Earliest Chemical Warfare - Dura-Europos, Syria

[Melvadius]

This story is actually originally got listed here arising from the Jan/ Feb 2010 edition of Archaeology magazine when it was mentioned as one of the Top Archaeological Stories in 2009 thread elsewhere on this site.

 

In a narrow tunnel under the fortress-city of Dura (now Dura-Europos) in the eastern Syrian desert, 20 Roman soldiers met their fate defending the city from the Sasanian Empire. The archaeologists who found them in the 1930s assumed they had died in a tunnel collapse, but University of Leicester archaeologist Simon James thinks they met a more unusual demise--as victims of chemical warfare.

 

Sometime around A.D. 256, forces of the powerful, expanding Sasanian Empire laid siege to the Roman fortress. They dug tunnels to undermine the city's outer wall, while the Romans excavated countermines to intercept them. Reexamining the site as if it were a crime scene, James noted that the bodies of the soldiers had been deliberately stacked where the Roman and Sasanian tunnels met. The Sasanians had apparently used their enemies' bodies as a barricade, behind which they could light a fire to collapse the tunnels and bring down the wall. But how had the Persians killed so many Roman soldiers in such a dark, confined space? "The Persians would have heard the Roman counterminers and, I believe, prepared a deadly surprise for them," says James.

....continued

 

However it seems to have sprung off of a Discovery Channel article in January 2009 although other media also ran with it around then.

 

However it has recently had a resurgence appearing in (amongst others):

 

Science 2.0 article on 14th Jan 2011

 

Daily Mail article on 15th January.

 

World Science article on 16rth Janaury

 

Plus Live Science's more extensive article 8 March 2011.

 

Almost 2,000 years ago, 19 Roman soldiers rushed into a cramped underground tunnel, prepared to defend the Roman-held Syrian city of Dura-Europos from an army of Persians digging to undermine the city's mudbrick walls. But instead of Persian soldiers, the Romans met with a wall of noxious black smoke that turned to acid in their lungs. Their crystal-pommeled swords were no match for this weapon; the Romans choked and died in moments, many with their last pay of coins still slung in purses on their belts.

 

Nearby, a Persian soldier

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

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