1400 graves under the Salonika subway
Worked building a subway line in Salonika, Greece, have unconverted an enormous grave complex with over 1400 graves ranging in date from the 4th c. B.C. to the 4th c. A.D.
The finds range from humble pits and altar tombs of stone to marble sarcophagi, the ministry said.
One in five burial sites were found to contain offerings including Roman-era gold coins from Persia, jewellery made of gold, silver and copper, clay vessels and glass perfume-holders.
It looks like such a jumble. I can’t figure out from the article or the picture if these graves were all found in one spot, or if this is some sort of collection area for sarcophagi. I can’t imagine they’d move them around already, so I’m going to go with the on-site theory.
The subway also passes underneath the Jewish cemetery, incidentally, which was one of the largest in Europe and is thought to have contained 300,000 graves at its peak. Suprisingly huge, neh?
Oi, 1400 graves? And I thought 20 was a lot to excavate!
They do look like a jumble, standing above ground like that. But then, who ever said graves had to be in straight lines?
Seriously, thanks for this news.
It seems weird to have jumbled sarcophagi, though. Burials every which way bespeak haste, but there are plenty of circumstances which might result in a large number of corpses needing to get in the ground fast.
Sarcophagi, on the other hand, are a lot of trouble to make, transport and bury. Plus, they take up a lot less space when they’re arranged in grids.