ancient Burial Practices

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greek burial practices were highly regulated and the Greek funeral ritual consisted of three parts: the prosthesis, the ekphora and the perideipnon.

The funeral allowed for the surviving relatives to show the depth of their pride and the strength of their relationships

It also gave an opportunity for families to show their wealth and prove their status by staging very complicated funerals and mourning in a public fashion.

Ancient Rome

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• Romans could bury or burn their dead, practices known as inhumation (burial) and cremation (burning), but at certain times one practice was used more often more than the other practice, and family traditions may have resisted the current fashions.

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• practice of cremation was the normal burial practice and embalming was referred to as a foreign custom. When a person died, he would be washed and laid out on a couch, and dressed in his finest clothes and crowned only if he had earned one in his lifetime

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• A coin would be placed on his mouth, under the tongue, or on the eyes so he could pay the ferryman or charon to row him to the land of the dead. After being laid out for 8 days, he would be taken out for burial.

Ancient Egypt

Used process of mummification