[HN Gopher] 1,700-year-old Roman sarcophagus is unearthed in Bud...
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1,700-year-old Roman sarcophagus is unearthed in Budapest
Author : gmays
Score : 142 points
Date : 2025-11-24 22:17 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| rolph wrote:
| "Excavators also removed a layer of mud roughly 4 centimeters
| (1.5 inches) thick from inside the coffin that Fenyes hopes could
| contain more treasures."
|
| i strongly suspect this is not "mud" but the dried precipitate of
| liquified soft tissue, [coffin liquor] and condensation.
| mptest wrote:
| 'Coffin liquor' may be the most disgusting pair of words I've
| ever read, and I've been on the internet a while. Wow.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I was getting the exact same thing. I will be using the term
| in conversation now though.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Sounds like a cocktail to me. Somewhat like a black russian
| but browner in colour.
| ronjakoi wrote:
| Cool band name, too.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Haha I told my good friend (we played together in a black
| metal band 100 years ago) that we might want to try again
| with this name.
| Semaphor wrote:
| There's a grindcore album by that name. Which I'll now
| have to check out ;)
|
| https://napalmted.bandcamp.com/album/coffin-liquor
| speed_spread wrote:
| Vampires playing black metal during the roaring 20s must
| have been wild
| herodoturtle wrote:
| > Cool band name, too.
|
| Coffin Liquor. It's to die for.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Brown is right. "Mummy brown" is a pigment made from
| ground up mummy.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| Similar to "dumpster piss". hehe.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I'm imagining vampires obsessing over terroir...
| dv_dt wrote:
| Try these three words: Victorians eating mummies
| wunderlust wrote:
| "dried precipitate of liquified soft tissue...and
| condensation". Yeah - mud.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Once all the bacteria have done their thing what's left? At
| this point thousands of years later it probably is solidly
| within the mud spectrum and closer to the sand end then say
| lakebottom or swamp mud.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I wish someone would do the math, it feels like a human body
| wouldn't leave that much remains after degrading. I remember
| learning in the cemetery tour at New Orleans that those above
| ground tombs are family tombs and that they contain generations
| of people. The top shelf is where the body goes and it stays
| for one year and degrades before it is opened again and scraped
| into the bottom layer where multiple generations dwell forever
| together.
|
| https://historyinstone.blogspot.com/2019/07/above-ground-bur...
| nixass wrote:
| > In the early days of New Orleans, the pieces of the casket
| were removed and burned, while the remains were pushed to the
| back of the tomb, falling into an underground chamber called
| a caveau (This is where the phrase, "I wouldn't touch him
| with a ten-foot pole comes from... the pole being the device
| used to push remains to the back of the tomb).
|
| TIL
| lostlogin wrote:
| I've always heard the phase a little different, "I wouldn't
| touch that with a ten foot barge pole." And when I search
| that the story matches yours.
| rolph wrote:
| sarcophagus looks to be 2 feet by 7 feet based on scale of
| objects in the image.
|
| is 1.75 cubic feet of solid material reasonable?
|
| the image displays distinct relief cracks of a drying wet
| slurry, the dark staining inside the coffin suggests high
| fluid mark was maybe 4inches, it may have knocked an urn
| over, before recedeing, and evaporating.
|
| while not up on the finer points of such burial practice, it
| doesnt seem unreasonable that a consideral amount of flowers
| and other plant materials may be involved, there should be
| considerable pollen present, potassium and sodium salts of
| the decedent, adipocere, and perhaps diatoms dependent on the
| nature of the soil, and source of water percolating into the
| sarcophagus.
|
| i believe considering it to be just mud, would be to
| overlook, a volume of pertinant discovery.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Sounds like dirt to me.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| I was reading the article looking for mentions of some analysis
| that this might allow. Perhaps all that archaeology does with
| this material is to sift it for objects.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Step 1: Find it.
|
| Step 2: Archive it. (Dig and catalogue)
|
| Step 3: Analyze it.
|
| We often learn new things from fossils that have been shelved
| for decades, but not yet researched, so I assume analysis is
| still in the pipeline.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| Where did the mud inside come from if it was still sealed?
| rolph wrote:
| limestone is porous and will allow water to eventually seep
| through.
|
| a condensation cycle will occur, and drip percolate the soft
| tissue and adipocere into a slurry [coffin liquor] that will
| settle to the bottom of the sarcophagus.
| xenospn wrote:
| I honestly cannot believe that I have been listening to Death
| Metal my entire life, and no one has ever used the term
| "coffin liquor" in a song.
| Isamu wrote:
| I think "coffin liquor" would be a great name for an
| absinthe.
| ajxs wrote:
| For what it's worth, Morpheus Descends had a song called
| 'Submerged in Adipocere', which is a similar kind of thing.
| user432678 wrote:
| Just wanted to say hello to my fellow metalheads. And
| thanks for the song recommendation!
| jojobas wrote:
| That's more Necrophagist kinda territory.
| Aloisius wrote:
| There's something about how this article was written that reads
| like grave robbing, especially the bit about them hoping to
| discover "more treasures."
| carefulfungi wrote:
| Yes. "Unlooted and unopened"... until today.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| It sells newspapers unfortunately. For the longest time
| newspapers (and by extension much of the general public) equat
| archaeology with treasure hunting.
|
| I don't know the circumstances of this dig, but it may have
| been a rescue dig ahead of eg massive concrete foundations
| going in. In many countries this is what drives (and funds)
| fieldwork.
| animal531 wrote:
| There's a bit done by a comedian where they ask what the
| differences are between grave robbers and archaeologists, but
| basically it boils down to a question of time.
| vintermann wrote:
| If historical grave robbers left detailed descriptions of
| what they'd found and where they moved it to, I wouldn't mind
| much.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Those descriptions themselves would be a major
| archaeological find if they were preserved at all. But
| chances are that those detailed descriptions would be lost
| even if the original artifacts would have still been
| preserved had they not been looted.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| A key fossil, journal entry, or bit of clothing that would
| help explain "X" is going to stay mute if sold on the black
| market and kept on someone's shelf. _Maybe_ we 'll get lucky
| and learn about it someday from the heirs - but probably not.
| rester324 wrote:
| While the article does not mention it, chances are that the
| sarcophagus was found during doing the soilwork for modern
| construction. In which case the construction company is obliged
| to report that to the ministry in charge and then the
| excavation can be done with proper care. If there was not a law
| for that we wouldn't talk about grave robbing but grave
| destroying instead.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| What's the difference between archeology and grave robbing.
| Just time.
| PetriCasserole wrote:
| Taking all the tokens people gave the deceased for their
| afterlife journey sounds like highway robbery.
| tedggh wrote:
| We are much closer in time to Marco Polo than Marco Polo was to
| this girl.
| codeflo wrote:
| Obviously?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Untouched by looters and sealed for centuries,
|
| Until today. Open a grave one day and you are a grave robber.
| Open it on some other day and you are a scientist. I think the
| people who sealed the grave wouldn't see much of a difference.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| And open a grave a third day, and you're just an ordinary grave
| digger, reusing the cemetery land.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Is that Yorick?
| dav_Oz wrote:
| What would the people who sealed the grave do when they
| accidentally unearthed a sophisticated burial site from the
| middle bronze age? Leave it alone? Maybe. I'm not sure, humans
| are curious.
|
| Well the effort and care put into the grave made us - 2000
| years later in cyberspace - in a sense remember the person. Who
| was this young woman? They even gave us hints/rewards. Made us
| curious.
|
| So maybe they prepared her for an afterlife ... of continued
| memory and presence among the living, which they with their
| technological limitations succeeded in, we are talking about
| her, now.
| nubg wrote:
| Goddamn the website is atrocious to use on a phone, let me pinch
| to zoom in on the photos!
|
| Good post though.
| gverrilla wrote:
| What an aggressive website: at the same time, there's 2 different
| popups, a display ad and a video ad playing without being
| activated. Doesn't AP make enough money selling news to news
| organizations? Disgusting.
| RobKohr wrote:
| Underneath all of that mud there might be treasures.
|
| Adblocking is the brush you need
| paxys wrote:
| uBlock Origin, my friend
| Joker_vD wrote:
| What a strange way to date it. "The Roman sarcophagus from the
| III century CE is unearthed in Budapest". Okay? The Roman Empire
| did span that far in that time period, and IIRC that time period
| is already quite well represented archaeologically speaking.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| >III century CE
|
| IV century CE
| cozyman wrote:
| AD*
| pelasaco wrote:
| The famous last words: "Let's open this Sarcophagus and see what
| we find inside..."
| albert_e wrote:
| > "The peculiarity of the finding is that it was a hermetically
| sealed sarcophagus. It was not disturbed previously, so it was
| intact," said Gabriella Fenyes, the excavation's lead
| archaeologist.
|
| If this is the case -- dont scientists have interest in analyzing
| the air contents inside this sealed box before it is fully opened
| -- maybe by inserting a narrow tube? Might that not teach us
| something that may help us preserve future archaeological finds
| better? Maybe we are irreversibly destroying some of the evidence
| inside it by casually opening them? (I am sure they are not
| intentionally careless or destroying it -- but just wondering if
| future scince might make the current scientific process look
| clunky and ill-advised)
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's made of limestone, which is quite porous. Should be plenty
| of air exchange over the last 1700 years.
|
| (And they may have done so before opening. It probably wouldn't
| be mentioned in an article like this.)
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Then it wasn't hermetically sealed, as the author claims.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| If nothing else, a time capsule of bacteria present...
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Where does it say that they didn't?
| rolph wrote:
| there is an urn inside, that seems unbroken, there may be a
| sample in there.
| 0x70dd wrote:
| A Roman sarcophagus was found on a beach in Bulgaria last year
| [1]. It was used as a bar and had holes drilled for LED lighting.
|
| [1] https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/08/12/beach-bar-
| sarc...
| jamonserrano wrote:
| Video (in Hungarian) about the excavation and the opening of the
| sarcophagus. They remove the lid at 8:30.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LknkrGnCTG8
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(page generated 2025-11-26 23:01 UTC)