CentralNotice From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation , search For other uses, see Tower of Silence (disambiguation) . Interior view of Tower of Silence Early 20th century drawing of the Tower of Silence on Malabar Hill, Bombay. The Malabar Hill Tower of Silence today. A Tower of Silence is a circular, raised structure used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead, particularly to scavenging birds for the purposes of excarnation . Zoroastrian exposure of the dead is first attested in the mid-5th century BCE Histories of Herodotus , but the use of towers is first documented in the early 9th century. [ 1 ] :156–162 The doctrinal rationale for exposure is to avoid contact with earth or fire, both of which are considered sacred. One of the earliest literary descriptions of such a building appears in the late 9th-century Epistles of Manu...