Buried in a Toilet: The Two Byzantine Babies That Ended Up in a Latrine Drain

New study analyzes two premature infants buried in a Roman latrine at Ephesos, Türkiye, 8th–9th century CE

Among my colleagues and friends, I have never heard of any of them finding the remains of a child, let alone an infant. When I read journal articles, this same trend persists: adult bones are ‘abundant’, juvenile and infant bones are rarer. Their bones are small, weak, and brittle, and the ravages of time hit them a little harder.

But every once in a while, you do come across them, and they can tell you so much about how ancient families grappled with the death of their children, social expectations, and religious beliefs.

In a recent study published in Childhood in the Past, Caroline Partiot and Lilli Zabrana found the remains of two 8th-9th century CE perinatal (period at or around childbirth) infants in a disused latrine of a Roman Odeion in Turkiye.

But why dispose of them in a latrine? Why may they have died, and what culture surrounded their death?

The Structures of Ancient Ephesos

Ephesos was once the capital of the Roman province of Asia, today located south of Izmir, Turkiye. The ancient city is best known for housing the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Little of said temple remains today, though it once drew pilgrims from across the Mediterranean. The city also boasted the Library of Celsus, a two-story structure that housed over 10,000 scrolls, and the Great Theatre, which could accommodate around 25,000 spectators.

Around 175 m from the temple, hidden today beneath farmland, once lay a large rectangular structure. For a long time, it was a mystery what this building was, until a 2009 research project identified it as a Roman Odeion, a venue for music and recitals, built in the second half of the 1st century CE. Between the 2nd and 3rd centuries, it was renovated, gaining inlaid marble flooring, painted walls, sculptures, and a latrine. By the 5th and 6th centuries, fire brought down the roof, and the Odeion was abandoned, the marble stripped and, for a time, used as a dumping ground for butcher waste and broken pots. And by the Middle Byzantine period, the ruins were occasionally visited but seem to have otherwise been left in peace, only to be substantially rebuilt between the 14th and 15th centuries.

During excavations in 2010, a cist grave was uncovered along a wall within the latrine channel, dated to the quieter Middle Byzantine period. Consisting of tiles and stones, it contained the remains of two infants laid side by side in eternal slumber.

The babies’ burials were decidedly out of place; they had no connection to the city’s recognized burial grounds, such as the large Harbor Necropolis (2nd to 6th century), nor the Byzantine-era cemetery of the Church of Mary. Instead, they lay within a latrine which itself could not be reached from within the Odeion, suggesting it was built to make up for the shortage of public toilets for visitors coming from the outside.

The unusual burial led to a multitude of questions, but the main lines of inquiry followed by the researchers were: their age, their health, their relationship with each other, how exactly they had been laid to rest, and what it might mean.

Two Babies, One Burial, a Million Questions

Using the length of their limb bones, paired with tooth and bone development, it was found that the two babies were born prematurely, dying at around 33 or 34 weeks of pregnancy, roughly seven and a half to eight months. Determining whether this was a preterm birth, still birth, or if they survived hours or days after birth is basically impossible (at least without a time machine).

The burials may not have been in a traditional cemetery, but they still followed a few Christian customs. They were placed roughly east-west, as it is believed Christ would return from the east and raise the dead, though tilted slightly off true by the shape of the channel they had to fit inside. Stone-lined cist graves like theirs are common in Byzantine cemeteries at Ephesos itself, notably beside the Church of Mary, and at sites elsewhere in Türkiye, Greece, and Cyprus.

Most burials have the dead washed, perfumed, and wrapped in white linen, and the placement of the babies’ bones suggests they likely were once wrapped in a similar shroud, though it has long since rotted away. A metal object found near one of the infants may have once been a pin to secure the wrapping. And finally, children and babies were usually buried alongside others, either at the same time or added to existing graves over time.

Given the many similarities, why place them in such an odd location? It seems they were disposed of with care, and yet a latrine does not necessarily scream love and comfort, at least not to the modern observer. Isolated burials of children outside the established cemeteries turn up occasionally, but as far as anyone knows, the Odeion is the only documented case of newborns buried in isolation this way at Ephesos.

An Unusual Burial

One factor which mattered greatly in deciding where a baby would be buried was baptism. Only baptized children could be laid to rest on the consecrated grounds of a cemetery. But baptisms typically could occur only after the mother’s forty-day purification period had passed, though some exceptions allowed baptism on the eighth day or immediately after birth. An understandable concession given the high infant mortality, with half to three-quarters of children in past populations failing to reach their 5th birthdays, and most of those deaths occurring within the first year and very first days of life.

A newborn was considered only a ‘candidate for life’. So perhaps these babies died before baptism was possible. But why did they die at all, and could that too have shaped where they were buried?

At least one of the babies had an extra rib growing from a neck vertebra, making it only the second known archaeological case of an infant with this feature in the world. It is a very rare variant that is relatively harmless in adults, but in young individuals can point to a ‘glitch’ in the genes governing early development, associated with stillbirths, tumors, sudden infant death, premature birth, limb defects, nervous system disorders, and more. Finding this extra rib suggests these babies had an additional factor reducing their survival.

Even without it, sanitation was poor after the fall of the Roman Empire, to say the least. As clean water supplies and sanitation systems broke down, the risk of disease exposure increased.

Given their similar age at death, burial at the same time, and only minor differences in size, as is typical in babies sharing a womb, the researchers suggest the two infants may have been twins. (Though, without DNA, this cannot be proven and remains an educated guess).

Twin pregnancies are uncommon even today, occurring between 1 in 80 and 1 in 100 births, and are 3 to 4 times more likely to end in stillbirth and seven times more likely to be preterm. Twins also grow more slowly in the womb, weigh less at birth, and suffer congenital defects, especially heart malformations, more often than single babies. And even if born completely healthy, two babies are double the burden in a community that would have struggled to support just one.

Then there is the culture they were born into. Byzantine attitudes toward newborns were tangled: a baby was seen as fragile but also dangerous, hovering between the living and the dead until baptism. There was also a belief that a demon named Gillo preyed on mothers and infants, with multiple and malformed births read as bad omens.

With all these factors to consider, the burial of these possible twins in a latrine becomes even more complicated. On the one hand, they were possibly unbaptized, maybe malformed, perhaps twins; ticking every box for the kind of infant a Byzantine community might have quietly wanted rid of. On the other hand, they were not hastily discarded; the burial consisted of a properly built cist, the infants were likely wrapped and laid side by side with care, and it lay undisturbed for over a thousand years.

The researchers suggest the drain was not chosen to dispose of something unwanted but to shelter them, buried within the boundaries of an ancient sanctuary that had protected the living for centuries and may protect the dead, too.

Two babies, possibly twins, were uncovered in a latrine cist burial during excavations in 2010. Were they unwanted, or were they placed there to hide and protect their burial? Why did they die? And did they ever draw breath? Many of these questions may never be answered, but we do know they were buried with care, hidden in a spot where they lay undisturbed for over a thousand years.

One of the greatest paradoxes I find is that despite infants likely making up the majority of deaths in the past, they make up some of the fewest remains, and it is a shame. So when an infant burial is discovered, it provides a wealth of knowledge and insight into the past.

Do you think these two individuals were twins, and why may they have been buried in this odd location?

Let me know your thoughts, and if you’d like to support the countless hours I pour into researching, writing, and bringing these hidden corners of history to life, why not Buy Me A Coffee

References

UNESCO World Heritage Centre. (2016). Ephesus. In Unesco.org. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1018/

Partiot, C., & Zabrana, L. (2026). Peace in Unexpected Places: The Middle Byzantine Burial of Two Perinates, Possibly Twins, in a Latrine Canal of the Odeion in the Artemision of Ephesos. Childhood in the Past, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/17585716.2026.2682804