The Salt Men of Iran are ancient corpses found in the Chehrabad Salt Mine in Iran mummified by the extreme conditions. Hair, flesh and bone are all preserved, and even internal organs such as stomachs and colons have been found intact, with one sporting a long beard, iron knives and a single gold earring. One of the men lived around 1700 years ago while another is 2000 years old and was 15 or 16 years old at the time of death.
Classical images of satyrs are indeed similar looking, with similar hair and beards, snub noses and protruding jaws. “I think it’s very likely that an ancient discovery of a similarly preserved ‘salt man’ in northwestern Iran is the basis for St. Jerome’s account of the ‘satyr’ preserved in salt and examined by the Emperor Constantine and numerous other curious visitors in Antioch,” Mayor writes.
While four salt men have been transferred to the Zanjan Archaeology Museum and one to the National Museum of Iran in Tehran (all can be seen by the public), the final salt man remains in-situ, half stuck in a mountain of salt. As of 2008, Iran’s Ministry of Industries and Mines canceled the mining permit for the Chehrabad Salt Mine and declared the site an archeological research center so more work could be done to look for and preserve other salt men.
Credit : Atlas Obscura
Picture Credit : Google
