IMMUREMENT: Death in a Box
At the turn of the last century, the world was undergoing a great transformation that would eventually set the pace for our current millennium. It was a period of travel, discoveries, and inventions. A historical period of evaluation of moral standards and values, a period that will first fragment our world with the onset of the First World War and then attempt to reunite it through social, economic, and political systems and practices.
This shocking photograph below was first published in the 1922 issue of National Geographic magazine under the caption “Mongolian prisoner in a box”. It depicts a Mongolian woman desperately reaching out from the porthole of a crude crate in which she is imprisoned, laid in a barren desert to die of slow and painful starvation and dehydration. That crate was meant to be her tomb. It was taken in July 1913, by the French photographer Stéphane Passet (1875-) commissioned by a French millionaire banker, Albert Kahn (1860–1940), during their trip through exotic countries. The authenticity of the photograph is clearly undisputed. It is a mesmerizing illustration of an oppressive past with age-old traditions and ironically, exemplary of early color photography.
The bowls on the ground had food and water in them. The prisoner could beg for food which just prolonged their suffering as they generally didn’t get enough passersby. The “swastika” symbol seen on the crate is placed there for a reason. It is a very old symbol used extensively throughout Central and South Asia with various meanings, a token of luck or a symbol of the sun, etc. Its adoption by the NSDAP in Germany had nothing to do with its original meaning. It was proposed by a member of the predecessor of the NSDAP. Hitler later adopted it as a branded icon because it was not used by any other entity in the West.
This image questions humanity. Who could have perpetrated such a tragic situation? What could possibly be a reason for such a brutal consequence? What was the intention of the photographer to take such a picture? Why did he not help this desperate woman out of her misery? Why did he leave her in the box? Could he not at least let her out of that box? But it was against the law of the land to interfere in their local traditional practices. There was also a current directive to all anthropologists at the time, not to intervene in another culture’s order system.
The publishers made the claim through a random writer for the National Geographic magazine, that the woman was condemned to Immurement, purging a capital sentence for adultery. Because the story shocked the modern world, it was initially considered a mere supposition, until the truth and practices of Mongolia’s capital punishment methods surfaced through other pictures (below), and it was finally abolished in 2012 — almost one century later. Immurement was one of their most common methods.
Immurement (from Latin im- “in” and murus “wall”; literally “walling in”) is a form of imprisonment, usually for life, in which a person is entrapped within an enclosed space precisely his size and with no means of exit — just as people restricted within a coffin.
Immurement is thought to have been created during the golden age of the Roman Empire and applied mostly to vestal virgin women who broke their oath of chastity. Since it was forbidden to spill the blood of these women, the most creative way men found to punish them was by locking them in enclosed places with rationed food and water to let them slowly die on their own. This practice spread through many countries during the Roman invasion of other lands and became quite popular throughout the world, mainly as a punishment for women. But the practice didn’t stop there. During the Middle Ages, a time of extreme superstition, people used to immure children in the foundations of new buildings as a sacrifice so that the building will not collapse. There are many cases of castles and bridges where the bones of little children have been found within the walls of these constructions. It has been applied until recently as a means of execution of political prisoners, leaving them to die a slow and agonizing death.
In a newspaper report from 1914, it is written: “…the prisons and dungeons of Far Eastern countries contain a number of refined Chinese shut up for life in heavy iron-bound coffins, which do not permit them to sit upright or lie down. These prisoners see daylight for only a few minutes daily when the food is thrown into their coffins through a small hole”.
Immurement may have been abolished and banned in most regions of the world, but there still exist so many other inhuman and ruthless practices that retard us as a modern society. In the Catholic Church, a similar tradition was maintained with the dead corpses of saints or their bone relics being buried under the alters of new churches and cathedrals. This tradition was later replaced by placing other holy relics under the alters. A similar traditional practice still prevails in Levantine countries where Christians, regardless of their denomination, place large quantities of the Holy Medal blessed by a cleric, into freshly-cast concrete for Divine protection.
Albert Kahn (1860–1940), a millionaire banker, had a passion for the new technology of photography. He devoted much of his life and fortune to adapting the innovative autochrome system the Lumiere Brothers had patented for their films. He wanted to document as much as possible combining it with his other passion for philanthropy. After traveling to Japan for business in 1909 he observed first-hand the cultural vastness the world had to offer. He considered the best way forward was applying photography to document cultural diversity. After taking many pictures during this journey, he decided to invest a considerable amount of money into showing the world all these wonders, cultural traditions, and customs prevalent at the time from every corner of the globe. He commissioned a team of professional photographers, Passet and several others, to document what would become THE ARCHIVES OF THE PLANET, a 22-year project. In total, Passet’s photos along with the others on Kahn’s team amassed 72,000 color photographs and 183,000 meters of film into a unique historical record of 50 countries.
Sammy RNAJ — sammy.rnaj.writer@gmail.com
