In a Roman Tomb, ‘Dead Nails’ Reveal the Occult

When it came to treating diseases, the ancient Romans had no shortage of magical remedies, several of which involved iron nails.

To cure epilepsy, the first-century historian Pliny the Elder advised driving a nail into the ground at the spot where the afflicted person’s head lay at the start of the seizure. The Romans hammered nails into doors to avert plagues and pounded coffin nails into thresholds to keep nightmares at bay. Nails from tombs and crucifixions were even worn around the neck as talismans against fevers, malaria and evil spells.

Recently, archaeologists excavated an unusual set of talismanic nails from a mountaintop necropolis on the outskirts of Sagalassos in southwestern Turkey. In an early Roman imperial tomb, 41 broken nails were found scattered among the cremated remains of an adult male who had lived in the second century A.D. and was buried in situ. Twenty-five of the nails were headless and deliberately bent at right angles; the others were complete roundheaded nails with the shanks twisted multiple times.

The unusual funerary practice is the subject of a new study published in the journal Antiquity.

“The nails were not used in the construction of the pyre, and had no practical purpose,” said Johan Claeys, an archaeologist at Catholic University Leuven and the lead author of the paper. “They were dead nails, and the way they were distributed around the perimeter of the tomb suggests that the placement was purposeful.” By “dead nails,” he meant that they had been believed to possess occult power.

In this case, the pyre was sealed beneath a raft of two dozen bricks, arranged in four rows. The undersides of the bricks were discolored, indicating that they had been set atop the still-smoldering embers. The bricks were then slathered with slaked lime. The nails, the bricks and the lime implied the use of protective charms to keep the “restless dead” from interfering with the living, Claeys said.

“Whether or not the cause of the man’s death was traumatic, mysterious or the result of a contagious illness or punishment, it appears to have left the mourners fearful of his return,” Claeys said.

“We are witnessing here at least three deviant interventions that each in and of themselves can be understood as means to pin the deceased to his final resting position.”