Wikipedia Trails: Homer to Tower of Silence

Bust of Homer, from Wikipedia

To start my research this week, I clicked on the Wikipedia page for Homer - the author of the Iliad. Much like Aesop, Homer may have been a hostage or slave of the Greeks. Something about that experience must inspire people to write. I saw that one of the ways that scholars were estimating when Homer was alive was comparing him to actions taken by Xerxes I, so I clicked through to that page next (also because I recognized him as the villain from 300). Xerxes was evidently a Zoroastrian, which implied to me that he did not actually consider himself a God. Reading about the Zoroastrian burial practices led me to a morbid page, regarding Towers of Silence. Since Zoroastrians believe that bodies must be disposed of to prevent invasions by Demons that can transfer to the living. The method that some follow is to place bodies on top of a tower, where the flesh is eaten by carrion birds, and after about a year, the bones of the dead are disintegrated in a mixture of lime and water.