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­chapter 20

mortuary rituals

ANNE KATRINE DE HEMMER GUDME

Introduction: Early Christian
Mortuary Rituals

Humanity’s relationship with death is characterized by paradoxes. Death is the big uni-
versal, it comes to us all, and it is sometimes described as the only certain thing in life. At
the same time, death is the great unknown, the object of countless hopes, fears, and be-
liefs; it is a threshold to something that we have no knowledge of. All known human cul-
tures respond to death with ritual actions, and ritual disposal of the dead can be traced
back to our earliest human ancestors. Nevertheless, the ways in which humans dispose
of their dead is incredibly diverse, even within the same cultural system (Metcalf and
Huntingdon 1991: 75; Davies 2002: 24–​42; Andrews and Bello 2006). On the one hand,
death is the only thing that is truly and indisputably common to the experience of being
human across divides of time, culture, and geography. On the other hand, humanity’s
reactions to death are incredibly varied and multifaceted.
In a way we know very little about how the early Christians in the first centuries ce
responded to death. The literary sources that we do have are very uncommunicative
on this particular topic and although funerary archaeological evidence is exceedingly
abundant in the Roman era, it has proven difficult, if not impossible, to isolate a dis-
tinctly Christian archaeology earlier than the third century (Volp 2002: 99–​102; Bowes
2008). However, we do know quite a lot about mortuary ritual practices among the
Romans and the Jews, and therefore we have the means to create a thick description of
mortuary rituals in the cultural environment in which early Christianity emerged.1 The

1 
The terms ‘Christian’ and ‘Jewish’ are used here only because of a lack of a better alternative and
in order to achieve brevity and clarity at the expense of precise analytical and terminological accuracy.
I fully agree with Richard DeMaris (2008: 11–​12) that since these religions were going through their
formative phases during the first centuries ce there was no such thing as a Jew or a Christian at this
time. The reality rather corresponded with the messiness described below. I have chosen not to use

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354    Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme

aim of this chapter is to give a theoretical and empirical introduction to mortuary rit-
uals in the ancient Mediterranean in the first centuries ce in order to contextualize the
mortuary ritual practices of the early Christians. The assumption behind this approach
is that for the first two to three centuries or more, the early Christian ritual response
to death differed very little or not at all from that of their neighbours (MacMullen
2009: 25). This is consistent with the emerging consensus on early Christian mortuary
rituals and burial practices, which stresses cultural continuity, fluid religious identities,
and the importance of practices over beliefs (Bowes 2008; Rebillard 2015). This current
view is in contrast with earlier research that assumed a distinct and discernible Christian
identity and material culture as a reflection of a fully formed and widely disseminated
Christian belief system.2 The image of early Christianity that emerges in the wake of
the new consensus is ‘messy’. It embraces mixed burials, tombstones with a disorienting
mix of Jewish, Christian, and Roman symbols, and a community of early Christians that
dined and celebrated in the cemeteries alongside their non-​Christian neighbours. It is to
this delightful messiness that we now turn.

Mortuary Rituals

The term ‘mortuary rituals’ encompasses all kinds of death-​related ritual practices,
including preparation and disposal of the dead body, mourning, commemoration,
and habitual and occasional visits to the tomb of the deceased (Schmidt 1996: 5). If
we follow Catherine Bell’s categorization of ritual behaviour into ‘Basic Genres of
Ritual Action’, mortuary rituals include both rites of passage (e.g. the funeral and
mourning), rites of exchange and communion (e.g. giving gifts to the dead), rites of
affliction (e.g. purification), calendrical rites (e.g. annual days of commemoration),
and finally feasting, fasting, and festival (e.g. commemorative feasts) (Bell 1997: 93–​
137; Grimes 2000:  219–​22). As such, mortuary rituals comprise a wide variety of
ritual genres, but they are often emphasized as rites of passage, a category of rituals
that mark or even bring about social transformation in the life of individuals through
stages of separation, transition, and reintegration (van Gennep 1960; Bell 1997:
94–​102; Grimes 2000: 5–​8).
The work of two early twentieth-​century sociologists, Arnold van Gennep and
Robert Hertz, has particularly influenced scholars’ understanding of mortuary

the term ‘Pagan’ to describe what MacMullen (2009) refers to as the ‘traditional’ non-​Christian and
non-​Jewish religion. Instead, I shall use simply ‘Roman religion’, although it can be argued that the
latter encompasses both early Jewish and early Christian religion in the first centuries ce, for a further
discussion of terminology, see Salzman (2008).
2 
Contrast e.g. Rush (1941) with Rebillard (2009) and MacMullen (2009) For an interesting discussion
of Jewish and Christian iconography, see Kraemer (1991)..

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Mortuary Rituals   355

rituals as rites of passage. Both van Gennep and Hertz stressed the importance of
mortuary rituals (especially funerals and mourning) in the transition of the de-
ceased from the world of the living to the world of the dead (Hertz 1960; van Gennep
1960). Hertz saw the body of the individual as both a biological and a social entity
and therefore interpreted mortuary rituals as necessary in order to transform the
deceased from a member of the visible society of the living to a member of the in-
visible society of the dead. Death is only a temporary exclusion from society and the
transitory period in which rituals of burial and mourning take place creates a space
where social ties between the living and between the living and the dead are renego-
tiated (Hertz 1960; Metcalf and Huntingdon 1991: 79–​107; Davies 2000; 2002: 10–​
14). Mortuary rituals change the status of the dead and reframe their relationships
with the living, but the dead remain relevant members of society as a whole. This
strand in Hertz’s thought resonates particularly well with recent anthropological and
sociological studies on death and commemoration, where the agency of the dead in
the social world of the living is emphasized (Hallam and Hockey 2001; Hockey and
Draper 2005; Mitchell 2007; Bille, Hastrup, and Sørensen 2010). The dead have a con-
tinued material presence in the world of the living through their place of burial, but
also through objects and places that are invested with memories of the dead by stra-
tegic actions performed by the living (Hockey and Draper 2005; Grimes 2014: 121–​30;
Laqueur 2015: 31, 55–​60). The social life of the dead is as paradoxical as death itself;
they are absent and invisible and at the same time present and tangible through de-
marcated burial and memorial space.
In the following, an approach that focuses on rituals as a category of actions will be
applied to mortuary rituals. This approach, which is inspired by the cognitive science of
religion, stresses that ritual actions mirror social actions in that they are performed in
order to motivate another agent’s actions or cause a change in disposition. What makes
ritual actions different from mundane social actions is that they are perceived to be in-
fluenced by or directed at a so-​called counterintuitive being such as a deity, a demon,
or a deceased family member. Whereas ordinary actions bring about changes in the
mundane world, ritual actions bring about changes in the ‘ritual’ world.3 These changes
are sometimes invisible, just as their subjects and objects, such as deities and the dead,
can be invisible too, but their impact can still be significant and meaningful to those
who participate in and observe these actions (Barrett and Lawson 2001; McCauley and
Lawson 2007; cf. Uro 2016: 33–​5, 65–​6).

3  Ritual actions are designed to be and indeed expected to be efficacious, but at the same time their

effects are often invisible. It is felt or known rather than seen that a person has been purified or that
a deity has been appeased by a sacrifice. McCauley and Lawson, whose theory specifically focuses
on religious rituals, write that ‘religious rituals bring about changes in the religious world’ (2002: 14),
whereas Barrett and Lawson describe the consequences of ritual as ‘non-​natural consequences’ (2001,
184–​5). In this chapter, I have chosen the more cautious and inclusive description that rituals bring about
changes in the ritual world. I do this inspired by the work of Jørgen Podemann Sørensen who stresses
that ritual actions have no extra-​ritual receivers (1993: 19).

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356    Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme

The Sources

Literary Sources
In the New Testament itself, there are only a few brief descriptions of mortuary ritual.
Apart from the descriptions of Jesus’ burial in the gospels (Matt. 27:57–​61; Mark 15:42–​7;
Luke 23:50–​6; John 19:38–​42), there are references to mortuary ritual in the stories about
the resurrection of the widow’s son (Luke 7:12–​15), of Jairus’ daughter (Matt. 9:23–​5;
Mark 5:38–​43; Luke 8:49–​55), of Lazarus (John 11:43–​4), and in the stories of the death of
Dorcas (Acts 9:37–​40), and of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:6–​10, for further references,
see Rush 1941; MacMullen 2009; Rebillard 2009). The first-​century historian Josephus
(37–​c. 100 ce) has a brief reference to mortuary ritual in Against Apion 2.205 and more
elaborate accounts of mourning behaviour in the descriptions of David in Antiquities 7
and of elite burials in the descriptions of Herodian funerals in Antiquities 14–​17 and in
Jewish Wars 1 (Levison 2002).
In rabbinic literature, the first thematic treatment of mortuary practices is Semahot
or Evel Rabbati, which dates to the eighth century or later (Kraemer 2000: 9). In earlier
texts, bits and pieces about mortuary ritual can be found in the Mishnah (c. 200 ce),
mostly in the tractates Sanhedrin, Šabbat, Moʿed Qaṭan, ʾOhalot, and Berakot, and with
some information added in the third-​century Tosefta and Tannaitic Midrashim (for
exact references, see Kraemer 2000: 23–​47).
This scarcity of texts ceases when we turn to Roman literature (for the following, see
Hope 2007; 2009a; 2009b). Cicero (106–​143 bce), writing in the first century bce, has
much to say about funerary customs and what the proper Roman response to death
should be. Likewise in the following century, Seneca the Younger (c. 4 bce–​65 ce) gives
a philosopher’s view on how to face death and grief. In the second half of the first cen-
tury ce, the historians Tacitus (56–​118 ce) and Pliny the Younger (61–​112 ce) offer in-
sights into the mortuary rituals and ideals of the Roman elite, the former through highly
evocative literary death scenes and the latter in accounts of death and mourning in a
multitude of letters. Mortuary rituals are also treated by comedians and satirists such
as Petronius (c. 27–​66 ce), writing in the first half of the first century ce, and the Syrian
Lucian of Samosata (c. 120–​after 180 ce) in the second century. In Satyricon, Petronius
writes about the incredibly wealthy and vulgar freedman Trimalchio, whose lavish ban-
quet ends up as a mock funeral for the host. And in several works, such as the comic dia-
logue Charon, Lucian directed a scathing critique against the mortuary ritual practices
and afterlife mythologies of his time.
Although invaluable for information on mortuary ritual practices that leave little or
no trace in the material record such as mourning, praying, and processions, literary
sources must be treated with caution. It almost goes without saying that the perspectives
and experiences that these texts offer are those of the literary elite and religious experts,
and as such they may have had no resonance with the vast majority of the population

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Mortuary Rituals   357

(Kraemer 2000: 5; Hope 2009a: 10–​12).4 In a time with only very limited literacy and no
widely disseminated religious belief system of any kind, it is doubtful that the religious
ideals and attempts of systemization of the literary elite would have had any impact on
the lives and actions of the proverbial men and women in the street (cf. MacMullen
2009: ix, 8). In the ancient world, literary death scenes became a trope for evaluating the
quality of a person’s life and character (Davies 1999: 127–​38; Noy 2000; Hope 2009a: 50–​
7), and idealized literary accounts of responses to death could be used to stress the moral
qualities or aspirations of a given society, such as when both Cicero and Josephus praise
a funeral that is carried out without excessive expenses and with piety (Levison 2002). It
is important to keep these social and ideological biases in mind when extracting infor-
mation on ritual practices from literary sources.

Archaeology
In the archaeological record, we encounter many but by no means all of those ordinary
people who are not represented in the literary sources. Throughout the ancient world,
the lower classes were buried in simply dug and unmarked graves that leave hardly any
trace, or their bodies were disposed of in mass burials in Potter’s fields (Bodel 2000;
Magness 2012b). However, although the monumental funerary architecture of the elite
dominates both the landscape and to some extent scholarly literature, the thousands of
burials and epitaphs of the people who were neither at the very top nor bottom of society
in the Roman world do give us an insight into the death and life of a broader section of
the populace than the one we find in the literature of the time.
Apart from a general ban on burials inside the town or city (Hope 2009a:  154;
MacMullen 2009: 9), there was no common rule or law for Jewish, Christian, or Roman
funerals during the first centuries ce, and this latitude is to some extent reflected in the
diversity of burial practices that were in use (Williams 1994; Rebillard 2009: 139; Graham
and Hope 2016). This diversity makes it impossible to give anything but a very general
description of Roman burial practices and funerary architecture at the time of the early
Christians. During the first two to three centuries ce it is impossible to distinguish be-
tween Jewish and Christian burials (McCane 2003: 112), and, generally speaking, Jewish
burial practices at this time are firmly embedded in the overall Graeco-​Roman prac-
tices and material expressions of the Roman world (Fine 2010). There are thus several
similarities and a few notable differences in the ways early Jews/​Christians and Romans
disposed of their dead. In order to illustrate them I shall first introduce the archaeology

4  I follow Stanley K. Stowers and Daniel Ullucci in naming these specialists ‘literate cultural

producers’ with a term borrowed from Pierre Bourdieu (1991, cf. Stowers 2011 and Ullucci 2011). Literate
cultural producers continuously fight for prestige and influence. They do this by interpreting and
producing texts, and in the cultural field of the literate cultural producers, it is all about correct beliefs
and practices and about the true nature and meaning of things (Stowers 2011). For a recent discussion on
religious experts, see Ullucci (2014).

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358    Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme

of Roman funerals (based primarily on Toynbee 1971; von Hesberg 1992; Bodel 2008;
Hope 2009a; Graham and Hope 2016). The outline below focuses on the city of Rome
and Italy (for information on local variations and customs in the provinces, see Hope
2001; Cormack 2004; Stone and Stirling 2007; Hope 2009a: 163–​6; and the many useful
references in MacMullen 2009). Then I shall turn to the funerary archaeology of Roman
Palestine (based primarily on Hachlili 2005; Fine 2010; Magness 2012a; for Jewish bur-
ials outside Palestine, see Williams 1994; Rutgers 1995; Hachlili 1998; Stern 2008).
During the first three centuries ce, Roman funerary practices underwent two signifi-
cant developments. One was the turn to inhumation instead of cremation as the pre-
ferred method of disposal of the body, and the other was a move—​probably because
of a surge in the price of burial plots—​from the above-​ground necropoleis that lined
the roads leading into the cities to underground burial areas, such as subterranean
columbaria, which started to appear in the late first century bce, and catacombs, the
oldest of which, the Catacomb of Callistus, dates to the late second century ce. Both of
these changes have been connected with the spread of Christianity in the second and
third centuries ce and for both phenomena this explanation has been refuted in recent
scholarship. Renewed studies of the catacombs of Rome show that there was nothing
particularly Christian about this type of burial, and that although a certain amount of
clustering in family and religious groups can be discerned, mixed burials remained
the norm at least until the fourth century ce (Johnson 1997). As to the end of crema-
tion, which started in the late first century ce, although Jews and Christians consist-
ently practised inhumation even when cremation was in vogue in the Roman world,
these groups were too small and too insignificant to have caused such a major change in
practices at this time. It is more likely that the change from cremation, which is a rather
direct and hands-​on method of disposal, to the more distance and concealed practice
of inhumation has to do with a more general change in the perception of the body and
therefore also of the corpse in Roman society. This change, which is sometimes referred
to as the ‘discovery’ of the importance of the body in late antiquity may have led to a
change in the method of disposal of corpses, but the shift from cremation to inhumation
may also simply have been a result of changing fashion (Morris 1992: 53–​9; Rebillard
2009: 88; Graham 2015).
Whether burnt or buried, the Roman dead could be treated in a number of ways. The
cremated remains, which consisted of ashes and mostly intact bones, could be placed
in an urn made of either glass or ceramic, or placed in a bag or a box. These containers
would then be buried in a pit or put in a built structure above or below ground. Intact
bodies could be wrapped in a shroud, placed on a bier, or placed in a coffin or sar-
cophagus and then either buried in a pit or placed in a built tomb monument, which
could also be either above or below ground.
Originally tomb monuments were rare except for those in the top layer of society, but
from the second half of the first century bce tombs start to appear and they increased in
popularity during the first century ce. Tomb monuments could have a great variety of
architectural forms such as altars, towers, temples, houses, and enclosures. Around the
mid-​first century ce, tombs generally became larger and intended for multiple burials

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Mortuary Rituals   359

and in the late second century the production of stone funerary monuments seems to
decrease roughly simultaneously with the appearance of catacombs and an increase in
subterranean burials. The earliest catacombs were fairly modest, narrow, and dark struc-
tures, but from the fourth century they became more spacious and luxurious. During
the fourth and fifth centuries, burials moved above ground once more.
If we turn to burial practices in Roman Palestine, there are two basic modes of
disposing of the body: it is either placed in a pit or trench grave dug into the ground,
a means of burial which would have been common among the lowest layers of society
(e.g. the burial ground at Qumran, cf. Magness 2012a: 244–​5, contra Hachlili 2005: 478–​
9, but see Magness 2012b); or the body was placed in a rock-​cut tomb in either a loculus
chamber (kokh in Hebrew) or in an arcosolium niche.5 There are also a limited number of
monumental tomb structures belonging to the elite. The funerary evidence from Roman
Palestine comes primarily from the necropolis outside Jericho and Jerusalem (first cen-
tury bce–​first century ce) and from the necropolis and catacombs at Beth Shearim in
the Lower Galilee (third–​fifth/​sixth centuries ce).6 The loculus tomb type is by far the
most common in Jericho and Jerusalem, but during the first century ce arcosolia begin
to appear in Jerusalem. At Beth Shearim, arcosolia with carved troughs are the most
common architectural form for primary burials. Inside the rock-​cut tombs, there are ex-
amples of both primary and secondary burials. For primary burials the body was placed
directly in the loculus or in a receptacle, such as a wooden coffin or a sarcophagus. For
secondary burials the body was first placed in the tomb, presumably in a loculus or on a
bench, and subsequently the bones were removed to either a communal charnel, a side
loculus, or a chamber.
During the last quarter of the first century bce there is a change in the form of sec-
ondary burial, when ossilegium, the practice of collecting and placing bones in indi-
vidual containers (ossuaries) made of stone, ceramic, or wood rather than placing the
bones in a communal deposit, is introduced. The introduction of ossuaries may very
well have been due to Roman cultural influence since it is roughly contemporary with
the surge in cremation in the Roman world, which started in the mid-​third century bce
and continued into the second century ce. Ossuaries could be decorated and inscribed,
to some extent, they even resembled Roman funerary urns, and ossuary burial may have
allowed the reasonably well-​off to have a monumentalized form of burial while sticking
to the preferred practice of inhumation rather than cremation.7 For example, in the

5 
For a discussion of and comparison between the archaeological evidence of burials in first-​century
Jerusalem and the gospels’ accounts of the burial of Jesus, see McCane (2003: 89–​108) and Magness
(2012a: 245–​8).
6  For continuity with earlier practices, see Hachlili (2005: 512–​14) and Magness (2012a: 231–​2). The

excavators of the Beth Shearim necropolis dated the end of the site to the mid-​fourth century ce, but it
may have continued in use through the fifth and sixth centuries, see Weiss (2010).
7  Levi Y. Rahmani proposed that the introduction of ossuaries was due to belief in individual

resurrection, but this interpretation has been largely refuted, see Hachlili (2005: 526–​8); Fine (2000;
2010: 447–​51); and Magness (2012a: 241–​2). For information on ossilegium in Galilee, see Aviam and
Syon (2002).

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360    Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme

necropolis and catacombs of Beth Shearim, there is a diversity of different burial cus-
toms. In the above-​ground necropolis there are trench graves, cist graves, shaft graves,
and mausoleums, and in the catacombs there are the very common arcosolium niches
and less common loculus chambers. There are primary burials in receptacles such as
coffins and sarcophagi made of stone, lead, terracotta, or wood and sometimes there are
signs of secondary burials with bones deposited in pits or ossuaries.
In summary, the most distinctive features of Jewish/​Christian burial practices in
Roman Palestine are the absence of cremation and the temporary introduction of in-
dividual secondary burial in ossuaries. Apart from this, there are several similarities
between Jewish/​Christian and Graeco-​Roman burial practices of the first centuries ce.
This is particularly evident in the necropolis and catacombs at Beth Shearim which fol-
lows the development and trends of Roman funerary architecture with underground
burials in large halls and the increasing use of sarcophagi.

Funeral and Mourning

Before the corpse reaches its destination in the tomb, it is prepared through a series
of funerary rites that stress the transformation that is taking place when the deceased
moves from the community of the living to the community of the dead. These rituals
focus on the social person of the newly dead and to some extent they mask the fact that
this person’s physical manifestation is now merely a corpse, a cadaver vulnerable to
decay (cf. Graham 2015; Laqueur 2015: 31, 54). The journey from the realm of the living to
the realm of the dead is accentuated by the funeral procession that transports the dead
from the home to the tomb, and the subsequent period of ritualized mourning behav-
iour to be observed by the bereaved additionally emphasizes that the time immediately
following a death is a time of transition and changing social status.8
As often pointed out, there are several similarities between Jewish/​Christian and
Roman funerary ritual. Therefore, the following is a combined description of funeral
and mourning practices among Jews/​Christians and Romans that only marks relevant
differences, see Rush (1941); Toynbee (1971); Davies (1999); Kraemer (2000); Levison
(2002); McCane (2003); Hachlili (2005: 447–​516); Hope (2009a); Corley (2010).9
According to several Roman authors, at the time of death, the relatives of the deceased
would either embrace or kiss the dying person, the latter in order to catch the last breath,
and close the eyes (see Hope 2007: 93–​4; 2009a: 50, n 14 for references). This task often
fell to the closest female relatives. This is in contrast with the Mishnah tractate Shabbat’s

8 
For an interesting discussion of the functions and meanings of mourning that engages with the
works of van Gennep and Hertz, see Olyan (2004).
9
  As a service to the reader particularly interested in early Christianity, relevant references to New
Testament texts have been included below. For references to ancient sources in general, see especially
Kraemer (2000: 20–​35), Hope (2007: 85–​127, 172–​210; 2009a: 71–​96, 121–​49).

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recommendation that one should refrain from touching a dying or newly dead person,
even in order to close this person’s eyes, so as not to interfere with the ‘exit of the soul’.
After death, the body was placed on the ground, where it was washed (Acts 9:37) and
treated with spices and aromatics (Mark 16:1; Matt. 26:12; Luke 24:1; John 12:7; 19:39),
and the jaw was bound. In Roman sources, the corpse is also garlanded with flowers and
sometimes a coin is placed in its mouth. This latter custom is not mentioned in Jewish/​
Christian sources, but coins have been found in Jewish burials (Hachlili 2005: 441–​3).
These preparations took place in the home. The body was then wrapped in a shroud
(Matt. 27:59; John 11:44) or in appropriate clothing and kept in the home until the time of
the funeral. In Roman sources, the dead were placed on a special couch, a lectus funebris,
and put on display in the atrium. The length of the display varied according to the so-
cial status of the family and the size of the house. For modest households it may have
been inconvenient to continue the display for more than a couple of days, but among the
wealthy it may have gone on for up to a week. In Jewish/​Christian sources it is stressed
that the funeral had to take place on the day of death and therefore the body would only
have lain on display for a limited time.
The body was carried to the funerary ground in a procession (pompa in Latin, Luke
7:12–​14) and it was accompanied by friends and family, professional mourners, and mu-
sicians (Mark 5:38; Matt. 9:23). Important persons would have been taken first to the
Forum so that eulogies could be performed there (Bodel 1999), but most people would
have been taken straight to the necropolis for either inhumation or cremation and sub-
sequent interment of the bones. In the case of cremation, which took several hours (Noy
2000), the remains of the pyre were doused with wine before the ashes and bones were
gathered in a receptacle. In the case of secondary burial, the final interment of the bones
would have to wait until the flesh had decomposed. The most common grave goods were
ceramic items, such as cooking pots, lamps, and scented oil vessels (unguentaria), and
personal items such as jewelry, combs, and even sandals (Hachlili 2005: 375–​446; Hope
2009a: 82–​5). These items would have been left in the tomb at the time of the funeral or
at subsequent visits to the tomb.
After the disposal of the body, the funeral party would gather for a meal. According to
Jewish sources, this meal took place in the home sitting on an overturned piece of fur-
niture. The latter may be a symbolic indication of the inversion of normality that takes
place during the time of mourning. Roman funerary meals took place at the gravesite
and part of the meal may have been a sow that was sacrificed to the goddess Ceres.
The funeral marked the end of the corpse’s journey to the tomb, but the time of
mourning continued for the bereaved. In Roman sources, mourning lasts for nine days,
although longer periods of mourning also occur depending on a person’s relation-
ship with the deceased. Mourners wore dark clothes and abstained from bathing and
grooming. They may also have abstained from food and they may have voiced their grief
with dramatic or mournful utterances. At the end of the nine days, there was a feast
with visits to the tomb and purification of the home. In Jewish sources, two periods of
mourning are mentioned, lasting seven and thirty days respectively, and mourners re-
frain from bathing and performing any kind of work. According to both Roman and

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362    Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme

Jewish sources, the mourners were ritually impure to a certain extent during the time
of mourning and rituals of purification were required before they could return to their
everyday lives (Kraemer 2000:  28; Lindsay 2001).10 Particularly in Roman sources,
mourning behaviour is idealized in a way that stresses gender ideals. Men are ex-
pected to act stoically and composed when faced with death and loss whereas violent
expressions of grief are considered a weak and feminine response. In general, women
had a prominent part to play in mortuary ritual both as preparers of the corpse and as
mourners. This gave them a certain status and importance of course but the link be-
tween women and death may also have carried negative connotations because of ritual
pollution. During the first century bce and the first century ce there was a distinct pro-
fessionalization and commercialization of funerary practices and services in the Roman
world and many of the tasks that involved direct contact with the body, such as washing
and anointing, were performed by embalmers and undertakers rather than family
members (Bodel 2000; Lindsay 2000; Graham 2015). A similar development may be in-
dicated at Beth Shearim by the many references to funerary professionals in the inscrip-
tions there (Weiss 1992; Williams 1994).

Visiting the Dead

One very prominent aspect of mortuary ritual in the Roman world was habitual visits to
the tomb of the deceased at annual festivals of the dead. The most well-​documented fes-
tivals are the Parentalia in mid-​February and the festivals of violets and roses in March
and May respectively (Toynbee 1971: 61–​4; Jensen 2008: 107–​20; Hope 2009a: 98–​102;
MacMullen 2010; 2014; Dolansky 2011; see also Dolansky, Chapter 10 in this volume).11
During these visits, the family of the deceased would share a tombside meal with the
dead and the family dead were perceived as hosts at these occasions (Corley 2010: 29;
MacMullen 2014: 492). One very good example of this is a terracotta relief in one of
the tombs in the Isola Sacra necropolis south of Rome, where the dead man is depicted
with outstretched arms welcoming his guests (Gee 2008: 64). The atmosphere at these
meals was festive, even raucous, and Roman funerary architecture attests to the energy
invested in picnics at the tomb. Several tombs have furniture for dining and reclining
such as table tops and benches and some even have installations for cooking, such as
barbecues and wells (Graham 2005; Gee 2008).

10 
It is unknown exactly how and for how long corpse impurity affected those who came into contact
with a dead body in Judaism and early Christianity. There is no reason to assume that texts such as
Numbers 19 were put into practice, but purity seems to have mattered in relation to funerals and visits
to the dead since a number of ritual baths, presumably intended for ritual purification, have been
discovered next to tombs and necropoleis (see Adler 2009).
11
  Another well-​documented festival of the dead is Lemuria, which took place in May, but this was
a festival centred on the home of the living, where the dead are perceived as guests, rather than at the
tombs of the dead.

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Mortuary Rituals   363

There is no explicit evidence of tombside dining in Roman Palestine, but there are struc-
tures in the necropoleis in Jericho, Jerusalem, and Beth Shearim that could indicate ha-
bitual gatherings and possibly meals at the tomb. In Jericho and Jerusalem, some tombs
have open courtyards with benches (Hachlili 2005: 10; Fine 2010: 445), usually referred
to as ‘mourning enclosures’ in the excavation reports, and at Beth Shearim catacombs
nos. 14, 20, and 23 have built upper structures also with open courtyards and benches
(Avigad 1976). It seems likely that these structures were used for gatherings at and visits
to the tomb that extended beyond the actual funeral and possible re-​burial of bones (cf.
Kraemer 2000: 60–​5).12
When identifiably Christian funerary remains begin to appear during the third cen-
tury ce, it is clear that the Christians were visiting their dead and dining at their tombs
just like their Graeco-​Roman neighbours. On the basis of this, it seems likely that the
earliest Christians also performed mortuary rituals that included regular visits to the
tomb and meals with the dead (Jensen 2008: 120–​4; MacMullen 2009: 25). A late third-​
century funerary inscription from Satifis in North Africa gives a good impression of a
Christian family’s interaction with their dead relative, the late Aelia Secundula:

[W]‌e have decided furthermore to put up a stone dining chamber where Mother
Secundula rests, wherein we may recall the many wonderful things she did, the while
the loaves, the cups, the cushions are set out, so as to assuage the sharp hurt that eats at
our hearts. While the hour grows late, gladly will we revisit our tales about our virtuous
mother, and our praises of her, while the old lady sleeps . . . (MacMullen 2009: 58)

The family of Aelia Secundula visited her grave and feasted there, presumably to spend
time with each other, to strengthen their family bonds, and of course to commemorate
the deceased. But the meal was also a ritual that facilitated continued social interaction
between the living and the dead. The dead were now invisible counterintuitive beings
but nevertheless invested and relevant social agents, treated exactly as such through the
means of mortuary rituals such as tombside meals.

Mortuary Rituals and Afterlife

Beliefs

Some mortuary ritual practices among the early Christians and their Jewish and
Graeco-​Roman neighbours fall into a category that is often called ancestor worship
or mortuary cult in modern scholarship.13 This category includes deposition of grave

12 
For a very helpful list of sites with Roman and Christian funerary architecture with indications of
tombside dining, see MacMullen (2009: 502–​13).
13
  For difficulties with terminology and delineation, contrast the fairly restrictive categories in
Schmidt (1996: 4–​13) with the very broad definitions in MacMullen (2014) and Steadman, Palmer, and
Tilley (1996).

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364    Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme

goods and gifts to the dead, customary visits to the tomb possibly to pray to or otherwise
interact with the dead, and tombside meals that are shared with the dead. The common
denominator for all these practices is a continued social interaction with the dead be-
yond the boundaries of physical life. For the interpreter, these practices raise questions
about the nature and status of the dead: Are they god-​like beings from whom one can
ask for help and blessing? Or are they feeble and weak spirits, dependent on services
and sustenance from the living?
The cultural world of the early Christians was ripe with an abundance of afterlife
beliefs that ranged from a categorical refusal of any kind of postmortem existence, to
visions of the dead as feeble shades in a dreary netherworld, to various beliefs in res-
urrection (Davies 1999; Segal 2004; Hope 2009a: 97–​120). Interestingly, in spite of this
diversity and development in beliefs about the afterlife, the practices directed towards
the dead remained fairly constant throughout the first centuries of the Common Era
and furthermore these practices were more or less the same among Romans and Jews/​
Christians. This seems to indicate that the underlying rationale behind these mortuary
rituals is that which has also been stressed above, namely, that the dead are socially rele-
vant and invested agents, and interaction with them is governed by pragmatic, local, and
traditional concerns rather than dependent on any system of afterlife beliefs. Although
some funerary inscriptions do explicitly mention an afterlife and resurrection, such as
the incurably cheerful ‘good luck with your resurrection’ from Beth Shearim (no. 194,
Schwabe and Lifshitz 1974: 180), the ritual practices that take place in the tomb seem
to be entirely directed at the ongoing social personhood of the deceased (cf. Bynum
1995:  51; Fine 2010). The general sentiment expressed through Jewish/​Christian and
Roman funerary inscriptions, graffiti, and architecture is one of care and concern for
the well-​being of the dead. The dead are given gifts of sustenance and protection and
several inscriptions and graffiti urge the dead to have courage and threaten anyone who
would disturb their tomb (Stern 2013). In several tombs, pillows and headrests indicate
either symbolic or real concern for the corporeal comfort of the dead (Hachlili 2005: 72;
Graham 2015). These gifts and services were given to and performed for the dead,
not necessarily because the dead were thought of as weak or in need (contra Schmidt
1996: 10), but because gifting the dead strengthened the social ties between the dead
and the living. According to some people’s beliefs, the dead may have been able to recip-
rocate in some way (cf. evidence of votive practice in funerary contexts in MacMullen
2010: 605; contra Lewis 2013, and cf. Eastman, Chapter 39 in this volume, on the cult of
saints), whereas others may have visited and gifted the dead because it was tradition or
simply because it felt ‘right’ (Hope 2009a). Either way, the dead lived on as part of their
communities through the mortuary ritual practices performed by the living.

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Suggested Reading
Davies, Jon. 1999. Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity. London: Routledge.
Hope, Valerie M. 2009. Roman Death:  The Dying and the Dead in Ancient Rome.
London: Continuum.

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Mortuary Rituals   369

Kraemer, David. 2000. The Meanings of Death in Rabbinic Judaism. London: Routledge.

MacMullen, Ramsay. 2009. The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200–​400. Atlanta,
GA: Society of Biblical Literature.
McCane, Byron R. 2003. Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus. Harrisburg,
PA: Trinity Press.
Rush, Alfred C. 1941. Death and Burial in Christian Antiquity. Washington, DC:  Catholic
University of America Press.
Toynbee, J. M. C. 1971. Death and Burial in the Roman World. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press.

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