It was a jarring find.

Analysis of 1,600-year-old human remains inside a jar in Bulgaria revealed a young Roman’s horrifying final moments during an assault on an ancient city.

Archaeologists had exhumed the impromptu coffin on August 10 from a turret in Deultum, a former Roman colony that was constantly under attack from Hun and Germanic armies in the fourth and fifth centuries, not long before the Empire’s fall in 476 AD, Live Science reported.

Inside this 3-foot-wide dolium — a large ceramic container used for food storage — was a contorted skeleton with two iron knives and a belt. Researchers speculated that the occupant, presumably a young man who was not involved in the battle, had hidden there during an invasion and armed himself in case the enemy found him.

“The man had found refuge in the pitos, crouched there with his knees pressed to his chin and his face turned downward,” lead excavator Lyudmil Vagalinski, an archaeologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, told local media. “He made no attempt to get out.”

Meanwhile, littered about the food vessel-turned-urn were blackened walls, melted glass fragments and charred bones from domestic animals, which researchers deduced were incinerated in a fire during an enemy attack.

From these signs, the researcher posited that the victim had suffocated during a blaze shortly after holing up in the jar that would become his final resting place.

It’s yet unclear what sparked the inferno, but the presence of ashes under the skeleton indicates that the individual sequestered themself after the fire had already started.

Following the invasion, the citizens of the city demolished the tower’s ruins and paved over them with a new floor, effectively entombing the individual beneath.

As it was customary to bury one’s dead outside city walls, Vagalinski claimed that it was uncommon to discover human remains inside except during “extraordinary circumstances.”

These included earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or enemy attacks like with the skeleton in question.

The remains have since been transported to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, where they will undergo analysis by a physical anthropologist in the hopes of shedding more light on the events surrounding the victim’s death, per Vagalinski.