#burial customs

[emmaklee]

burial custom depicted in Les Contrees mysterieuses et les peuples inconnus (1884)

[bones-ivy-breath]

Plato defined the ideal of any Greek as to be rich, healthy and honoured; to live to a grand old age; to bury his parents with honour, and ultimately to be buried in turn by his own children with due respect.

Burial Customs, the Afterlife and the Pollution of Death in Ancient Greece by Louise Cilliers and Francois Pieter Retief

[greek-museums]

Archaeological Museum of Patra:

Four crowned skulls of two little girls, and two women, from the North Cemetery in Patras, from the Hellenistic Period. 

The first skull bears a wreath of gilded myrtle fruits. The deceased wore golden earrings. (300-275 B.C)

The second skull bears a wreath of fruits and myrtle flowers. The flowers are earthen, some gilded and others in a variety of colors. (late 4th-3rd cent. B.C)

The third skull bears a gilded myrtle wreath, where apart from the leaves, some of the small fruits have survived as well.

The fourth skull is also decorated with a gilded myrtle wreath. The shaft is made of lead and has been also perforated. Gilded bronze leaves and earthen fruits were attached to the small holes.

A detail from the heads of the two little girls. Damages to the skulls might have occured posthumously- it was not specified in the tags.

I have seen many luxurious funerary wreaths, made of gold, with extraordinary craftmanship, they are a particular trait of the burials of the Hellenistic period, and these burials were of particularly wealthy, aristocrats of the (Greek) Macedonian elite, usually families of soldiers associated with the campaigns of Alexander the Great. They were discovered either in ornately painted built tombs, under raised mounds, or well built cist graves, who often would also be decorated with painting.

But these burials of commoners, those wreaths of painted, clay flowers are the most touching of them all. It just shows you the exceptional love and care that existed in those ancient families.  

[the-ablest-navigators]

Asleep in Jesus.

[shamandrummer]

Native American Vows to Decolonize Native Burials

Robert Gill of Buffalo, Minnesota is a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate tribe and among only a few Native American morticians in the country. A gentle hero to many tribal members, Gill has made it his life's mission to restore Native burial customs and to "decolonize," as he calls it, the process of honoring and burying those who die on Indian reservations. Since the arrival of the pandemic, death has become an all-encompassing specter of Gill's daily life, consuming his days and even his nights. He travels hundreds of miles each week to remote tribal communities as far west as the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and as far north as the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation near the Canadian border.

Before the pandemic, Gill arranged three to four burials a month for Native families. Now he is receiving that many funeral requests every week. Even with a punishing work schedule, he sometimes struggles with guilt over his inability to meet the surging demand for traditional burial services. He knows that many tribal families are being left with no choice but to turn to white-owned funeral homes with morticians who do not understand their language and customs. Without ceremonies rooted in their culture, Gill argues, tribal members are disconnected from their history and unable to mourn properly.

The dearth of funeral options, some tribal leaders argue, is a legacy of America's dark history of racial subjugation of American Indians and their religious practices. Until 1978, when Congress passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, spiritual ceremonies like the sweat lodge and drum dances were still technically illegal. The prohibitions enabled Christian churches to establish deep footholds on reservations and further restrict Indigenous customs--including their ceremonies for honoring the deceased.

Determined to bring more dignity to the burial process, he enrolled in the Worsham College of Mortuary Science in Chicago, where he graduated in 2012. He is believed to be the only licensed mortician of Dakota heritage in the country. Today Gill is virtually alone in the funeral business for his willingness to make long-distance house visits -- sometimes driving entire days, through sleet and snow, to meet with tribal families in their homes. Each visit carries the risk that he will contract the virus still raging through Indian Country. Gill is the only one of five morticians who work at Chilson Funeral Chapel in central Minnesota who has not been sickened by COVID-19.

"You've got to have nerves of steel to do this work in a pandemic," Gill said.

A version of this article first appeared in the “Minneapolis Star Tribune.”

[revgmh]

[phoenixdown-and-fairydust]

When  I die bury me with a tree. Yes I know that’s how you get haunted forests.  I WISH TO BE THE HAUNTED FOREST! I will be that vaguely menacing, vaguely helpful spirit/fae that judges you for your character and either helps you on your quest or eats your bones for being a disgrace to humanity.

[nemfrog]

“Etruscan burial jar with separate arms fastened to the ring handles.” 8th-6th century B.C.E. Records of the past. v.10. 1911. 

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