The Worst Ways To Die

Scaphism, also known as the boats,[1] was an ancient Persian method of execution designed to inflict torturous death. The name comes from the Greek word σκάφη, skaphe, meaning "anything scooped (or hollowed) out".

The intended victim was stripped naked and then firmly fastened within the interior spaces of two narrow rowing boats (or hollowed-out tree trunks) joined together one on top of the other with the head, hands and feet protruding. The condemned was forced to ingest milk and honey to the point of developing severe bowel movement and diarrhoea, and more honey would be rubbed on his body to attract insects to the exposed appendages. He would then be left to float on a stagnant pond or be exposed to the sun. The defenceless individual's faeces accumulated within the container, attracting more insects, which would eat and breed within his exposed flesh, which—pursuant to interruption of the blood supply by burrowing insects—became increasingly gangrenous. The feeding would be repeated each day in some cases to prolong the torture, so that dehydration or starvation did not kill him. Death, when it eventually occurred, was probably due to a combination of dehydration, starvation and septic shock. Delirium would typically set in after a few days.

In other recorded versions, the insects did not eat the person; biting and stinging insects such as wasps, which were attracted by honey on the body, acted as the torture.

Death by scaphism was incredibly painful, humiliating and protracted. Plutarch writes in his biography of Artaxerxes II that Mithridates, sentenced to die in this manner in 401 BC for boasting about killing Cyrus the Younger, survived 17 days before dying.[2]