Death is a strange thing. On the one hand, it is pretty much the most universal thing that humanity can ever imagine. After all, death strikes everyone and makes no difference. Whether rich or poor, popular or hated – in the end he is the great equalizer. That's actually a comforting thought and must have been even more so in the past, when the life of the masses was much more miserable than we can even imagine today. Nevertheless, the subject of death is one that is hardly talked about - today as then. Nevertheless, everyone has an idea of death and in the western world this death even has a face! We call him the Grim Reaper, the skeleton dressed in black with a scythe that comes to pick us up at the end of our days.
This bone man has many names attributed to him throughout history. In German, people knew him quite early under his name, which is still in common use today, the Grim Reaper. But he was and is also known as the reaper or grim reaper. But why Grim Reaper? Why is this the idea that we associate with death, which is actually invisible? What is the meaning behind it and very important:How long has death been portrayed as a grim reaper? After all, this blog is supposed to be about the story... So let's dive in!
Representations of death in ancient mythology
First of all, one thing is very important when we talk about the depiction of death in history:death is not actually depictable. It's just a concept, not a tangible thing. After all, a corpse on the street is not “death”, it is only the consequence of it. But since we humans are terribly bad at imagining an intangible concept, we started imagining such things differently very early on. We personalize them. Other concepts are also known to us today in such a personalized form. Think of love and Cupid's arrow, which is supposed to bring it to us. Because how could something so inexplicable as love exist if some tangible being didn't have something to do with it! Death has been very similar since ancient times. The vast majority of human cultures eventually developed gods of the dead to which they could transfer the concept of death in order to make it comprehensible.
The earliest predecessors of today's Grim Reaper are probably to be found among these gods of the dead. With the help of these gods, we finally gave the end of our days a more or less human face for the first time. But not every god of the dead was created equal. After all, such a god can have quite different tasks. In ancient mythology he often ruled over a kind of underworld. Such was the case in ancient Greece, for example, with Hades and also with its Roman successor (some would say its Roman plagiarism) Pluto. But there were similar ideas in completely different cultures at completely different times, for example with the ancient Egyptians or later with the Aztecs.
In addition, there is another function that is taken over by a kind of god of the dead. They ensure the passage of the dying into the underworld. In the Greek example, this was the task of the god Thanatos (by the way, the brother of the god of sleep Hypnos), in Rome the Greek idea became the god Mors. These gods were thus considered to be somewhere in between, i.e. between the world of the living and the dead. This made them much more real and closer to the people than the guardians of the underworld. These gods symbolized death itself, they were there when it came. It is not without reason that the Roman variant of the god is simply called "Mors" - death. This same idea continues in death today. As is well known, someone else is also referred to as death today:the Grim Reaper.
How the Grim Reaper got his skeleton
Not only the name of the Roman god Mors reminds us of today's ideas of the Grim Reaper. A few other ideas that might sound familiar to us were also prevalent in Graeco-Roman antiquity. Even then there was an idea of the so-called "thread of life", which is severed at the onset of death and separates the soul from the body. The Grim Reaper still has his scythe for exactly this purpose, at least if you follow one of the possible explanations. In ancient times, the tool wasn't exactly defined, but the basic idea did exist. We also find a few other basic ideas in the world of that time. Mors was also described as dressed in black. Well, black has had a negative connotation in Europe for a long time...
The Grim Reaper didn't get his skeleton until much later. This idea did not really exist in ancient times. In the Revelation of John, the Bible speaks of “death”. But what is meant by this is the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, who is supposed to appear on a “pale horse”. It takes some imagination to recognize a skeletal being in it, which of course does not mean that later theorists have not tried it. In fact, skeletons first appeared in European mysticism and art in the late Middle Ages. The first art form in which skeletons were depicted on a large scale was the so-called dance of death. These images were popular in the period after the first great plague, in the 15th and 16th centuries. But the depiction in it wasn't necessarily as scary as the Grim Reaper is today. As the name Totentanz suggests, the skeletons were usually depicted dancing with living people. In a way, death was brought into life here. That changed again later on. However, the figure of the skeleton as a representation of death has been preserved.
Hello, I am Death
The Grim Reaper is of course more than just any random skeleton today! A few other symbols also belong to it very centrally. First of all, for example, he is wearing his characteristic black robe. That wasn't always the case. The skeletons in the Dances of Death were mostly still naked, if you can say that about a skeleton. Even the early representations of the Grim Reaper in the time that followed did not show a monk's habit. He was either also unclothed or wrapped in a simple linen. His current style of clothing is therefore not much older than 150 years. In contrast, the Grim Reaper's second major identifying feature, his scythe, has long been a symbol of death. That probably has to do with the logic of agriculture. After all, the agriculture from which the scythe comes stands in a certain way for transience. Or at least the two are mutually dependent. This connection can even be found in the Bible. “The corpses of the people lie like dung in the field, like sheaves behind the reaper; there is no one to collect them “ can be read in Jeremiah.
This is the first time today's death is even mentioned by its name:the reaper, the agricultural worker armed with a scythe. But it was a long way from then. Over the centuries, the image of today's Grim Reaper slowly came together. The god of death or companion into death became a farm hand. The late Middle Ages and the plague period added the idea of the human skeleton, followed by the hourglass and the cowl and there we have him, the Grim Reaper we know. And this image was to prove damn stable. After all, it can now also be found far beyond Europe ...
In Latin America, too, characters predominate that look quite similar to the Grim Reaper we know. This week's podcast is about one of them, the Mexican saint Santa Muerte. Together with the theologian Fabian, who runs the great Secta podcast, I talk about the history, faith and meaning of this Santa Muerte. And do you want more history now? Then sign up for the Déjà-vu history newsletter! I would be happy to see you there!