“Fetch the execution elephant.”
In yet more compelling evidence that living in pretty much any other time period than now would absolutely suck, one of the ways some people were put to death was being executed by an elephant.
They say elephants never forget, which means the enormous executioner would remember every method of pain and death it has been taught to inflict.
Elephants trained to execute people could be taught to slowly crush and gore a condemned soul to death, or be made to get it over and done with quickly.
It was carried out in various parts of the world including India and Southeast Asia, though there are examples recorded in the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds too.
Scottish Sailor Alexander Hamilton (not the guy the musical is about) wrote an account of an execution by elephant carried out in what was then Siam, now Thailand, in his 1727 book A New Account of the East Indies.
An artistic depiction of execution by elephant from the Akbarnama, a chronicle of the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great (Public Domain)
“For Treason and Murder, the Elephant is the Executioner,” he wrote, as he went on to describe how a man was crushed to death by an elephant.
“The condemned Person is made fast to a Stake driven into the Ground for the Purpose, and the Elephant is brought to view him, and goes twice or thrice round him.
“And when the Elephant’s Keeper speaks to the monstrous Executioner, he twines his Trunk round the Person and Stake, and pulling the Stake from the Ground with great Violence, tosses the Man and the Stake into the Air, and in coming down, receives him on his Teeth, and making him off again, puts one of his fore Feet on the Carcase, and squeezes it flat.”
That all sounds thoroughly unpleasant to endure.
In the same book the sailor wrote of how in the Mughal Empire which ruled most of India at the time a man who had offended 17th Century Mughal ruler Shah Jahan was sent ‘to the Elephant Garden, and there to be executed by an Elephant, which is reckoned to be a shameful and terrible Death’.
Historical accounts from Ancient Greece and Rome also mention a couple of famous figures using execution by elephant on their enemies to make an example.
There are many other existing accounts of execution by elephant which note how versatile a way it was to put someone to death.
Elephants could kill someone quickly by crushing their head or crush various body parts slowly, while the animals could also have accessories attached to them in order to inflict even more pain.
If it was quick they’d stamp on your head, it wasn’t always quick (CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
Blades and spikes could be fitted to the elephant’s tusks to increase the number of ways someone sentenced to death by elephant could be killed by the animal.
In some cases an elephant would be used more as an implement of torture than death, as they were sometimes trained to roll their victims around on the ground but not kill them.
Some people who had an elephant set upon them could be pardoned and find themselves badly beaten and fearing for their lives but ultimately let go.
Thankfully, as a means of punishment it has long since fallen out of favour.
Featured Image Credit: @zackdfilms / YouTube
Over the many, many years we’ve been rolling around on this rock we’ve come up with some truly devilish ways to kill each other.
Tallying up the evidence of human history you might come away with the impression that humans are not very nice to each other.
If ever you wanted proof of that then you need look no further than the ‘worst way to die’, an Ancient Greek contraption made for torture and execution known as the Brazen Bull.
Basically, it’s a big bronze statue of a bull that’s hollow on the inside and has a trapdoor that a human could fit through.
You insert the person you don’t like into the bull and lock them inside, then light a fire underneath the statue and cook them to death.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the guy who invented this thing stuck some pipes into the statue so that the victim’s screams would come out sounding like animal noises.
The bloke who came up with this was one Perilaus of Athens, who invented the Brazen Bull in the 6th Century BC.
Person goes in, fire is lit, person gets cooked to death. That’s largely the gist of it. (Discovery)
For some reason he decided to invent a device to hurt and kill people in a horribly painful way, then decided he knew just the guy who might like to buy the Brazen Bull.
That’s right, nobody commissioned Perilaus to make this thing, he just made it and took it to Phalaris, the tyrant of the Sicilian state of Akragas.
According to some historical records, Phalaris was a cannibal who ate newborn babies so he was either a terrible person or so terribly hated that his enemies made up those sorts of stories about him.
Anyhow, in more recent times a simulation of what being put inside the Brazen Bull would be like and it’s horribly gruesome.
The victim would be cooked alive by the fire while those outside listened to your screams transformed by the pipes in the contraption.
However, back in the 6th century BC where they didn’t have the Discovery Channel in those times, Phalaris decided to conduct his own simulation and decided that the Brazen Bull needed some testing.
As you screamed the pipes would turn your wails of agony into other sounds. (Discovery)
So he put Perilaus in it and lit a fire underneath to cook the man inside his own invention.
Having demonstrated that the occupant would be roasted in terrible agony and the Brazen Bull worked the tyrant removed the inventor from his own creation before he died, then decided it would be execution for Perilaus after all as he was thrown off a hill.
Phalaris very much enjoyed killing people with his new toy, with the sight of it rocking back and forth as the occupant was cooked in side supposedly amusing him.
However, when he was overthrown in 554 BC those who defeated him decided they knew exactly what to do with the tyrant and decided it was his turn to go inside the Brazen Bull.
Featured Image Credit: Discovery
