A mystery skeleton found in a Roman sarcophagus at Westminster Abbey may finally have an identity

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A centuries-old stone coffin discovered more than 150 years ago at London’s Westminster Abbey sparked a question that has endured ever since: Who’s inside? Now, archaeologists have clues that point to a respected medieval figure who was not the burial’s original occupant.

Prior research had determined that the sarcophagus dated to the Roman period, around the fourth century, and a three-line Latin inscription dedicated it “to the memory of Valerius Amandinus.” Given the coffin’s high quality, Amandinus was probably an important resident of London, but nothing is known about his life and deeds.

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However, a cross of a late Anglo-Saxon style carved on the sarcophagus lid and measuring 5.9 feet (1.8 meters) long was likely made at least 600 years later. The symbol’s presence sowed doubts about the age and identity of the skeleton inside, according to Warwick Rodwell, a consultant archaeologist at Westminster Abbey.

He conducted a new analysis of the remains and found the coffin’s occupant was likely a medieval monk or abbot of Westminster. Rodwell reported his findings October 20 in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association .

Workers first discovered the burial at the abbey in 1820. During its excavation, they broke the lid into six pieces, and their rough handling damaged the skull. The bones were swept into a pile and left in disarray, perhaps disturbed by looters while the lid was open. Then, the coffin and its contents were reburied without being catalogued or studied.

Strephon Duckering/Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd

The sarcophagus was “found” a second time in 1869 during a renovation project, and it was moved from the abbey’s North Green region to the East Cloister. (Charles Dickens Jr., eldest son of the famous novelist, wrote about seeing the sarcophagus at the abbey in 1879, according to the study.) It was later relocated to the base of the abbey’s northwest tower, a task that took more than 36 hours due to the coffin’s weight.

Rodwell first learned of the coffin’s history in 2009. When he found out that the sarcophagus was scheduled for cleaning and conservation in 2016, in preparation for display in new galleries that were being constructed in the abbey, he seized the rare chance to revisit the mysterious burial.

“I saw this as an opportunity to take a fresh look at it, and to see what was inside — if anything — after 150 years of being sealed up,” he told CNN in an email.

Rodwell found the bones were still jumbled together inside the coffin, which was hewn from a single block of limestone and measured about 7 feet (2 meters) long, with walls about 4 inches (10 centimeters) thick on average. The skeleton was about 90% complete, and the skull had been reconstructed when the coffin was last opened in 1869, he wrote in the study.

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Skeletal analysis hinted that this was a man who died between the ages of 35 and 49 years, and radiocarbon dating of the bones placed him between A.D. 987 and 1052. His teeth were in good condition. And while some bones showed evidence of healed fractures, osteoarthritis and gout, there was no sign of serious disease or injury that might have caused the man’s death.

When the researchers removed the skeleton and cleared the coffin of soil and rubble, they were surprised to find a rectangular patch of lime, a compound thought to accelerate decay and trap “miasmas,” so-called toxic vapors that were erroneously linked to disease. The shape of the lime patch suggested that the body had been inside a rectangular wooden coffin that was then filled with lime before being placed in the sarcophagus, Rodwell said. “This had not been suspected, and the timber coffin had totally rotted away.”

The practice of covering a body in lime was rare in the Middle Ages and typically reserved for high-status burials, he added.

That clue and the cross on the coffin led the researchers to reason that the skeleton probably belonged to an important man, most likely the abbot of Westminster. Two historically identified candidates arose for that period: Ælfwig, abbot from A.D. 993 to around 1020, and Wulfnoth, who became abbot in 1020. Ælfwig is a slightly stronger contender, according to the study, as he was known to have been a monk at Westminster before becoming abbot and may therefore have had a clearer connection to the church.

“No single clue clinched the matter,” Rodwell said. “It was a case of assembling and weighing all the strands of evidence.”

But why would the abbot of a prestigious church be buried in a used Roman coffin? Rodwell said this could actually be a tribute to his elevated status.

“In the late Saxon period stone coffins were hard to come by — the industry for making them had died out,” he said. “Acquiring a secondhand stone coffin was considered a ‘prize.’”

So valued were these coffins, he added, that in the seventh century, British monks from an abbey in Ely traveled to a Roman cemetery in Cambridge and dug up a stone coffin to take back with them for their deceased abbess, Æthelthryth.

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Another example of a repurposed stone coffin is the elaborate fourth century sarcophagus currently in the Vatican Museums that is rumored to hold the remains of Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine the Great, said Dr. Simon Roffey, a reader in medieval archaeology at the University of Winchester in the UK. Carved with a military scene of Roman soldiers trampling barbarians, the coffin was likely intended for a man.

Still, further research is needed to fully explain the motives and rationale behind the reuse of pagan tombs and sarcophagi during the medieval Christian period, Roffey told CNN in an email. He was not involved in the new research.

While Ælfwig the abbot isn’t exactly a well-known figure who looms large in the public imagination, this discovery nonetheless untangled a mystery that has stymied academics since 1869 and fills a significant gap in the Anglo-Saxon history of Westminster Abbey, “the most important church in Britain,” Rodwell said.

Mindy Weisberger is a science writer and media producer whose work has appeared in Live Science, Scientific American and How It Works magazine. She is the author of “ Rise of the Zombie Bugs : The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control” (Hopkins Press).

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150多年前，伦敦威斯敏斯特教堂发现了一口有着数百年历史的石棺，由此引发了一个至今仍令人好奇的问题：里面究竟是谁？如今，考古学家掌握了一些线索，指向一位受人尊敬的中世纪人物，但他并非墓穴最初的主人。

先前的研究已确定这具石棺可追溯至罗马时期，大约在公元四世纪，其上的三行拉丁文铭文将其献给“瓦莱里乌斯·阿曼迪努斯”。鉴于石棺的精良品质，阿曼迪努斯很可能是伦敦一位重要的居民，但人们对他生平事迹一无所知。

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然而，石棺盖上雕刻的、长5.9英尺（1.8米）的晚期盎格鲁-撒克逊风格的十字架，很可能至少是在600年后才制作的。威斯敏斯特教堂的考古顾问沃里克·罗德韦尔表示，这个符号的存在使人们对棺内骸骨的年龄和身份产生了怀疑。

他对遗骸进行了新的分析，发现棺材里的主人很可能是中世纪威斯敏斯特的僧侣或修道院长。罗德韦尔于10月20日在《英国考古协会杂志》上发表了他的研究结果。

工人们于1820年首次在修道院发现了这处墓葬。挖掘过程中，他们将棺盖敲成了六块，粗暴的操作也损坏了头骨。骨骼被随意堆放在一起，杂乱无章，或许是在棺盖打开时被盗墓者翻动过。之后，棺材及其内含物未经登记或研究便被重新埋葬。

Strephon Duckering/Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd

1869年，在一次翻修工程中，石棺第二次被“发现”，并从修道院的北绿地移至东回廊。（据研究，著名小说家狄更斯的长子小查尔斯·狄更斯曾于1879年撰文描述他在修道院见到石棺的情景。）后来，由于石棺的重量，搬运工作耗时超过36小时，最终将其移至修道院西北塔的底部。

罗德韦尔于 2009 年首次了解到这口棺材的历史。当他得知这口石棺计划于 2016 年进行清洁和保护，以便在修道院正在建造的新展厅中展出时，他抓住了这个难得的机会，重新探访了这处神秘的墓葬。

“我认为这是一个重新审视它的机会，看看在被密封了 150 年后，里面究竟有什么——如果有的话，”他在一封电子邮件中告诉 CNN。

罗德韦尔发现，棺材内的骨骼仍然杂乱地堆放在一起。这口棺材由一整块石灰岩凿成，长约7英尺（2米），棺壁平均厚约4英寸（10厘米）。他在研究中写道，这具骨架完整度约为90%，头骨在1869年棺材最后一次打开时已经过修复。

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骨骼分析表明，死者生前年龄在35至49岁之间，放射性碳定年法测定其生卒年份为公元987年至1052年。他的牙齿状况良好。虽然部分骨骼显示出愈合的骨折、骨关节炎和痛风的痕迹，但没有发现可能导致其死亡的严重疾病或损伤。

当研究人员取出骨骼并清理棺材中的泥土和瓦砾时，他们惊讶地发现了一块长方形的石灰。石灰是一种被认为会加速腐烂并吸附“瘴气”（即所谓的有毒气体，这些气体曾被错误地与疾病联系起来）的化合物。罗德韦尔说，这块石灰的形状表明，尸体原本放在一个长方形的木棺中，木棺里填满了石灰，然后才被放入石棺。“这一点之前并没有人想到，而且木棺已经完全腐烂了。”

他还补充说，中世纪用石灰覆盖尸体的做法很少见，通常只用于地位显赫的葬礼。

这条线索以及棺材上的十字架让研究人员推断，这具骸骨很可能属于一位重要人物，极有可能是威斯敏斯特修道院院长。历史上已知的候选人有两位：一位是公元993年至1020年左右担任院长的埃尔夫维格（Ælfwig），另一位是1020年成为院长的伍尔夫诺斯（Wulfnoth）。根据这项研究，埃尔夫维格的可能性略高，因为已知他在成为院长之前曾在威斯敏斯特修道院担任修士，因此可能与教会有着更明确的联系。

罗德威尔说：“没有哪一条单一线索能最终定案。这需要将所有证据线索汇集起来，仔细权衡。”

但为什么一位享有盛誉的教堂院长会被葬在用过的罗马棺材里呢？罗德韦尔说，这实际上可能是对他崇高地位的一种致敬。

“在撒克逊晚期，石棺非常稀少——制作石棺的行业已经消亡了，”他说。“得到一口二手石棺被视为一种‘奖品’。”

他补充说，这些棺材非常珍贵，以至于在七世纪，英国伊利修道院的僧侣们前往剑桥的一处罗马墓地，挖出一口石棺，带回去给他们已故的女修道院长埃塞尔斯里思。

剑桥考古组/圣约翰学院

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英国温彻斯特大学中世纪考古学讲师西蒙·罗菲博士指出，梵蒂冈博物馆现藏着一具精美的四世纪石棺，据传其中安葬着罗马皇帝君士坦丁大帝的母亲海伦娜的遗骸，这也是石棺被重新利用的例子。这具石棺上雕刻着罗马士兵践踏蛮族的军事场景，很可能是为男性准备的。

罗菲在给CNN的一封电子邮件中表示，尽管如此，仍需进一步研究才能充分解释中世纪基督教时期重新利用异教墓葬和石棺的动机和理由。他并未参与这项新研究。

虽然修道院院长埃尔夫维格并不是一个广为人知、在公众想象中占据重要地位的人物，但这一发现仍然解开了自 1869 年以来一直困扰着学者们的一个谜团，并填补了威斯敏斯特教堂盎格鲁-撒克逊历史中的一个重要空白。“威斯敏斯特教堂是英国最重要的教堂，”罗德韦尔说。

明迪·韦斯伯格是一位科学作家和媒体制作人，她的作品曾发表在《Live Science》、《Scientific American》和《How It Works》杂志上。她是《僵尸虫的崛起：寄生虫精神控制的惊人科学》（霍普金斯出版社）一书的作者。