Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 24. (Budapest, 1962)

The deads of the battle of Mohács

to the skeleton, all in a most unusual position. The body was lying on its right side, the right arm hanging downwards - also the lower extremities were sunk much lower than the torso. On the same day, in the third trench dug at a right angle to the other two, about 8090 cm deep a series of "preserved" skeletons were discovered, in normal positions. Superficial cleaning revealed the fact that we dealt with the remnants of corpses thrown indiscriminately into the ditch. Without any doubt, we had discovered the first mass-grave of Mohács. In the course of the first week the grave, which turned out to be wedge-shaped and forms an obtuse angle, yielded following measurements: length 14.50 m, width alternately 2.20-2.50 m, depth in the latter parts about 1.50 m. Whilst still occupied with the opening up and cleaning out of the first grave, we discovered on Sept. 28. in the vicinity of the first, and about 1.50 m eastwards the second grave. The shape of this one is, roughly speaking, elliptical, the direction of its axis is identical with the eastward pointing wing of the first. Smaller in size its length measures 8.5 m, its average width 2.5 m. The first mass-grave seems, on the whole, to have remained untouched, in the second a deep furrow of about 1 m had been cut lengthwise by a trench-digging machine, bruising a considerable amount of bo:nes and throwing a lot of them to the surface. After cleaning the upper layer of the graves it became evident that the corpses had been thrown or laid into them without any order whatsoever, pell-mell fashion. The second grave was even more disorderly than the first. The skeletons lay mostly flat on their backs, heads pointing castor westwards as well as to other points of the compass. Some lay on their right or left side, or on their belly, others with knees drawn up almost to the nose. In some oases the head, in some others the lower limbs lay much higher or lower than the torso. We also saw skeletons laying on their back with both arms outstretched, and some whose arms were raised and almost twined round the head. In the smaller grave almost all the skeletons lay in a disorderly heap; in the bigger one the confusion was somewhat less. (111. No. 1.) The skeletons lay on a much lower level in the center of the graves than on the borders; in the former case we found them at about