A catafalque is a raised bier or platform, often movable, that is used to support the casket, coffin, or body of the deceased during a funeral or memorial service. Catafalque decorations are known as castrum doloris.
The term originates from the Italian catafalco, which means scaffolding. The most notable Italian catafalque was the one designed for Michelangelo by his fellow artists in 1564.
In the United States, during a lying-in-state under the Capitol Rotunda, the casket is placed on the catafalque first ...
A chamber tomb is a tomb for burial used in many different cultures. In the case of individual burials, the chamber is thought to signify a higher status for the interree than a simple grave. Built from rock or sometimes wood, the chambers could also serve as places for storage of the dead from one family or social group and were often used over long periods for the placemnet of multiple burials. There are numerous terms for them depending on the period, design and region in question. Most were built from large stones or megaliths and ...
A chambered cairn is a burial monument, usually constructed during the Neolithic, consisting of a cairn of stones inside which a sizeable (usually stone) chamber was constructed. Some chambered cairns are also passage-graves.
Typically, the chamber is larger than a cist, and will contain a larger number of interments, which are either excarnated bones or inhumations (cremations). Most were situated near a settlement, and served as that community's "graveyard".
Chambered cairn - Chambered cairns in Scotland. Including:
In funeral services, a viewing (sometimes called a funeral visitation in the United States and Canada) is the time that the family and friends come to see the deceased after they have been prepared by a funeral home. Most bodies that are viewed in the Western world are embalmed. A viewing may take place at the funeral parlour, in a family home or at a church or chapel prior to the actual funeral service. Some cultures, such as the Māori of New Zealand, often take t ...
Coffin plates are decorative adornments attached to a coffin that can contain various inscriptions like the name and death date of the deceased or a simple terms of endearment.
They are usually made of a soft metal like lead, pewter, silver, brass, copper or tin. Coffin plates go back as far as the the 1600s and were reserved for people of wealth. Through the centuries, more people were able to afford the luxury of a coffin plate and with the industrial revolution the cost of the plates by the mid-1800s decreased so much that almost every family could afford ...
A cist (IPA [kɪst]) is a small stone-built coffin-like box used to hold the bodies of the dead (notably during the Bronze Age in Britain and occasionally in Native American burials). The sides are usually built of single slabs.
A cist may have been associated with other monuments, perhaps under a cairn or long barrow. It would not be uncommon to find several cists close together within the same cairn or barrow. Occasionally, ornaments have been found within a cist under excavation, which could indi ...
In medieval terms, a crypt (from the Latin crypta and the Greek kryptē) is a stone chamber or vault, usually beneath the floor of a church, usually containing tombs of important personalities such as saints or saints' relics, or high ranking church officials. Churches were occasionally raised above ground level to accommodate a crypt at the ground level, such as St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim, Germany. Crypts are typically found below the apse such as at Saint-Germain en Auxerre, but occasionally found beneath churc ...
Among the ancient Egyptians, canopic jars were covered funerary vases, normally composed of clay, intended to keep the viscera of mummified corpses. All the viscera were not kept in a single canopic jar, but rather each organ in its own.
In addition to hieroglyphs, figures of gods was often painted on the jars. These were the Four sons of Horus, the guardians of the organs:
Imset (depicted as a human) was responsible for the liver;
Hapi (a baboon) for the lungs;
Duamutef (a jackal) for the stomach;
Kebechsenef (a ...
A burial liner (also known as a grave liner), in a burial of human remains, is an enclosure that is placed over a coffin, which is then buried in the ground. The casket serves as the inner enclosure of a deceased person; the liner serves as the outer enclosure.
A burial liner is similar to a burial vault. However, unlike a burial vault, the liner only covers the top and sides of a casket, whereas a burial vault completely encloses a casket. The bottom of the casket in this case is in direct contact with the ground. A bur ...
A sarcophagus is a stone container for a coffin or body. The word comes from Greek "sarx" meaning flesh, and "Phagos" meaning to eat, so sarkophagos, which means "eater of flesh". The 5th century BC Greek historian, Herodotus, believed erroneously that sarcophagi (the plural) were carved from a special kind of rock that consumed the flesh of the corpse inside.
Sarcophagi were usually carved, decorated or built ornately. Some were built to be freestanding above ground, as a part of an elaborate tomb or tombs. Others were ...
Beehive tombs, also known as Tholos tombs (plural tholoi), are a style of Mycenaean chamber tomb from the Bronze Age.
Beehive tombs developed from Mycenaean shaft tombs, which first appear around 1600 BC. After about 1500 BC, beehive tombs became more widespread. They were built as corbelled arches, layers of stone and dirt placed closer together as the arch tapers toward the top of the tomb. This style is probably an influence from Minoan tombs. Each tomb usually contains more than one person, in various places i ...
Canopus was an ancient Egyptian coastal town in the Nile Delta. Its site is in the eastern outskirts of modern-day Alexandria, around 25 kilometres from the centre of that city.
The god Osiris was worshipped at Canopus under the form of a vase with a human head. Through an old misunderstanding, the name "canopic jar" was applied by early Egyptologists to any vase with a human or animal head.
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Ancient Egyptians devoted their entire life to afterlife. However there was no concept of heaven or hell, instead one either existed among the indestructables (immortality) or one ceased to exist. The Egyptians believed that there were six important aspects that made up a human being. The lack of any one of these would mean one would cease to exist hence a mummified body lasts forever. The six aspects are:
The Physical Body
The ...
A funeral home is a facility that provides a number of functions dealing with the deceased person and their families.
For those who want to make their wishes known before death, funeral homes offer prearrangement services. This is where a person records their wishes for the service and the disposition of their body. The person can often pay for the funeral beforehand, or specify payment after death has occurred.
Funeral homes will make arrangements with families of the recently deceased. Families can arrange a service according ...
Headstones in the Japanese Cemetery in Broome, Western Australia
A cemetery in rural Spain
A typical late 20th century headstone in the United States
Headstone in an English cemetery
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In the United States, the distinction between "lying in repose" and "lying in state" is not much observed. "Lying in state" is usually carried out in the Rotunda of the Capitol.
The remains of presidents who die in office generally lie in repose in the East Room of the White House. The body of a deceased former president generally lies in repose in his home state. However, when JFK lay in repose, the term "lying in repose" mea ...
The Pharaoh:
In Ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh was the highest political and religious authority. The Pharaoh represented the gods. Long before they died they ordered the construction of their final resting place. The Pyramids of Egypt are the final resting place of the most notable and famous Pharaohs. How such colossal structures were built using the technology available at the time is not fully understood.
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