[MR] History Blog: Early Children's Cemetery Excavated in Poland

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

Today the History Blog offers a feature on the discovery of a late 16th or
early 17th century children's graveyard in Jeżowe
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmina_Je%C5%BCowe>, Poland. More than 100
graves have been found, most of them containing children. What is
interesting about these graves, and gives fairly exact dates for the
cemetery, is that most have at least one coin with the bodies, often in the
mouth.

The practice of placing a coin with the deceased is a pagan tradition from
ancient Greece, and is called Charon's Obol. The coin was to pay Charon,
the ferryman who took the souls across the Styx River to the place of the
dead. It is perhaps surprising that this tradition survived through
medieval Christian times in Europe, and actually into the 19th century in
some areas.

The whole story is found at http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/58964 .

For more the obol tradition see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon%27s_obol .