The most ancient burials. The meaning of ancient burials in the dictionary of rituals and sacraments

It is believed that the cemetery in the Valley of Jehoshaphat near the outer wall of East Jerusalem, where, by the way, tourists almost never go down, is one of the oldest in the world, and is still in use today. It is impossible to verify this, although, of course, there are tombstones and graves standing side by side here, erected 500 years BC, and in 500 AD, and in 1500, and very recent burials. This seems strange, because even simple calculation and logic would suggest that there would be physically no space for graves. But everything is not as simple as it seems at first glance.

If you go around the Archaeological Park in the Old City of Jerusalem, then literally around the corner you will see the view of the so-called Valley of Jehoshaphat, almost entirely occupied by the cemeteries of all three monotheistic religions - Jewish, Christian and Muslim. This area is also Muslim. although there are many Christian churches here. This is explained by the fact that directly opposite Old Jerusalem is the Mount of Olives, the shrine of Christianity with its sacred center, the Garden of Gethsemane.

However, this is a residential area, closely populated by Arabs, who built houses here to their taste. Well, you can only compare them with the Jewish quarters of Jerusalem.

The architectural style is completely absent here. True, there are parks, and inexplicable vacant lots, fences, parking lots, etc. But all this is very chaotic and motley. There is absolutely nothing for the eye to grab onto.

The hills of Jerusalem at sunset, the areas of Ras al-Amoud and Bat al-Hama, and the road to Bethlehem. All these are areas with an Arab population.

Jewish woman at the bus stop. Bus number 5A will take you directly to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

Tourist. Or maybe an intelligence officer, there are a lot of secret agents in disguise here.

Among Orthodox Jews there is a family with a pregnant woman. Unusually, her hair is uncovered, although this is also orthodox.

Excavations at the site of the City of David, the oldest part of the Jewish settlement in Jerusalem. Well, this is what houses looked like 3000 years ago.

Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

This part of the Valley of Jehoshaphat and the Kidron Creek flowing at the very bottom is not yet developed, and, surprisingly, is not occupied by a cemetery.

Here, however, the first Jewish burials appear, but they are rather the exception. From here you have a good overview of the entire eastern part of Jerusalem.

Opposite them is the same Archaeological Park near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a former Templar fortress. Here, at the very bottom of the wall, you can see huge stone blocks of the ancient Herodian wall, the one that continues to the Western Wall (Wailing Wall).

From here we descend into the Kidron Valley, or the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Directly opposite us (at sunset) is the Mount of Olives with villas and hotels, the Church of Mary Magdalene (with golden domes in the center), built with money from the Russian tsarist regime in 1888. Behind it, at the very top of the mountain, is a Benedictine monastery.

Below is a Jewish cemetery. It is so ancient that even the tombs located at the very bottom, carved into the rocks, changed owners many times. The tombs of the so-called prophets (it is unlikely that the prophets of the Old Testament were buried there) on the right, in the center with a pyramidal roof, is the tomb of the prophet Zechariah (in fact, just an ancient tomb that has nothing to do with Zechariah).

The higher up the mountain slope, the more organized this colossal cemetery looks. The graves here were placed one on top of the other, so the antiquity of the burial had no significance. Old graves were simply built on with new ones.

But below everything collapsed and crumbled. Of course, there are no bones there and cannot be. When the body decayed, the bones were collected and placed in a special box of very small sizes, buried separately, and the grave was vacated.

The cemetery approaches the city blocks directly. Thousands of Jews in all centuries dreamed of dying and being buried here, so that at the coming of the Messiah they would be the first to be resurrected. The Messiah must descend from heaven precisely on this Mount of Olives and enter Jerusalem through the Lion Gate, now walled up by Muslims.

The tombs are now all empty, they were completely plundered long ago, and only miraculously survived after all the countless wars.

Cemetery cat.

On the highway that circles east Jerusalem stands the beautiful Church of the Agony, on the site of the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed and where he was arrested. The entire church, built in 1924, is decorated with mosaics inside and out.

It was Christmas time, and even in the evening there were quite a lot of pilgrims in the church who had arrived by bus.

Down in the Kidron Valley in front of the Church of the Agony is a Christian cemetery. Interestingly, there are almost no inscriptions; the pilgrims and Christian figures buried here preferred to remain unknown to outsiders.

Suddenly a man galloped along on a horse, talking on his cell phone.

If you go to the other side of the valley and climb the stairs to the top, you can find yourself at the very wall of Jerusalem in a Muslim cemetery.

The view of the Mount of Olives from it is very impressive, but the Muslim cemetery itself looks very unpresentable.

Burials here also began a long time ago, almost from the moment of the conquest of Jerusalem by Muslims, and especially after the capture of Jerusalem and its defense from the crusaders by Saladin. The difference between the condition of Jewish and Christian graves and Muslim ones is amazing.

You walk around with one question: is it really impossible to put everything here in some order?

Almost all the tombstones are broken or damaged, and everything is littered with rubbish. I note that there were also battles here in 1967, but enough time has passed since then for everything to be restored.

Most of the burials were made here a long time ago, and there are no relatives left. According to Muslim beliefs, it is believed that those buried here will also be resurrected on the day of the coming of the Messiah. And so that the Jews would not enter Jerusalem, outstanding warriors of Arab origin were buried here.

This is how they have been looking at each other for centuries, dead Jews and Arabs.

Some graves are well-kept, you can’t say anything, but some are just lined with stones that came to hand.

The Lion Gate of Jerusalem, one of the most beautiful in the city, was walled up by the Arabs during the expulsion of the Crusaders. And also because of the fear of the Messiah of Jewish-Christian origin, in the naive hope of preventing this event through human efforts. It’s strange to see beautiful arches from ancient times covered with stones now. But what is, that is, no one is even trying to unwall them. It’s good to walk here during the day, but it’s very deserted and uncomfortable.

The cemetery in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, near the outer wall of East Jerusalem, is the oldest in the world. It still functions today. Here are tombstones erected 500 BC, 500 AD, 1500 and more recently.

The Valley of Jehoshaphat is entirely occupied by cemeteries - Jewish, Christian and Muslim.

The Jewish cemetery is so ancient that even the tombs located at the very bottom, carved into the rocks, changed owners many times. The higher up the mountain slope, the more organized the cemetery looks. The graves were placed one on top of the other, so the antiquity of the burial did not matter. Old graves were simply built on with new ones.

Everything below fell through and crumbled. There are no remains here. When the body decayed, the bones were placed in a special box and buried separately, and the grave was vacated.

The cemetery approaches the city blocks directly. Thousands of Jews in all centuries dreamed of dying and being buried here, so that at the coming of the Messiah they would be the first to be resurrected.

All the tombs are empty, they were plundered long ago and only miraculously survived after countless wars.

In the Kidron Valley, in front of the Church of the Agony, there is a Christian cemetery. There are almost no inscriptions here; the buried pilgrims and Christian figures preferred to remain unknown to outsiders.

On the other side of the valley, at the top, there is a Muslim cemetery.

Burials began here from the moment of the conquest of Jerusalem by Muslims, and especially after the capture of Jerusalem and its defense from the crusaders by Saladin.

There is complete chaos here.

Almost all the tombstones are broken, there is trash everywhere. The people buried here have no relatives left.

According to Muslim beliefs, it is believed that those buried here will also be resurrected on the day of the coming of the Messiah.

The graves of Jews and Arabs have been adjacent for centuries. Peace of mind for everyone.

There is something mystical about death. And where people find their final refuge, there is always a special, slightly creepy atmosphere. It excites the imagination, frightens and at the same time attracts. This is how superstitions, legends appear, and ridiculous rumors spread. The most interesting and unusual of them are collected here.

Graves of witches and wizards

If there was a bad rumor about a person during his lifetime, he was buried in a special way. The body could be burned, nailed to the ground, tied with belts, chopped up, tendons cut, or “sealed” with silver. Many peoples believed that a witch should be buried without a coffin, face down. Graves were often placed behind the fences of cemeteries, in forests, and at crossroads. They threw stones on top and planted thorny bushes.

If this is not done, the dead man will be able to get out. There is a belief that over time, holes and cracks appear on the graves of witches and sorcerers, through which they come to the surface. A large number of ants, bleeding grass and strange sounds from underground also indicate the place where the witch is buried. Without knowing these signs, it will be difficult to find him. But there are also well-known facts:

This cemetery is located in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. Well, I think many people have heard about the famous Salem witch trials of 1692. Then about 200 people were arrested on charges of witchcraft. Some were executed outright (hanged or crushed with stones), others died in prison.

True, in 1702 the authorities officially declared the process illegal, in 1957 all sentences were overturned, and in 1992 the cemetery became a memorial to the victims. By the way, in fact, those convicted of witchcraft were not buried there. There is not a single witch grave in Salem. But the legend attracts tourists there.

And in the forests of Michigan lies a witch who, according to legend, destroyed an entire city. If in 1874 there were about 1,500 residents in Pere Cheney, then by the beginning of the 20th century there were only 25 of them left. Two diphtheria epidemics wiped out most of the population, the rest left. And the disease, of course, was caused by a local witch.

They say she gave birth to a child out of wedlock and was banished. The baby died, and then the woman cursed the city. In the end, the witch was caught, hanged, and her body was buried. In that forest, dark figures and ghostly lights still appear, and children’s laughter can be heard. But get real photos of ghosts So far it hasn't been possible.

Graves of vampires and ghouls

Almost all nations have legends about the dead who drink living blood. Usually such a fate awaited suicides, sorcerers, excommunications... and many others. And, of course, those who have been bitten by a vampire. Naturally, people were afraid of these creatures and took measures to ensure that the deceased did not leave his grave after death. And for this it is important to properly bury someone who can become a vampire.

The body should be burned or at least pierced with an aspen stake and laid so that it is oriented from east to west. It is advisable to separate the head and place it between the feet. To prevent the corpse from eating its shroud, you need to slip something under the chin (stone, iron). You can also pour sawdust or grains into the coffin so that the vampire begins to count them and does not have time to get out before dawn. Here are the most famous burials:

In north London there is the old Highgate Cemetery. It has been attracting attention for a long time. Reports of vampires often appear, and suspicious graves are marked with the letter V. Visitors find dug up and headless corpses, empty coffins. Several bodies were exhumed, and they looked strange.

Plump, well-fed... not completely dead... Exist real photos of vampires, they look exactly like this. But everything is explained more simply. The corpse always swells, this is one of the stages of decomposition. There is blood on the lips. If a stake is pierced through the body, it may groan as the accumulated gases are forced past the vocal cords.

The Père Lachaise cemetery in France is also considered a haven for vampires. It all started in 1848, when some madman dug up several graves, pulled out bodies and badly damaged them. He believed that he had to do this. Since then, rumors have spread. However, the appearance of some tombstones is suggestive.

The symbolism of the burials looks ominous. Skulls and bats, which are considered the visual embodiment of vampires, fatalistic inscriptions... However, in the 19th century in Western Europe this was accepted. According to another version, the image of a bat with outstretched wings served as protection from evil.

Wandering graves and restless crypts

There is a belief that the earth will not accept the ashes of a person if they have not been buried properly. Horrific stories of graves being moved have flooded the Internet. In general, this phenomenon has been known for a long time, but the evidence is poor. Everyone rewrites the same texts, which mention non-existent cities and people. There are no real photos or documents.

Normal explanations too. Perhaps there are forces and energies at work here that we don’t yet know anything about. For example, when it exploded Chelyabinsk meteorite, strange things also happened... negative pressure and much more... But in the case of the graves there was something different. If they moved anywhere at all. Here are a couple of more or less plausible stories:

This event took place even before the revolution in a remote Russian village. At night, a mound of earth with a half-rotten cross appeared in one hut. They tried to remove the grave, but it turned out that there was also a lot of earth under the floor. When they took her out, human remains were found there.

The cross was similar to those installed in an abandoned cemetery near the village. How all this ended up in the hut, no one understood. The grave was removed and the bones were reburied. But the house had to be abandoned. Since then, people have avoided the terrible place.

The Chase family crypt is located in Barbados. It is carved out of the rock and covered with a marble slab. Every time it was opened, the coffins located there turned out to be turned on their sides, standing upright, scattered... They seemed to be crawling around the room. This was repeated from 1812 to 1820.

Various versions have been put forward, from Voodoo magic and Masonic rites to floods and shifts in the earth's crust. In the mid-20th century, researcher Eric Russell identified a number of patterns in these phenomena. He believed that metal coffins were moved by water under the influence of gravity and a magnetic field.

So what is it? True or just gossip? I don’t know.. But here the materials are collected all over the Internet, I couldn’t even identify the original sources. And the dead cannot confirm or deny the rumors that circulate about them. Waiting for better times, they will keep their ancient secrets.

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About 12 thousand years ago, people staged a solemn funeral ritual in honor of a mysterious woman. The group filled her grave with a variety of items. What is especially surprising is that at the end of the ritual they threw the remains of their food into the pit. Recently, traces of this burial were found in Israel in a cave where other remains of ancient people had previously been found.

Recent Study

Archaeologists have been busy studying the remains since the day they were discovered. At the moment, it has been possible to reconstruct the exact order of actions that the funeral feast required among the ancients. Scientists publish all discoveries in a journal dedicated to anthropology. As it turned out, the burial belongs to representatives of the Natufian culture, which was widespread in the Levant from 15 to 11 thousand years ago.
The bearers of this culture lived in groups and practiced sedentism even before the development of farming. This is their distinctive feature - in those days, most people lived in teams of hunters and gatherers, wandering from place to place. The Natufians were also among the first to conduct organized funeral rituals.

Distinctive feature of the find

So, the Natufian culture was among the first to attach importance to burial rituals. Perhaps it was then that the structure of society began to become more complex. This conclusion was reached by Leor Grosman from the University of Israel, who has been researching in the cave for eight years. The ceremonial ritual was associated with one of the longest funeral banquets ever discovered by scientists. In addition, he is among the oldest. The banquet featured an impressive menu - fish, mountain gazelles, foxes, martens, snakes and hares, all of which were discovered at the burial site. The main dish was fried turtles - the remains of more than eighty animals were found, that is, about twenty kilograms of turtle meat were eaten. Apparently there were a lot of people here, although it is difficult for scientists to determine their exact number.

Six stages of preparation

As scientists have determined, the funeral ceremony required serious preparation, which took place in six clearly planned stages. First of all, representatives of the Natufian culture excavated a hole in the cave to make a grave. After this, they placed a limestone bowl in the grave, filling it with strange objects, such as a deer antler, a piece of red ocher, several turtle shells and fragments of chalk. Then it was all covered with ashes. Only after this the woman’s body was placed in the grave, and it was given an almost sitting position. The leg of a wild boar was placed under her head, and several more turtle shells were placed in the pelvic area. In addition, other objects were located around the woman and on top of the body, unusual even for Natufian burials. These include seashells and eagle feathers. The strangest find is a severed human leg, that is, a fragment of the remains of another person. The fifth stage was a feast, after which the remains of food were thrown into the grave. What seems like garbage to us was then completely appropriate - just to crush the body. At the sixth stage, the grave was covered with a large piece of limestone weighing 75 kilograms. This is the largest piece of limestone ever found in a Natufian burial.

Mysteries of a mysterious burial

It turns out that the funeral ritual required considerable preparation. Hunting and gathering animals probably took weeks. Scientists are still not clear why this woman received such an unusual grave, while in the neighborhood there are much more modest burials. Apparently, judging by her grave, she was a very important person. Objects placed around the body hint at the activities of a shaman, unique to her community. In addition, her skeleton shows deformity and she probably walked with a limp. The kind of funeral ritual this woman received shows that the Natufian culture had a complex system of social interaction. Small teams of hunters and gatherers could not develop such complex traditions because they moved too often to create strong bonds with specific groups of people. Natufian culture was distinguished by symbolism and a special ideology. Now scientists will have to start looking for other graves with a similar design, and perhaps even more unusual ones. In addition, there are also cultures to be studied that borrowed their customs from the Natufians.

ANCIENT BURIALS

Ancient burials

The first known burials in human history are those of Neanderthals. In 1908, the Swiss Otto Gauser made an amazing discovery: he found in the valley of the Wesern River (France) the grave of a Neanderthal youth who lived several tens of thousands of years ago. In a shallow grave, a skeleton lay on its right side, its right arm under its head, its legs bent. Near the skeleton lay flint tools and several burnt animal bones: they were given to the dead man on his way to eternity. In 1938, the burial of a Neanderthal boy was discovered in Uzbekistan. His bones lay in a shallow depression. Around the skull, the horns of a Siberian goat were stuck into the ground, and they formed something like a fence around the boy’s skull.

These findings convinced many that human sympathy and respect for the dead dates back to the most ancient times in human history. The famous archaeologist A.P. Okladnikov wrote: “... the Neanderthal was already convinced that the dead man was not just “sleeping”, that special care was needed for him, qualitatively different than for a living person. He did not just leave the dead man on the surface earth in the position in which death found him, but gave him, while his body was not yet numb, a certain, strictly maintained position; he laid him not as he had to, but in a certain direction - with his head to the east or west, and finally, he placed him in a hole and covered it with earth. It follows that the Neanderthal had already developed some ideas about a qualitatively different form of existence for the dead after death, i.e., the first ideas about “life beyond the grave.”

The first indisputable funeral rites are also associated with the first era of the Late Paleolithic. The dead were often buried in the same place where they had lived before, and the people themselves left this place.

Sometimes the corpse was placed directly into the fire of the hearth; the body burned or turned into ashes and ash. In other places, the dead were buried in specially dug graves, often covering their heads and feet with stones. In some places stones were placed on the head, chest and legs of the dead man, as if they wanted to prevent the dead from getting up. Perhaps that is why the dead were sometimes tied up and buried in a very crouched position. The dead were sometimes left in the cave, and the entrance was blocked with large stones. Often the corpse or just the head was sprinkled with red paint. Jewelry, stone tools, and food were placed in the grave with the dead.

For many peoples at the stage of primitive society, as S. Ryazanov notes in the book “Philosophy of Death,” above-ground burials are also characteristic. Thus, the primitive tribes of the Australian aborigines dried the bodies of their dead over a slow fire, removed their skin, painted them with ocher and placed them naked on a platform.

Among another Australian tribe, the body of the deceased is placed on a platform woven from branches, on the branches of a tree, and left there until the entire skeleton is exposed. After this, the bones are wrapped in bark and taken to a special clearing, where members of the tribe sit around them and cry. After this funeral ceremony, the bones are taken back to the tree and finally left there.

S. Krasheninnikov, who visited Kamchatka in 1737-1740, noted the burial ritual of the Kamchadals. Having tied a belt to the dead man's neck, he is pulled out of the yurt and almost immediately left to be eaten by dogs. It was believed that a dead person eaten by dogs would have a good dog team in the next world.

Echoes of the customs of above-ground burials are preserved in the religious views of fire worshipers professing the teachings of Zarathustra (between the 10th and mid-6th centuries BC; prophet and reformer of the ancient Iranian religion). Religion prohibits burning or burying the dead in the ground, so as not to desecrate fire and earth, so their bodies are given to birds to be eaten.

Nowadays, 100 thousand Parsis live in Bombay - descendants of the ancient fire-worshipping Parsis. Here, in Bombay, there are gloomy Towers of Silence, which serve for the funeral rites of the Parsis. All the trees under these towers are usually covered with clouds of vultures and crows, patiently waiting in the wings. On funeral days, only relatives of the deceased have access to the Towers of Silence. The body of the deceased Parsee is carried up a steep staircase on a stretcher to the top of the tower and placed on a grate, completely naked. The carriers run headlong downwards as the vultures immediately pounce on their prey. Within an hour, only bones remain of the dead body. When the vultures have done their job, the servants of the Towers of Silence use special tongs to throw the remains under the grate into a deep well at the bottom of the tower. In this way, the non-desecration of the four sacred elements is observed: fire, water, earth and sky.

In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, a new form of burial was born - cremation. A new idea appears - the idea of the souls of ancestors, which, falling with the smoke of the funeral pyre into heaven, must contribute to all heavenly operations (rain, fog, snow) for the benefit of those remaining on Earth.

In the era of antiquity until the period of the Roman Empire, along with burial in the ground, cremation also existed. Roman urns with ashes were usually installed in a columbarium (lat. columbarium - dovecote niche). These were the names of the niches in which urns containing the ashes of the dead were placed. They were located in rectangular or oval-shaped rooms specially built for this purpose, which were also built underground and contained up to 700 niches with walled-up urns. Basically, columbaria were burial places for poor citizens.

The ritual of corpse burning was very widespread. In addition to the countries of the Greco-Roman world, it was observed in India, Indochina, China, Mongolia, among the ancient Finns and Slavs. Thus, in pre-Christian times, there were two main methods of burial in the world - burning and burial in the ground. The latter was resorted to, in particular, by the ancient Egyptians and Jews, from whom it was borrowed by Christianity and spread in both parts of the Roman Empire instead of the previously common burning of corpses there.

The graves of the ancient Jews were simple holes dug in the ground, or caves, of which there are many in Palestine. The entrance to the cave was blocked with stones. Sometimes the graves were carved into rocks and inside looked like a large room with small side chambers. Only kings and prophets were buried in cities. The rich usually had family graves and liked to carve them high into the rocks. It was considered humiliating not to be buried in the grave of one's fathers. Monuments made of stones or carved from rock were sometimes placed over the graves. After the winter rains, the graves were whitened with chalk in order to warn fellow believers from desecration when touching the grave, and therefore Jesus Christ likened the Pharisees to the painted ones, i.e. outwardly beautiful coffins, inside filled with the bones of the dead and all uncleanness (Gospel of Matthew, ch. 23, 27).

The Mongols, on the contrary, kept the burial place of their khans secret. It is still unknown where Genghis Khan is buried. One of the Mongolian chronicles says that a herd of 10 thousand horses was driven over the grave of Genghis Khan in order to raze the burial site to the ground.

Remembering ancient Egypt, one cannot help but mention the practice of embalming the dead.

The oldest human mummy is 7041 years old. It was found not in Egypt, but in Chile, and is currently located in Santiago, in the National Museum of Nature. But, of course, we associate the word “mummy”, first of all, with the culture of Ancient Egypt.

For the procedure of embalming the dead and the burial ceremony, the priestly caste created a special ceremony. A manuscript on death and the preservation of the bodies of the dead, later called the Book of the Dead, was created by priests during the first Egyptian dynasty around 4266 BC. e.

The mummification process was quite long and painstaking, it lasted 70 days. Immediately after the supposed death of a person, the priest made an incision on the left side of the deceased’s abdomen and hastily removed the knife so as not to incur the wrath of the deceased’s relatives. This custom arose as a result of cases of premature misattribution of death. Then the assistants removed the internal organs, with the exception of the heart - the seat of the soul and thought, thoroughly washed them with aromatic liquids and filled them with peace and aromatic substances. Then everything was put back in place and stitched up, rubbing with embalming substances. Using a clever hook, the brain was removed piece by piece through the nostrils of the deceased, and the cranial cavity was also filled with spices. The body was washed with a saline solution and left for 70 days, then washed again, rubbed with gum, wrapped in cloth and placed in a wooden sarcophagus.

Mourners were indispensable participants in funerals in the ancient East. It depended on them how the funeral would go, whether “their singing would fill our eyes with tears” (Jeremiah). The mourners walked in the funeral procession with loose hair and bare breasts. For example, the Egyptians believed that the crying of professional mourners could bring the dead back to life.

In ancient times, relatives of the deceased loudly complained about the blows of an incomprehensible fate. According to custom, they also beat their chests and sprinkled ashes on their heads.

Many pre-Christian funeral rites featured elaborate ceremonies and bloody sacrifices. The most severe and cruel customs were at the funerals of Scythian leaders. Here is how the Greek historian Herodotus (IV century BC) describes them: after the death of the king, they cut the belly of the deceased, cleaned it and filled it with saffron, crushed incense, celery and anise seeds. Then they covered the king’s body with wax and transported it to Scythian villages and camps. And only after this the body was buried in a large quadrangular grave in a place chosen during the life of the king. As a sign of sadness, simple Scythians cut off the tip of their ear, their hair, made cuts on their hands, ripped open the skin on their forehead and nose, and pierced their left hand with arrows.

Together with the king they buried one of his concubines, as well as a cupbearer, a cook, a groom, a servant, an orderly, and then horses, the “firstborn” of all livestock; they placed gold and silver bowls, and a high hill was built over it all.

In those days when adherents of Christianity were persecuted, burials were carried out secretly, in catacombs, mines, and quarries. For burials in catacombs, wall niches were used - they were covered with slabs or walled up. Such catacombs were discovered in Alexandria, Rome, Naples, and Syracuse.

Christianity banned cremation as contrary to the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, and by 400 cremation had virtually ceased in the Roman Empire. In 768, an official church ban followed.

In medieval Europe, ordinary peasants and townspeople were buried in common graves, which were opened every time a new dead person needed to be buried.

With the establishment of Christianity as the state religion, a single funeral ritual that has survived to this day was formed. Not only the movements of numerous sects and heresies, but even wars, revolutions and changes in the social system could not change and shake it.

Rituals and sacraments. 2012