Hail to thee, O my father Osiris, I have come

and I have embalmed this my flesh so that

my body may not decay.
Inscription on one of the linen wrappings of the Egyptian mummy
of Thothmes II, 1493-1479 B.C.
Egypt
Ancient Egypt, with its mummies and vast pyramids seems
uniquely characterised by objects associated with death. These
monuments, inscriptions, and the opulent artifacts found around
the bodies within them betray a complex belief in the afterlife.
After death, Ancient Egyptians believed that the Ka, an entity
closely associated with the physical body was able to eat, drink
and smell, and essentially enjoy the afterlife.

The soul, or Ba could not survive without the body, and whats
more, had to be able to recognize its body to be able to return to
it. Thus the bodys preservation was essential in order for a
person both to reach the afterlife, and to be able to enjoy it. To
this end early Egyptians would leave their dead in the desert to be
preserved in the dry surroundings, but increasingly mummification
became common and remained so for three millennia.

Mummification
The mummification process involved ritually washing the corpse
and then removing any organs that might contribute to the rotting
process. Therefore the liver, stomach, lungs and intestines were
all removed and placed in canopic jars to be interred along with
the body. The brain, an organ not believed to be of much use in
the afterlife was removed through the nostrils, and often disposed
of.

The heart would be left in situ, or placed near the throat, due to
the belief that the heart was the source of a persons life force and
that any damage to it would result in a second death. After this,
the body would be dried out and padded so that it retained its
lifelike proportions. It would be preserved with natron or bitumen.
Indeed the term mummy is thought to be from the Arabic name
for bitumen or the embalmed corpse mumiya.

Before the final process of wrapping the body and entombing it, a
priest, wearing the mask of the Jackal-headed god Anubis (who
oversaw the judging of the soul in the afterlife) would perform the
last rites. This involved a ceremonial opening of the mouth to
grant the dead the power to speak and eat in the next life. The
body would then be wrapped in hundreds of yards of line
bandages and decorated, often with the persons face painted
over the carefully placed bandages. The whole process is thought
to have taken up to 70 days. These mummies would be put in a
series of coffins, each inscribed inside and out with magical texts
and symbols to facilitate the passage to the afterlife.

Ancient Mesopotamia
The Mesopotamians, a civilisation existing in and around modern
day Iraq around the same time as the time of Pharaohs of Egypt
had a very different view of death. For them, death was
something to be feared. In the Mesopotamian tradition, humans
were created from clay mixed with the blood of a sacrificed god.
Thus, being partly immortal, the spirit did not die after death but
lingered on to suffer a dismal afterlife. While retaining all the
needs and emotions of the living, after death the soul would live a
dark and subterranean existence eating only dust and clay in a
place deprived of drinkable water. The only respite from this
existence was the food and offerings of their descendants. This
meant that the confiscation of an enemys body from the care of
the family was a terrible punishment.

The dead were largely feared in Ancient Mesopotamia. It was

thought that distressed, murdered and evil spirits could escape
the land of the death to cause havoc among the living through
entering the bodies of the living through their ears. Likewise, the
dead could rise up and torment the living if not given a proper
burial, so even the bodies of enemies were buried in a manner
such as to prevent this from happening. Most were buried in
cemeteries, but the bodies of babies have been found under the
floors of houses, often curiously buried in cooking pots.
Due to the inevitability of the prospect of a grim afterlife, whether
you were good or bad, very few provisions were made for the
afterlife itself. Ancient Mesopotamian literature writes of the
goddess Ishtar who, in passing through the gates to the
underworld gradually had to give up all her possessions before
she could meet with Ereshkigal, the queen of the underworld.
However grave goods were still common.

These often took the form of pots for food and water, and indeed
skeletons from around 2900B.C. have commonly been found with
their hands held to their mouths cupping a small bowl. Other
grave goods are thought to be for use on the way to the afterlife,
as gifts to the gods, or in the cases of high-ranking individuals, as
displays of personal wealth.

Ancient Greece and Rome

The treatments of death in Ancient Greece and Rome were rather
similar, largely due to the extensive borrowing of Greek culture by
early Romans who interpreted their own gods through existing
Greek mythology. This meant that their conceptions of the afterlife
shared many elements. Both believed in a similar god of the
underworld, Hades in Greek and Pluto in Roman, who ruled over
the underworld with his wife Persephone or Proserpina.

After death, souls would give an account of their lives to three

judges and be consigned either to the Fields of Asphodel, or the
Pit of Tartarus. In some literature, if a soul had been exceptionally
good it might go to Elysium, or the Isles of the Blessed, a place
usually reserved for heroes and the gods. En-route to Hades, one
had to be ferried across the infernal River Styx by the demonic
boatman Charon. A coin was often placed in the mouth of the
body as his payment, with some believing that the greater the
value of the offering the smoother the passage to Hades. Some
souls were even provided with honey cakes to give to the
demonic three-headed dog Cerberus that guarded the gates of
the underworld.

A proper burial was important to both the Greeks and the

Romans, who believed that the dead could linger as ghosts if the
living failed to carry out the appropriate funeral rites. In Greece,
immortality could only be attained through remembrance by the
living. To this end monumental earth mounds, rectangular tombs,
and elaborate marble stelai and statues were erected. The
Romans took death equally seriously, some having their tombs
constructed in their lifetime to ensure a proper send off.

Though most people were buried in early Rome, in later centuries

cremation became popular, with urns buried under grand
commemorative monuments. Despite the increasing popularity of
cremation, Romans held onto the curious practice of os resectum
in which a severed finger joint was buried where the rest of the
body had been cremated. It has been suggested that this was to
purify the family of the deceased while mourning was taking
place, or could be seen as a symbolic burial after cremation.

For both the Greeks and the Romans attention to the dead would
continue well past the funeral. The Greeks believed that the dead
were capable of malevolent action if food offerings were not
made. The Romans continued this practice, sometimes going as
far as to incorporate feeding tubes into the grave to facilitate the
practice of giving food and wine to the dead.

Ancient China
In ancient China it was believed that death was just a
prolongation of life. Instead of believing in individual salvation per
se, the ancient Chinese believed that the dead would continue in
the spirit life much as they had done in this life. Thus provisions
were made for those that had died for use in the afterlife.

In noble and royal funerals these tombs and grave goods could
rival those used by the living. In some royal Shang Dynasty
(1600B.C. 1046 B.C.) tombs a practice emerged of taking
servants and concubines to the grave with them, and whats
more, the hundreds of skeletons uncovered have indicated that
these sacrifices may have been interred alive. However as time
passed human sacrifice stopped. By the Han dynasty (206 B.C.
220 A.D.), pottery figures were increasingly used instead.
However this did not make these graves any less impressive: Liu
Shengs tomb in Mangheng was designed like an actual house,
complete with windows, stables, storerooms, cookbooks and a
bathroom, while the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors in 1974
uncovered a massive burial complex, complete with 8,000
soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses,
acrobats, strongmen and officials.

This tradition would only get more popular. By the Song Dynasty
(960-1279 A.D.) fairly cheap grave goods could be mass
produced, giving the less well off the chance for a sumptuous
afterlife.

In addition to this, it was believed that children had obligations to

their ancestors for the sacrifice they had undertaken in having
children and that as in life these duties continued even after
death. Spirits in ancient China had the power to influence
peoples lives on earth and that if they were not cared for by the
living they might return, causing untold mischief. Thus an
ancestor cult emerged, with people making offerings and
observing ceremonies for their line of descendants.

Even the dead were buried with sets of bronze vessels, thought to
be so that they could continue making offerings to their own
ancestors. This developed further with Confucian influence, which
instigated spirit tablets to be placed in the family shrine and
revered, with offerings to remoter ancestors being made at longer
intervals than to those who had just died.