Cult of the dead
Among many peoples it has been the custom to preserve the memory of the dead by images of them placed upon their graves or tombs, usually with some accompanying inscription recording their names and often their achievements. This sepulchral iconography began in Egypt, the portrait statue of King Djoser (second king of the 3rd dynasty [c. 2686–c. 2613 bc]), found in the serdab (worship chamber; from the Arabic word for cellar) of the Step Pyramid being the oldest known example. The Egyptian images, however, had a magical purpose: they not only recorded the features of the deceased but also provided a locus for his ka, the mysterious entity that constituted an essential element of the personality. The sculptured gravestones of classical Athens deserve special notice, for they are among the noblest products of funerary art. They are expressive of a restrained grief for those who had departed to the virtual extinction of Hades. The deceased are often shown performing some familiar act for the last time. The inscriptions are very brief and usually record only the name and parentage; sometimes the word farewell is added. Etruscan mortuary art is characterized by the effigy of the deceased, sometimes with his wife, represented as reclining on the cover of the funerary casket. These images are obviously careful portraits, but whether they had some magical use as substitute bodies or are only commemorative is unknown. Roman funerary images seem to have been essentially commemorative, as were those of Palmyra.
Christianity has provided the richest legacy of funerary monuments. In the catacomb art of the 4th and 5th centuries, the deceased was sometimes depicted on the plaster covering of the niche in which his body was laid. From the early Middle Ages onward, the more affluent dead were represented in sculptured effigy or engraved in outline on stone or brass. In this tomb iconography, they are shown in a variety of postures: lying, kneeling, seated, standing, and sometimes on horseback. They are generally presented in the dress appropriate to their office or social standing: kings wear crowns, knights their armour; bishops are in copes and mitres and ladies in the fashionable attire of the day. This iconography is patently commemorative of the appearance in life, the achievements, and the status of the persons concerned. In the later Middle Ages, however, there was a remarkable innovation in this funerary art, which was designed to emphasize the horror and degradation of death. In what are known as memento mori tombs, below the effigies of the deceased as they were in life, there were placed effigies of their naked decaying corpses or skeletons. Such tomb sculpture reflected a contemporary obsession with the corruption of death.
Psychological and sociological aspects of death
The Paleolithic burials reveal that the pattern of man’s reaction to the fact and phenomena of death has been set from the dawn of culture. Unlike the other animals, man has been unable to ignore the mysterious cessation of activity and lapse of consciousness that cause his body to decay and befall members of his own kind. Death has, accordingly, constituted a problem for man, and he has felt impelled to take special action to cope with it. The pattern of his reaction has been twofold: confronted with the deaths of his companions, he has recognized an obligation to attend to their needs as he has conceived them, believing that they continued to exist in some form, either in the grave or in an underworld to which the grave gave access. But man’s concern with death has not been confined to his tendance of the dead; for in the deaths of his fellows he has seen a presage of his own demise. This anticipation on the part of the living of the experience of dying has been a factor of immense psychological and social import. It is essentially a human characteristic; it stems from a consciousness of time, of which the immense cultural significance is only now beginning to be properly evaluated.
Awareness of time in its three categories of past, present, and future has decisively contributed to man’s success in the struggle for existence. For it has enabled him to draw upon past experience in the present to anticipate future needs. Thus, from the making of the first stone tools to the complex structure of his modern technological civilization, man has sought by planning to render himself economically secure and to improve the standard of his living. But his time consciousness, which has made this immense achievement possible, is an ambivalent endowment. For, although it has enabled man to win economic security, it has also made him acutely aware of his own mortality and the inevitability of his own demise. Hence, his anticipation of death presents him with a profound emotional challenge, unknown to other species. The repercussions of this challenge can be traced in almost every aspect of his social and cultural life; but it is in his religions that man’s reaction to death finds its most significant expression. All religion is concerned with postmortem security—with linking mortal man to an eternal realm—whether it be achieved by ritual magic, divine assistance, or mystic enlightenment.
Modern notions of death
Continuation of traditional responses
Religious rites and customs continue to be practiced, because of conservatism, long after the ideas and beliefs that originally inspired them may be forgotten or abandoned. This is particularly true with regard to rites and customs pertaining to death. It is difficult to assess to what extent in the more sophisticated societies of the modern world the traditional eschatologies are still effectively held. Although a general skepticism obviously manifests itself toward the medieval imagery of death and judgment, of purgatory, heaven, and hell, modern modes of thinking have not lessened the mystery of death and its impact on the emotions. Indeed, in modern society, where expectation of life has been prolonged and standards of living raised, the negation of death is probably felt more keenly and also more hopelessly than in any other age.