New Delhi: Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered a 2,300-year-old prisons in the northwestern province of modern-day city of Bursa that they say was used for execution during the ancient Bithynia Kingdom.
Archeologist claims so as they found what appears to be a well covered in blood and a torture chamber at the site.
The discovery was made by İbrahim Yılmaz, from the Uludağ University Faculty of Science and Literature History of Art Department.
He was part of an excavation team set up as part of a wider project to reveal the old city walls of the region now known as Bursa, in the northwest of Turkey.
The prisons were found buried beneath the foundations of houses where people were living at the time, but have since been demolished.
These underground prisons also has long corridors that were probably connected to towers where inmates were kept, according to the Ibrahim Yilmaz.
Ibrahim Yilmaz. Found these prisons during the last part of an excavation project implemented by Bursa Municipality to restore the 3,400-metre-long Bursa city walls.
Archaeologists believe the executions during Bithynia Kingdom were carried by hangmen who were deaf and mute.
Yılmaz told the Hurriyet Daily News that “Hangmen, who were deaf and mute, cut off the heads of prisoners here in the bloody well. While the head of the body was falling into the well, the body part was given to their relatives or left to the stream.”
Yilmiz added that the hangmen were also known to have sold the dead bodies back to the families.
Archaeologists and the Bursa Muncipality plan to turn the dungeons and corridors into an open-air museum.
According to the reports torture tools will also be put on display, and the museum is expected to be ready by 2016.
