"If return is not possible, you will sleep for all eternity." What was the funeral like in ancient Greece? How long was the mourning? Was it possible to bribe Cerberus with sweets? Let's follow the ceremonial stages - prothesis, ekphora and perdeipnon to find out how the Greeks said goodbye to their loved ones.
The literary works of the ancients, such as Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, show us perfectly what funeral rituals looked like. They also manifest the emotions of mourners - their crying, lamentation and longing for the dead. The material that provides us with further information is also the preserved cemetery architecture, paintings on amphoras, etc. All this allows us to find out how the loss of loved ones was dealt with and what function in society was performed by funeral rites.
Farewell
The body of the deceased Greek was displayed to the public, mainly to make sure that the man was dead. This time also made it possible to honor the deceased by loved ones and say goodbye to him. The rite consisted in closing the eyes of the deceased and tying the hands, feet and jaw with a thin cloth. An oboe was then put into his mouth so that the deceased would be able to pay Charon and a piece of pie in his hand so that he could bribe with Cerberus sweets (a great three-headed dog guarding the entrance to the world of the dead). Women most often dealt with the preparation of the body for the funeral - washing, perfuming, wrapping it in a linen shroud (only the head was left uncovered). Pillows were placed under the head to make sure that the mouth did not open. The body prepared in this way was placed on a wooden bed with the legs pointing towards the exit from the room.
Lamentation was an important part of saying goodbye in ancient Greece
The deceased usually spent one day in the vestibule. At this time, the mourners began lamenting which was a permanent element of the funeral rites of those times. Those closest to him were screaming, singing, crying, tearing their hair off their heads, tearing their clothes, banging their heads on the floor or throwing themselves at her in a fit of despair. Undoubtedly, it helped to defuse emotions after the death of a loved one. Descriptions of these lamentations can be found, for example, in Homer's Iliad (when Hector is killed, the Trojans lament, the mother tears her hair out of her head and screams, while the father rolls in the sand). Other scenes can be found in the texts of Sophocles, Aeschylus or in the tragedies of Euripides.
An important element of the funeral was undoubtedly the speech given over the funeral pyre or the grave. The deceased was remembered, his merits and merits were presented . We know this speech as train. Although it was most often created during a funeral, it was also created on the anniversaries of his death. The trains were probably also meant to calm down their relatives, they made an attempt to come to terms with death.
Funeral
After the day of saying goodbye to the deceased in the vestibule of the house, the body was carried outside. This was done before dawn in complete silence. It was not wanted to allow the sun-god Apollo to see the dead man. The bed on which the deceased lay was carried by family members or transported on a cart full of flowers and wreaths. At the front was a woman holding a prepared urn for the bones of the deceased. At the end, the servants and the musicians marched. Interestingly, only women over sixty years of age could participate in the funeral process . Upon arrival, the body was burnt (in clothes, as it was supposed to be useful to the deceased in the afterlife) or placed directly in the grave (these two forms of burial were used in parallel, although sometimes one of them became more dominant, the other lost popularity, or vice versa) . People left the burial site by shouting three times the name of the deceased.
In the 6th century BC stone, brick or earth tombs were built. The dead were most often burnt at a wood stake or in a shallow grave dug nearby. Then the ashes and bones were put into a separate vessel, which was buried in the ground and a mound was built there. When the body of the deceased was buried directly in the grave, vine shoots were used on which the body was placed (alternately in a clay or wooden coffin) and buried.
Kerameikos - Athens Cemetery
An inscription was placed on the tombstones with information about the person / people buried in the grave and those who mourn them. Stelae were erected depicting characters that were to show the best features of the deceased person (most often over-colored), e.g. warriors, athletes, as well as mythological scenes from hunting or battles.
Offerings were an essential element of the funeral. They can be divided into three types:everyday items for the deceased, tools or an animal (sheep / goat), and libation, i.e. a wine offering.
The obligation to organize a funeral usually rested with the son of the deceased or his closest friends. The funerals were sumptuous and made it possible to show off one's wealth. They became such a problem that Athens introduced a law introducing restrictions prohibiting exceeding a certain financial threshold.
Cemeteries from the 8th century B.C. were located outside city walls, most often in the west (but it was not the rule). Solon's law stated that the burying of people was to be done in barren land.
Mourning
During mourning, loved ones dressed in dark clothes, they also cut their hair and forgot about hygiene. They did not feast, they avoided playing, singing or playing musical instruments. The Greeks washed their hands after the funeral, because they considered contact with the deceased to be a source of stain and dirt in a physical sense. They thought the same about contact with the grave (it was a border between worlds, but also a place of contact with the deceased). Three days after the funeral, a ritual of cleansing the house of the deceased was performed (with water or smoke).
The inmates put their hair cut in front of the entrance as a sign that in this house one could get "infected" with the blotch. The funeral was to enable the transition of the deceased from the world of the living to the land of the dead. The relatives were afraid of the wrath of the deceased person, therefore the rituals were approached with due respect. The living gave the body of the earth by burying it, and the spirit was passed on to the ether (the Greeks believed in an immortal soul). A few days after the funeral, a feast was organized in honor of the deceased, ending the time of mourning. It was also organized on each death anniversary as an element of worship.
Bibliography:
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- Kaszuba M. M., Funeral rites in archaic and classical Greece, [In:] Studia Antiquitatis et Medii Aevi incohantis, 2016.
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