Silence Tower

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Yazd, Being the center of Zoroastrianism and the main religion of some of the Persian great empires, Yazd is the city you would not want to miss.
There are two towers near Yazd, built in the nineteenth century according to a design from India, where many Zoroastrians live. When you reach the tops of the towers, you walk out onto a large circular platform with a pit in the middle. This pit is where the bodies would be placed to be excarnated. At one point, the Towers were placed well outside of the city of Yazd. But as the city grew, Yazd began to encroach on the Towers and now reaches right to their foot.
At the terrace at the top, the dead were exposed, and devoured by birds. In this way, neither the earth nor the sacred fire was soiled. Children were placed in the innermost ring, women in the next, and men in the outside ring. The custom to expose the dead on mountain summits still exists in modern Tibet, where it is called an “air burial”.
Although the towers date back to the nineteenth century and are influenced by the practices of Indian Zoroastrians, the custom to expose the dead on towers is mentioned in the late Sasanian age.

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