Whitechapel - Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T18:12:12-07:00

This happened last summer, and the thing is still to be cracked open for fears of damaging its contents. It will be subjected to endoscopy and, if necessary, MRI scans in order to divine it's contents.

A thousand pounds of metal is an enormous amount of wealth in this era. To waste so much of it in a burial is pretty unusual.

There isn't really any precedent for this. The Romans apparently used coffins very rarely and when they did, they were wooden. This anomaly is compounded in strangeness by the sheer bloody size of the thing. An inch thick and 1000 pounds in weight.

So what's in the box? I'm almost hoping for some insane conjecture about the Romans using trial and error to surmise that lead blocks sickness-causing radiation, so they choose that as the material that they'll entomb their mysterious time-travelling astronaut in.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T18:18:21-07:00

Add one more thing to the list of stuff that I'd love to see thorough scans of (another being the chamber they've discovered under one of the Sphinx's feet).

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T18:38:59-07:00

Screw all the scans and stuff, I have a crowbar and willing to travel.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T19:11:23-07:00

Oh man, this thing is going to punch its way out of its slumber hungry for blood.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T20:07:11-07:00

There are some things best left buried.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T20:20:24-07:00

Wasn't Osiris tricked into a sealed in a lead coffin?

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T20:56:54-07:00

There are some things best left buried.

Dammit, this is a Tales From the Crypt waiting to happen.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T21:11:27-07:00

When I was a kid, a movie theatre in the next town had a $1.00 Saturday afternoon horror movie double feature. One of them was a Hammer Films (I think) movie in which the hero accepts delivery of a skeleton from New Guinea. It had been buried way, way deep and was an object of great fear to the natives.

Turns out that the skeleton regenerated its flesh when it got wet.

This scared the hell out of me. And it makes me hope they open that coffin in a nice dry area.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T21:28:20-07:00

The obvious answer is that there is a cat in there. Now: is it alive, or is it dead.

My only other theory is that Romans actually invented some kind of nuclear power, and we're all going to be right fucked once it cracks open.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T22:29:57-07:00

I'm guessing David Blane, Lazarus or a dead Grey.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T22:40:41-07:00

My god, it's going to be full of fucking stars.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T22:43:26-07:00

JFK. A million space bucks on JFK.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T22:58:44-07:00

My favorite line from the article:

"It's hard but satisfying work. How many people can say they uncovered an ancient burial?"

The answer, of course, is a finite number (x) that diminishes by one (-1) each night (n) following the opening of the box...

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T23:18:13-07:00

the bones of teh Bat-man

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-29T23:43:11-07:00

My ~~complete lack of~~ money is on the aforementioned radioactive time travel equipment/astronaut. Who else is making bets?

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T00:02:56-07:00

Crap ancient game show prop, in vein of:

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T00:15:47-07:00

Interesting find... Now I cant wait to read what's inside that coffin! free online games pokies

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T01:44:21-07:00

Zombie Jesus.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T02:12:01-07:00

Ultimate Namor.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T05:11:15-07:00

So what's in the box?

The Vatican's morality.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T05:49:47-07:00

The box would be smaller

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T06:18:57-07:00

I second Ultimate Namor.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T07:30:41-07:00

A shoggoth.

Hey, I can dream, right?

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T07:36:36-07:00

Does anyone have a link to the article? All I could find was THIS story about a LEAD BURRITO BURIAL.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T08:20:01-07:00

@mthemordant - The very first word of the post is linked. I should probably extend it.

EDIT: There, done.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T09:36:47-07:00

From the Burrito Article Mordant posted:
, x-ray and CT scans—the preferred methods of coffin analysis—cannot penetrate the thick lead, leaving researchers pondering other, potentially dangerous ways to examine the remains inside. Since there is apparently a hold in the bottom of the coffin through witch a foot bone can be examined, I'm guessing they'll end up snaking a scope up into the coffin.

edit: N/M. AT the bottom of the article it says that's what they plan on doing next.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T09:41:19-07:00

i know someone who got the plague by opening a lead coffin.
I want to make it my mission in life to open all lead coffins to achieve the same thing. Imagine the possibilities for picking up girls and impressing drunk people

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T10:40:46-07:00

@ RenThing
I'll see your Shoggoth (which would be awesome) and raise you...
THE SPAWN OF CTHULHU!!!
He's coming out with his mouth tentacles waving, drooling for our souls, spreading death with just a glance of his insane yellow eyes...
The pope will address the world saying: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"
... then he'll finish with...
Long Live the God Damn Bat Man

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T11:05:25-07:00

Hoffa.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T12:06:50-07:00

An all powerful immortal alien that was worshipped as a god by the local populace and ruled an ancient kingdom for hundreds of year before being taken down while he was at his weakest and trapped inside the metal coffin. But. 'im just guessing. No real proof.

We are all gonna be disapointed when all they'll find is a mummified body possibly of the royalty variety.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T12:08:17-07:00

It contains lots of smaller lead boxes, gradually leading up to a solitary IOU note.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T12:15:08-07:00

Maybe it's that guy from that fictional reality from Planetary #9.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T12:26:01-07:00

It's a fart.

A thousands of years old fart, and it's been trapped in there, all this time... stewing... It's the culmination of the greatest practical joke in the history of the world!

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T12:28:46-07:00

I'm seconding Hoffa...

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T13:51:25-07:00

BOODOFFSTAGE - Royal types generally prefer the shinier metals. Surely lead coffins are meant for sinister and hard to kill grand vizier types, perhaps an ancient Rasputin?

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T14:12:31-07:00

Surely lead coffins are meant for sinister and hard to kill grand vizier types

I didn't know there was a protocol for this kind of thing.

Still.....I am a dead cat.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-03-30T15:28:57-07:00

They say lead coffins were usually used for adolescents or females of the somewhat important variety. So maybe it's a SHE in there? And lead was worth more back then.

...I'm still betting it's a zombie. Waiting to be freed, to release the zombie apocalypse upon us.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-04-03T10:36:56-07:00

An Etruscan noble catwoman. A thirsty one.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-04-03T12:31:07-07:00

It's actually an ancient automaton in it's transformed non-humanoid dormancy mode. Watch, they're gonna wake it up and it's gonna turn into this;

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-04-08T13:20:14-07:00

feh they keep on describing it as a burrito. maybe it just IS agiant metal burrito. With a foot in it. :D
"Yeh we dont know how that foot got into your lunch, mr.monster, we're sorry..."

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-04-08T13:38:26-07:00

Its Jean Grey - call Matt Fraction

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-04-08T13:42:35-07:00

@3millionyears I just spat cheap cola all over my laptop.

This story makes me wonder what the people of the future will make of the stuff we've buried. That is if they haven't all buggered off into space or fully digitized themselves.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-04-18T17:50:29-07:00

@oddbill

The answer, of course, is a finite number (x) that diminishes by one (-1) each night (n) following the opening of the box...

I get a weird feeling that only a maths or physics graduate would describe something this eldritch in those terms... If not, good knowledge anyway.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-04-18T18:08:05-07:00

Tracy Mills' head.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-06-02T20:13:23-07:00

It's an imperial Roman nuclear toaster. Motherfuckers had to toast bread made from grains grown in soil with hundreds of years of Carthaginian and Etruscan blood soaked up in it. Makes for pretty tough-as-nails wheat.

Either that or we'll find Starbuck and actually get an explanation of what the hell she is.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-06-02T22:00:35-07:00

Carthage didn't lose many of their own on Italian soil. Hannibal liked to let the Celts take the brunt. They got reamed at Zama, though.

Supposing it's a Roman god?

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-06-04T20:28:23-07:00

First thing I thought of, it's like that coffin from The Strain (a vampire novel co-written by Guillero Del Toro).

Somewhere in Rome, there is a giant homeless vampire sleeping in a seedy hotel room.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-06-05T06:48:53-07:00

I can't imagine how insane some immortal being would be, if there actually were an entity in that coffin that had spent a few hundred to a couple of thousand years in a box. Superboy from /Crisis/ would look like a model of emotional maturity.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-06-05T08:11:53-07:00

"There are only a handful of other examples from Italy of lead coffins from this age---the second, third or fourth century A.D."

why didn't they say what they found in those? <:/

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-06-05T21:56:35-07:00

I would presume they found, to their complete lack of surprise, dead people.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-06-06T11:26:50-07:00

-well we know at least there's someone's foot in there, so I'm assuming that it's the rest of the body.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-06-06T15:19:40-07:00

Maybe whatever's in there eating people just left the foot so it wouldn't look like a pig.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-11T15:50:46-07:00

Whatever it is it's got to be more exciting than what's inside that USAF container in the trailer of "Super 8".

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-11T17:07:56-07:00

I'd settle with what's in there being just a few scrolls of books. A lost comedy of Aristophanes, anyone? Maybe it's the reburial of Alexander the Great. We never did find where they moved him.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-12T06:35:53-07:00

I hope it's filled with even more lead

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-12T11:13:30-07:00

Or more, tinier coffins.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-12T13:46:13-07:00

It's coffins all the way down.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-13T22:01:29-07:00

That last post is the sum of all plausible metaphysics.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-14T00:10:08-07:00

This is a coffin of exceptional scientific value beyond archaeology. Lead that clean with 2000+ years to let all the radio-lead decay out makes for the best detector shielding. The Italian physics programs make extensive joint use of Roman & Greek lead ballast for shielding enclosures, with the cooperation of the board of antiquities. This could make a hell of a creepy high purity germanium rig.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-14T23:21:44-07:00

@funranium: that's actually fascinating. Mining the past to build the high-energy physics of tomorrow!

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-15T01:52:33-07:00

Clean metal, particularly virgin lead and iron, is a bit of a cherished commodity post-Manhattan project. One of the solutions to Co-60 waste from activated construction materials was to do mixed smelting with other steel, i.e. "dilution is the solution". As a result, there's a lot of elevated background steel in the world; if you want to build a detector with a very low background count rate, you obviously can't use that steel. This mean reprocessing antiques into new steel. Cuba did brisk trade selling their pre-Revolution GM & Ford land behemoths for this purpose.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-15T05:27:32-07:00

The WWI German ships at the bottom of Scapa Flow are a similar source of uncontaminated steel.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-15T12:47:37-07:00

This is a coffin of exceptional scientific value beyond archaeology. Lead that clean with 2000+ years to let all the radio-lead decay out makes for the best detector shielding. The Italian physics programs make extensive joint use of Roman & Greek lead ballast for shielding enclosures, with the cooperation of the board of antiquities. This could make a hell of a creepy high purity germanium rig.

Why is it so valuable? Is newly mined lead unsuitable?

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-08-17T18:35:30-07:00

Newly mined lead ore is in radioactive equilibrium with the radionuclides of radium/thorium/uranium daughters it is mixed with. Once you smelt and separate down to mostly lead, the daughters start decaying out until it is nearly inert lead. After 2000 years, it's pretty quiet.

Directly making lead this clean is a laborious and, above all, expensive process. As long as the Romans aren't using their ballast anymore, why not?

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-12-18T09:17:54-08:00

I've really got nothing interesting to add other than to say this is pretty damn exciting.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-12-18T10:01:52-08:00

Half-Ton Dead Discussion Thread Unearthed at Whitechapel.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2010-12-18T11:17:45-08:00

Ha Ha Ha

I didnt even notice the dates on the comments.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-15T07:09:36-08:00

Surprised no one ever mentioned grave liquor, the best liquor.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-24T16:18:57-08:00

Would be nice to get an update on this

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-24T16:58:15-08:00

Same here, most of the posts I've found have been current with the one at the start of the thread though, doesn't look like an update has hit the web

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-25T08:50:27-08:00

Because the one's who opened it are on the run with it, trying to keep it from all the criminal/corporate/governments that want to use it for world domination.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-25T08:57:43-08:00

Or were eaten by some horrible, unspeakable evil sealed away inside it.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-25T20:12:10-08:00

http://www.facebook.com/gabii.project would be one place for it.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-25T23:12:26-08:00

Not a fart or Schrödinger's cat: "The coffin contains human remains. These will have to be examined in greater detail at Rome."
http://lapisgabinus.blogspot.com/2010/11/german-tv-coverage-of-lead-sarcophagus.html

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-26T02:48:39-08:00

thread RUINED

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-26T06:00:26-08:00

Damn you, Facts!

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-26T21:37:26-08:00

**hangs head in shame**

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-27T02:32:20-08:00

Och well, thanks for the non-apocalyptic news.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-27T02:34:26-08:00

**flutters eyelashes***

I can't help it. I bring teh facts. :D

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-27T07:49:26-08:00

grumble grumble grumble. If I wanted facts, I'd watch Fox News.
*tries to keep straight face*ROFLMAO

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-27T10:53:25-08:00

To be fair, I saw nothing in that article that really eliminates the possibility of it containing a lost time traveler or hard to kill Grand Vizier.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-27T11:05:42-08:00

Or a fart.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-27T12:53:25-08:00

...or both.

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-27T16:42:57-08:00

It says - in November - that it'll be opened in a few weeks.

?

Half-Ton Lead Coffin Unearthed in Rome

2011-01-27T18:36:46-08:00

Considering that there was a human foot visible from the coffin from the get go, you're surprised it has human remains in it?
meh.