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This is a featured article. Click here for more infinformation.ormation. Funerary art From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A large sculpture of six life-sized black-cloaked men, their faces obscured by t heir hoods, carrying a slab upon which lies the supsupineine effigy of a knight, with hands folded together in prayer. His head rests on a pillow, and his feet on a s mall reclining lion. Tomb of Philippe Pot, governor of Burgundy under Louis XI Korean tomb mound of King Sejong the Great, d. 1450 Türbe of Roxelana (d. 1558), Süleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul Funerary art is any work of art forming, or placed in, a repository for the rema monumentsins of the whichdead. doThe not term contain also humanencompasses remains; cenotaphcenotaphs and communals ("empty memorials tombs"), to tomb-like the dead (such as war memorials), which may or may not containcontain human remains. Funerary art may serve many cultural functions. It can play a role in burial rit es, serve as an article for use by the dead in the afterlife, and celebrate the life and accomplishments of the dead, whether as part of kinship-centred practic es of ancestor veneration or as a publicly directed dynastic display. It can als o function as a reminder of the mortality of humankhumankind,ind, as an expression of cult ural values and roles, and help to propitiate the spirits of the dead, maintaini ng their benevolence and preventing their unwelcome intrusion into the affairs o f the living. The deposit of objects with an apparent aesthetic intention may go back to the N eanderthals over 50,000 years ago,[1] and is found in almost all subsequent cult uresHindu culture, which has little, is a notable exception. Many of the best-kno wn artistic creations of past culturesfrom the Egyptian pyramids and the Tutankha mun treasure to the Terracotta Army surrounding the tomb of the Qin Emperor, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Sutton Hoo ship burial and the Taj Mahalare tomb s or objects found in and around them. In most instinstances,ances, specialized funeral ar t was produced for the powerful and wealthy, although the burials of ordinary pe ople might include simple monuments and grave goods, usually from their possessi ons. An important factor in the development of traditions of funerary art is the divi sion between what was intended to be visible to visvisitorsitors or the public after com pletion of the funeral ceremonies.[2] The Tutankhamun treasure, for example, tho ugh exceptionally lavish, was never intended to be seen again after it was depos ited, while the exterior of the pyramids was a permpermanentanent and highly effective de monstration of the power of their creators. A similar division can be seen in gr and East Asian tombs. In other cultures, nearly all the art connected with the b urial, except for limited grave goods, was intended for later viewing by the pub lic or at least those admitted by the custodians. InIn these cultures, traditions such as the sculpted sarcophagus and tomb monument of the Greek and Roman empire s, and later the Christian world, have flourished. The mausoleum intended for vi siting was the grandest type of tomb in the classicclassicalal world, and later common in Islamic culture. Contents 1 Common terms 2 History 2.1 Pre-history 2.2 Ancient Egypt and Nubia 2.3 Ancient Greece 2.4 Etruscans 2.5 Ancient Rome 2.6 China 2.7 Korea 2.8 Japan 2.9 The Americas 3 Traditional societies 4 Funerary art and religion 4.1 Hinduism 4.2 Buddhism 4.3 Christianity 4.4 Islam 5 Modern period 6 See also 7 Notes 98 FurtherReferences reading 10 External links Common terms Tomb is a general term for any repository for human remains, while grave goods a re other objects which have been placed within the tomb.[3] Such objects may inc lude the personal possessions of the deceased, objects specially created for the burial, or miniature versions of things believed to be needed in an afterlife. Knowledge of many non-literate cultures is drawn largely from these sources. A tumulus, mound, kurgan, or long barrow covered important burials in many cultu res, and the body may be placed in a sarcophagus, uusuallysually of stone, or a cofcoffin,fin, usually of wood. A mausoleum is a building erected mainly as a tomb, taking its name from the Mausoleum of Mausolus at HalicarnassHalicarnassus.us. Stele is a term for erect stones that are often what are now called gravestogravestones.nes. Ship burials are mostly found in coastal Europe, while chariot burials are found widely across Eurasia. Catacombs, of which the most famous examples are those in Rome and Alexandria, a re underground cemeteries connected by tunnelled passages. A large group of buri als with traces remaining above ground can be called a necropolis; if there are no such visible structures, it is a grave field. A cenotaph is a memorial withou t a burial.[4] The word "funerary" strictly means "of or pertaining to a funeral or burial",[5] but there is a long tradition in English of applyiapplyingng it not only toto the practic es and artefacts directly associated with funeral rites, but also to a wider ran ge of more permanent memorials to the dead. Particularly influential in this reg ard was John Weever's Ancient Funerall Monuments (1631), the first full-length b ook to be dedicated to the subject of tomb memorialmemorialss and epitaphs. More recently , some scholars have challenged the usage: Phillip Lindley, for example, makes a point of referring to "tomb monuments", saying "I have avoided using the term ' funeral monuments' because funeral effigies were, in the Middle Ages, temporary products, made as substitutes for the encoffined corpse for use during the funer al ceremonies".[6] Others, however, have found this distinction "rather pedantic ".[7] Related genres of commemorative art for the dead take many forms, such as the mo ai figures of Easter Island, apparently a type of sculpted ancestor portrait, th ough hardly individualized.[8] These are common in cultures as diverse as Ancien t Rome and China, in both of which they are kept in the houses of the descendant s, rather than being buried.[9] Many cultures have psychopomp figures, such as t he Greek Hermes and Etruscan Charun, who help conduct the spirits of the dead in to the afterlife. History Pre-history Main article: Megalith The Poulnabrone dolmen in Ireland covered at least 22 bodies of the Neolithic pe riod Most of humanity's oldest known archaeological consconstructionstructions are tombs.[10] Most ly megalithic, the earliest instances date to within a few centuries of each oth er, yet show a wide diversity of form and purpose. Tombs in the Iberian peninsul a have been dated through thermoluminescence to c. 4510 BCE, and some burials at the Carnac stones in Brittany also date back to ththee fifth millennium BCE.[11] T he commemorative value of such burial sites are indicated by the fact that, at s ome stage, they became elevated, and that the constructs, almost from the earlie st, sought to be monumental. This effect was often achieved by encapsulating a s ingle corpse in a basic pit, surrounded by an elaboelaboraterate ditch and drain. Over-gr ound commemoration is thought to be tied to the conconceptcept of collective memory, an pmentd these available early tombs only were to communities likely intended that ashad a advancform edof toancestor-worship, the stage of settled a develo li vestock and formed social roles and relationships and specialized sectors of act ivity.[12] In Neolithic and Bronze Age societies, a great variety of tombs are found, with tumulus mounds, megaliths, and pottery as recurrent elements. In Eurasia, a dolm en is the exposed stone framework for a chamber tomtombb originally covered by earth to make a mound which no longer exists. Stones may be carved with geometricgeometric pat terns (petroglyphs), for example cup and ring marks. Group tombs were made, the social context of which is hard to decipher. Urn buburials,rials, where bones are buried in a pottery container, either in a more elaborate tomb, or by themselves, are widespread, by no means restricted to the Urnfield culture which is named after them, or even to Eurasia. Menhirs, or "standing stones", seem often to mark grav es or serve as memorials,[13] while the later runestones and image stones often are cenotaphs, or memorials apart from the grave itself; these continue into the Christian period. The Senegambian stone circles are a later African form of tom b markers.[14] Ancient Egypt and Nubia Main article: Art of ancient Egypt An oversized, shallow mask depicting a large face. The face is roughly oval-shap ed, but the top of the mask is a horizontal line jujustst above the eyebrows, leavin g the entire mask roughly triangular. The entire face is flattened, but the bulb ous nose protrudes away from the face. The eyes are large and almond shaped, and both the eyes and braided eyebrows are disproportidisproportionallyonally large in comparison wi th the mouth, which has full lips. The front of the face is clean-shaven, but be low the chin, there is a long, narrow, pointed, brabraidedided false beard that was cha racteristic of ancient Egyptian royalty. Egyptian ceramic coffin mask Egyptian funerary art was inseparably connected to the religious belief that lif e continued after death even more, it expressed a belief that "death is a mere p hase of life".[15] Aesthetic objects and images connected with this belief were partially intended to preserve material goods, wealth and status for the journey between this life and the next,[16] and to "commem"commemorateorate the life of the tomb ow ner ..