6. Being Flayed Alive was once more than just a parental threat
The expression ‘I’ll skin you alive!’, beloved of older generations for scolding naughty children, has a very disturbing, and very real, origin. This agonizing method of execution involved killing people by removing their entire skin. Depending on the individual involved, being skinned alive could kill victims through loss of blood, shock, hypothermia, or infection. Flaying enemies is recorded in the carvings of Iron Age Mesopotamia, from around 883 BC onwards. The Rassam Cylinder, carved in c.636 BC and now in the British Museum, describes a particularly grisly practice: ‘they stripped off their skins and covered the city wall with them’.
The abhorrent practice did not end with the Mesopotamians, however. Flaying alive has long been associated with religious intolerance, with the Torah recording how Rabbi Akiva was killed in this manner for preaching by the Romans. Amongst Christian martyrs, Saint Bartholomew is most famous for being flayed before his crucifixion. In 415, the Neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was flayed alive by a gang of angry Christian monks for heresy. In a more secular instance, Pierre Basile, who shot the arrow that killed King Richard I of England at the Siege of Châlus, was skinned alive in 1199.