Ossuary

An ossuary is a chest, box, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains.

A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary ("os" is "bone" in Latin[1]).

In Persia, the Zoroastrians used a deep well for this function from the earliest times (c. 3,000 years ago) and called it astudan (literally, "the place for the bones").

An increase in wealth among the urban elite in Jerusalem and Jericho, coupled with a building boom that created a surplus of stonemasons, allowed for new kinds of burial to evolve.

The village of Wamba in the province of Valladolid, Spain, has an impressive ossuary of over a thousand skulls inside the local church, dating from between the 12th and 18th centuries.

A more recent example is the Douaumont ossuary in France, which contains the remains of more than 130,000 French and German soldiers that fell at the Battle of Verdun during World War I.

[10] The skeletal remains of six million people lie, neatly arranged, in catacombs (also known as ossuaries or charnel houses) beneath the streets of Paris, France.

A Zoroastrian ossuary, 7–8th century CE, Hirman Tepe, Uzbekistan [ 2 ]
Jewish ossuary inscription from Second Temple period
Ossuaries from the Talpiot Tomb , displayed at the Israel Museum
The ossuary of San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan .
The Ursulakammer in the Basilica of St. Ursula in Cologne , where in the 17th century the largest mosaic in human bones ever was created, that covers the four walls of the room. [ 11 ]
Contemporary Greek ossuaries made of wood and metal.