercial) exhibition. Several 19th-century iron maidens are on display in museums around the world, including the San Diego Museum of Man, the Meiji University Museum,

 and several torture museums in Europe. Possible inspirations.The 19th-century iron maidens may have been constructed as probable misinterpretation of a medieval Schandmantel, which was made of wood and metal but without spikes. Inspiration for the iron maiden may also have come from the Carthaginian execution of Marcus Atilius Regulus as recorded in Tertullian's "To the Martyrs" (Chapter 4) and Augustine of

Hippos The City of God (1.15), in which the Carthaginians "shut him into a tight wooden box, where he was forced to stand, spiked with the sharpest nails on all sides so that he could not lean in any direction without being pierced" or from Polybius' account of Nabis of Sparta's deadly statue of his wife, the Iron Apega (earliest form of the device).

Other sites and paper basically reiterate this. So the current theory is that a handful of similar devices had been created and used, but their use was extremely limited, and nothing like the traditional Iron Maiden coffin we see in most medieval depictions.

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