Burial Books
-
Little, Brown and Company (28 September 2009)Price: $17.81 -
Yale University Press (02 September 2008)Price: $29.70 -
Westminster John Knox (30 January 2009)Price: $10.17 -
Westminster John Knox Press (16 January 2002)Price: $32.97 -
W.W. Norton & Co. (17 July 2006)Price: $15.61
Definition
Burial of the dead has been traced back to ancient Sumeria where food and tools were interred with the dead. According to Will Durant, "...the Sumerians believed in an after-life. But like the Greeks they pictured the other world as a dark abode of miserable shadows, to which all the dead descended indiscriminately” and that the land of the dead was beneath the earth (128).
This idea of the after-life existing below the feet of the living was also accepted in Babylonia where the dead “went to a dark and shadowy realm within the bowels of the earth, and none of them saw the light again”(240). In Babylonia the dead were “buried in vaults, a few were cremated and their remains were preserved in urns. The dead body was not embalmed, but professional mourners washed and perfumed it, clad it presentably, painted its cheeks, darkened its eyelids, put rings upon its fingers, and provided it with a change of linen”(240).
In Egypt the dead were also buried underground and, famously, the great pyramids of Egypt “were tombs, lineally descended from the most primitive of burial mounds. Apparently the Pharaoh believed, like any commoner among his people, that every living body was inhabited by a [spirit] which need not die with the breath…The pyramid, by its height, its form and its position, sought stability as a means of deathlessness”(148). For the more 'common’ of the Egyptians, however, a grave in the earth (with as many Shabti dolls as a family could afford to provide) was the usual final resting place.
Ancient Greece followed suit with burials under the earth and, as previously noted by Durant, continued the tradition of the after-life existing below the ground. The ancient Greeks (perhaps following an Egyptian tradition) made sure to provide their dead with carefully carved stones to remind the living of who the deceased were and what honors were still due them and remembrance of the dead was a very important civic and religious duty.
The Romans continued the Greek tradition both of burial underground, an after-life and of honoring the dead and, of course, the practice of burying the dead in the earth is still observed today in, more or less, the same way it was in ancient Babylonia.
(All citations from Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, 1935)
Articles
-
The Roman funeral was a rite of passage that signified the transition between the states of life and death. It was very important to conduct the proper ceremonies and burial in order to avoid having a malicious spirit rising from the underworld. While no direct description of Roman funerary practices has been passed down, numerous ancient sources exist that provide accounts of ancient funerals. Generally, there were five parts to a Roman funeral:
[Continue Reading...] -
II:85. Their fashions of mourning and of burial are these: Whenever any household has lost a man who is of any regard amongst them, the whole number of women of that house forthwith plaster over their heads or even their faces with mud. Then leaving the corpse within the house they go themselves to and fro about the city and beat themselves, with their garments bound up by a girdle and their breasts exposed, and with them go all the women who are related to the dead man, and on the other side the men beat themselves, they too having their garments bound up by a girdle; and when they have done this, they then convey the body to the embalming.
[Continue Reading...]
Illustrations
