The Saltman was discovered in Iran, in the Chehrabad salt mines located on the southern part of the Hamzehlu village, on the west side of the city of Zanjan, in the Zanjan Province. The head and left foot are currently on display in a glass case at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.
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In the winter of 1993, miners came across a body with long hair, a beard and some artifacts. These included the remains of a body, a foreleg inside a leather boot, three iron knives, a woollen half trouser, a silver needle, a sling, parts of a leather rope, a grindstone, a walnut, some pottery shards, some designed textile fragments, and finally a few broken bones. The body had been buried in the middle of a tunnel of approximately 45 metres length.
Five other corpses, including a teenager and a woman, were discovered later in the same salt mine. Four are kept at the Rakhtshuikhaneh Museum in Zanjan. A sixth was left in place at the salt mine. 300 pieces of fabric were found, some of which retained designs and dyes. In 2008 the Ministry of Industries and Mines canceled the mining permit.[1]
After archeological studies which included C14 dating of different samples of bones and textiles, the Salt Man was dated to about 1,700 years ago. By testing a sample of hair, the blood group B+ was determined.
Three dimensional pictures (scans) show the fractures around the eye and other damage that occurred before death as result of a hard blow. Visual characteristics presented long hair and beard and a golden earring on the left ear indicating that he was a person of rank or influence. The reason for his presence and death in the salt mine of Chehrabad remains a mystery.
Three bodies are dated to the Parthian (247 BCE-224 CE) and Sassanid (224-651 CE) eras, and the remainder to the Achaemenid Dynasty (550-330 BCE).[1]
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