The Well of Death. Where the Ancient Greeks threw away unwanted babies

 The Well of Death.

In Ancient Greece, infants weren’t seen as complete beings from the moment they were born. This is because there was a belief that most babies died before the seventh day, so a naming ceremony that solidified their position in Ancient Greek society was deferred until around the tenth day following their birth.

At which time, the father would decide whether the infant lived or died.

You see, it wasn’t uncommon for a father to decide that a child shouldn’t be reared, whether that be because the child had a deformity, the cost of raising it would overreach their means or even just because the child was the “wrong” sex. What would follow for a rejected baby was disturbing to say the least — exposure. Dumped outside on the doorstep, in a clay pot or near the roadway, it was likely that the baby would starve to death or suffocate. There was a chance that a baby would be picked up and adopted by someone else, but really, it was a horrid lottery.

Athenian agora.

For babies that didn’t survive the initial period, and because of their lesser status, they weren’t given proper burials. Instead, their bodies would unceremoniously be dumped, and one such dumping location was a well. In the 1930s, archaeologists discovered a well during their excavation of the Athenian agora.

Inside were the skeletons of hundreds of infants and dogs.

Theories sprang up about them, but it wasn’t until the last couple of decades, when the remains were examined with new tech, that they were able to determine that these babies were likely just the babies that died shortly after birth — all but three were less than a week old, and one third had died of meningitis.

One of the most disturbing discoveries amongst these skeletons is that one of these infants didn’t die from some illness. The corpse of an eighteen month old baby showed signs of frequent abuse, with multiple fractures at different points of healing, including one on the skull, and a jaw fracture at the time of death. So clear it was that this baby had been battered, that the biological anthropologist working on this would testify today that this child had been abused, over two thousand years later.

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