Severed Body Parts! 12 Frightful Spots for Losing Your Head (PHOTOS)

Let's start from the premise that the tourism industry is, quite frequently, a freakshow. And not just on Halloween... plenty of places keep it surreal all year round. Why? Luring people into your temple, museum, church, crypt isn't as easy as you might think. You need a hook.

While the words "severed body parts" may not have a tourist-brochure ring, let's face it, gore sells. Call them relics, taxidermy, ossuaries, medical oddities, or just a good story of legendary dismemberment--these 12 morbid spots keep the curious coming back.

Have you run across a displaced appendage in your travels? Let's reassemble them here and on Trazzler.com (and check out our latest writing contests).

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Counting the Body Parts in Medinet Habu, Egypt

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The building blocks of Medinet Habu seem to be the petrified insecurities of Ramesses III. Not only was he competing with the memory of his more powerful, more virile, and almost-certainly-better-looking namesake (Ramesses II), he was also pharaoh during a period of successive foreign invasions, and increasing internal strife. Which explains why his bloated mortuary temple complex feels like it's fortified, and is decorated with an excess of exuberantly brutal battle scenes. Even the carvings themselves are an act of war: some have been hammered into the walls with such ferocity, that you can actually fit your arm inside! But be careful where you reach, because whenever Ramesses III wasn't slaying his enemies, it would appear he was counting their severed penises! Thankfully they weren't spoils of war, but a way of calculating how much to pay his mercenaries. Today's visitors must hope that counting systems have moved on since then.

By Nick Rowlands | Photo: Nick Rowlands

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The building blocks of Medinet Habu seem to be the petrified insecurities of Ramesses III. Not only was he competing with the memory of his more powerful, more virile, and almost-certainly-better-looking namesake (Ramesses II), he was also pharaoh during a period of successive foreign invasions, and increasing internal strife. Which explains why his bloated mortuary temple complex feels like it's fortified, and is decorated with an excess of exuberantly brutal battle scenes. Even the carvings themselves are an act of war: some have been hammered into the walls with such ferocity, that you can actually fit your arm inside! But be careful where you reach, because whenever Ramesses III wasn't slaying his enemies, it would appear he was counting their severed penises! Thankfully they weren't spoils of war, but a way of calculating how much to pay his mercenaries. Today's visitors must hope that counting systems have moved on since then.

By Nick Rowlands | Photo: Nick Rowlands

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grotesque-o-meter

Rank #2  |  Average: 4

just a fleshwound inoperably severed

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A note about Trazzler's slideshows: we don't do top-tens or best-of lists. Nor are we so morbid or presumptuous as to tell you where you must go before you kick the bucket. The world is far too big and fascinating to encapsulate in any kind of definitive list. We simply chose the places that our writers have contributed that make us think, laugh, dream, and, in this case, shudder.

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Comments

[MJinCanada]

01:05 AM on 11/03/2010

I can't believe they missed the Cathedral of Otranto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Otranto_cathedral_martyrs.jpg

Or St. Peter's Church at Barton-on-Humber, where nearly 3000 burials spanning about 1000 years were excavated as part of the church restoration and archeological study. The forensic anthropological study of the burials contributed a great deal to the understanding of medieval life, diet, work and medical techniques. Except for three skeletons kept out for display, the bones were reburied with an appropriately medieval service.

[LMPE]

08:49 PM on 10/26/2010

St. Petersburg, Russia, has the Church on Spilled Blood

[EthicalJournalist]

09:34 AM on 10/26/2010

Visited Aphrodite's pool outside Paphos last spring. It is not very well tended, actually, and watching tourists crush out cigarettes all around it was equally disheartening. But Cyprus does have many charms...just not the state of what ought to be world-class antiquities venues.

[Schweik]

09:18 AM on 10/26/2010

Paris catacombs:
http://www.visitalltheworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/2661918.06dd6566.560.jpg