Funeral

A funeral is a ceremony marking a person's death. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from the funeral itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor. These customs vary widely between cultures, and between religious affiliations within cultures. In some cultures the dead are worshipped; this is commonly called ancestor worship. The word comes from the Latin funus, which had a variety of meanings, including the corpse and the funerary rites themselves.

Final disposition of the dead

Some cultures place the dead in tombs of various sorts, either individually, or in specially designated tracts of land that house tombs. Burial in a graveyard is one common form of tomb. In some places, burials are impractical because the ground water is too high; there tombs are placed above ground, as was the case in New Orleans, Louisiana. Elsewhere, a separate building for a tomb is usually reserved for the socially prominent and wealthy. Especially grand above-ground tombs are called mausoleums. Other buildings used as tombs include the crypts in churches; burial in these places is again usually a privilege given to the socially prominent dead. In more recent times, however, this has often been forbidden by hygiene laws.

Related Topics:
Tomb - Burial - Grave - New Orleans, Louisiana - Mausoleum - Crypt

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Burial was not always permanent. In some areas, burial grounds needed to be re-used because of limited space. In these areas, once the dead have decomposed to skeletons, the bones are removed; after their removal they can be placed in an ossuary.

Related Topics:
Decomposed - Skeleton - Ossuary

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"Burial at sea" means the deliberate disposal of a corpse into the ocean, wrapped and tied with weights to make sure it sinks. It is a common practice in navies and sea-faring nations; in the Church of England, special forms of funeral service were added to the Book of Common Prayer to cover it. Science fiction writers have frequently analogized with "Burial in space".

Related Topics:
Burial at sea - Ocean - Navies - Church of England - Book of Common Prayer - Burial in space

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Cremation, also, is an old custom; it was the usual mode of disposing of a corpse in ancient Rome. Vikings were occasionally cremated in their longships, and afterwards the location of the site was marked with standing stones. In recent years, despite the objections of some religious groups, cremation has become more and more widely used. Orthodox Judaism and the Eastern Orthodox Church forbid cremation, as do most Muslims Orthodox Judaism forbids cremation according to Jewish law (Halakha) believing that the soul of a cremated person cannot find its final repose. The Roman Catholic Church forbade it for many years. But since 1963 the church has allowed it so long as it is not done to express disbelief in bodily resurrection. The church specifies that cremated remains are either buried or entombed. They do not allow cremated remains to be scattered or kept at home. Many Catholic cemeteries now have columbarium niches for cremated remains, or specific sections for those remains. Some denominations of Protestantism allow cremation, the more conservative denominations generally do not.

Related Topics:
Cremation - Rome - Viking - Longship - Standing stone - Orthodox Judaism - Eastern Orthodox Church - Muslims - Halakha - Roman Catholic Church - Protestantism

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Hindus and Buddhists nearly always cremate their dead. Hindus bury their dead in the case of young children, and after mass disasters when there is not enough time or cremation fire-fuel available such as after the industrial gas escape disaster at Bhopal and the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster.

Related Topics:
Hindu - Buddhist - Cremate - Industrial - Gas - Disaster at Bhopal - 26 December - 2004 - Tsunami

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Recently a new method of disposing of the body, called Ecological funeral has been suggested by a Swedish biologist. Based on cryotechnology, its main purpose is to give the body a possibility of becoming soil again.

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Rarer forms of disposal of the dead include excarnation, where the corpse is exposed to the elements. This was done by some groups of Native Americans; it is still practiced by Zoroastrians in Bombay, where the Towers of Silence allow vultures and other carrion eating birds to dispose of the corpses. It is also practiced by some Tibetan Buddhist monks where it is sometimes called "sky burial".

Related Topics:
Excarnation - Native American - Zoroastrian - Bombay - Towers of Silence - Vulture - Bird

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Cannibalism is also practiced post-mortem in some countries. The practice has been linked to the spread of a prion disease called kuru.

Related Topics:
Cannibalism - Prion - Kuru

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Mummification is the drying of bodies to preserve them. The most famous practitioners of mummification were ancient Egyptians: many nobles and high-ranked bureaucrats of the old Egyptian kingdom had their corpses embalmed and stored in luxurious sarcophagi inside their funeral mausoleum or, in the case of some Pharaons, pyramid.

Related Topics:
Mummification - Embalmed - Sarcophagi - Pharaons - Pyramid

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