These included the remains of a body, a lower leg inside a leather boot, three iron knives, a woolen half trouser, a silver needle, a sling, parts of a leather rope, a grindstone, a walnut, some pottery shards, some patterned textile fragments, and a few broken bones.

The body had been buried in the middle of a collapsed tunnel approximately 45m in length.

In 2004, another mummy was discovered only 50ft away, followed by another in 2005 and a “teenage” boy mummy later that year. Three of the saltmen are dated to the Parthian (247 BC–224 CE) and Sassanid (224–651 CE) eras and remainder to Achaemenid Dynasty (550–330 BC).

These “saltmen” are in fact ancient corpses, most of them accidentally killed by the collapse of galleries in which they were working and then mummified by the extreme conditions. Hair, flesh and bone are all preserved by the dry salinity of the cave, and even internal organs such as stomachs and colons have been found intact.

The head and left foot of Salt Man 1 are on display at the National Museum of Iran in Tehran.