Memories of the past were an important guide to the future. This is in part why the funeral oration became so important in Athenian life. Introduction As a scholar of classical studies, I tend to look to the past to help understand the present. Ancient literature, especially ancient Greek epics, explore what it means to[…]
Ancient cultures left behind extraordinary memorials which were used for mortuary cults during the epoques in which they were created. Introduction A mortuary cult (also called funerary cult and death cult) is a ceremonial and religious form of a cult fostered over a certain duration of time, often lasting for generations or even dynasties. It[…]
They needed others to see them, to draw people to their grief. Reader, he died. I’ve devoted my career to death. As a scholar of Victorian disease, I think about death nearly every day, but this did not protect me from the sucker punch of loss. Neither did his slow, prolonged decline, nor my slow,[…]
Examples of curse-fine epitaphs range all over the ancient world. Introduction The concept of a curse laid on a tomb or gravesite is best known from ancient Egypt but the practice was quite common in other civilizations of antiquity. The tomb or grave was the eternal home of the physical remains of the deceased to which his or her soul could[…]
The tale begins after Ra had created the world and was king of the gods and humanity. Introduction The Book of the Heavenly Cow is an ancient Egyptian text dealing with the rebellion of humanity against the sun god Ra, his destruction of the rebels through the goddess Hathor, the reversal of this decision and Ra’s mercy, and his[…]
These burial places formed the centers of small-scale chiefdoms and shared a set of sculptural motifs and styles. By Benjamin OswaldHistorian Introduction Beginning approximately 2000 years ago, in a rugged stretch of southwestern Colombia where the Andes split into multiple ranges and the mighty Magdalena River is born, a people created a collection of magnificent[…]