Royal Mayan burial

In northern Guatemala is a Mesoamerican archaeological site called "El Zotz." The largest temple structure at that site is called "El Diablo" and has dangerously steep sides like the temple at the nearby site of Tikal. Beneath the "El Diablo" pyramid is the 1,600-year-old tomb of a Mayan king that was discovered on May 29th. Last week, archaeologists announced the contents of that tomb:

• The body of the king, laid to rest on a now-collapsed bier in the role of a ritual dancer. He had bell-like ornaments with clappers made of dog teeth placed around his waist and legs, and he had jewels embedded in his teeth. He wore a headdress, and held a sacrificial blade that was covered with red organic residue that may be blood.
• The remains of 6 infants, one of them partially burned, which were probably sacrificed to accompany the king to the afterlife. The children range in age from 1 to 6.
• Painted ceramic bowls filled with human fingers and teeth wrapped in what may have been leaves - possibly a symbolic meal offering. The tomb held many other pieces of blood-red pottery, including a mythical head of unknown meaning (3rd image), a tamale bowl (4th image), and a lid topped with a devil (2nd image). "These items are artistic riches, extraordinarily preserved from a key time in Maya history. From the tomb’s position, time, richness, and repeated constructions atop the tomb, we believe this is very likely the founder of a dynasty," say the scientists. The contents also included jade, wood, and textiles that retain their color.

All of this lay within or adjacent to the burial chamber (1st image), which measures 6' high, 12' long, and 4' wide. Tightly sealed and compared to "Fort Knox," the tomb had a strong odor of decay when it was opened, which lead archaeologist Stephen Houston calls "a complete King Tut moment.” He comments, “I can lie down comfortably in it, although I wouldn’t want to stay there.”

Egyptian-style tombs

Today's post was sparked by word from my friend and Egyptian scholar Dr. Jasmine Day that a documentary she features in can now be watched on-line:

Series: The Ancient World in London
Subject: Egyptian Revival Architecture
Length: 9 min.
Note: For best results, pause and let it fully load before watching.

In the video, Jasmine takes us on a tour of Kilmorey Mausoleum in West London (1st image). The tomb was built by Francis Jack "Black Jack" Needham, 2nd Earl of Kilmorey (1787-1880) as a memorial for his mistress Priscilla Hoste (1823-1854), whom he joined in the tomb many times before being laid to rest inside permanently. In fact, he had the mausoleum disassembled and reconstructed in a new location more than once - and constructed tunnels to it - so that he could visit her easily.

While looking this up, I discovered that American actor Nicholas Cage has acquired some Egyptian-style architecture of his own in the shape of a pyramid-shaped tomb in a New Orleans cemetery (2nd image). Despite his financial issues, which have prompted the sale of his mansion described as "eccentric in nature," Cage has commissioned the 9' tomb for his own future interment. In addition to fitting in with his other strange purchases, the pyramid is a symbol that features in his film "National Treasure."

John Donne, shrouded

In a portrait and on his tomb, English poet John Donne (1572-1631) is shown wrapped in a burial shroud (also known as a winding sheet). The portrait was commissioned a few months before his death by Donne, who was also an Anglican priest. It was intended to show him as he would appear rising from his grave at the Apocalypse, and he hung it on his wall to serve as a memento mori. His biographer Isaak Walton (1593-1683) describes the sitting:
"Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into their coffin, or grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might show his lean, pale, and deathlike face, which was purposely turned towards the east, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus."
In fact, Donne's last sermon was a meditation about mortality, and has been described as his own funeral sermon.

The tomb sculpture is a 3-dimensional representation of that portrait carved by Nicholas Stone (1586-1647). When Donne died, he was interred in Old St. Paul's Cathedral, which was gutted by the Great Fire of London in 1666. The marble sculpture survived the blaze and was transferred to a rebuilt St. Paul's Cathedral where it can still be seen. Unlike most transi tomb sculptures, which depict reclining bodies - either in repose or skeletonized, Donne's sculpture shows him upright, as if rising from the urn on which he stood for the portrait.

I never studied the poetry of Donne and didn't realize till now that he is the source of some of the most famous quotes about death:

• "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind;/ And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
• "Death be not proud, though some have called thee/ Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so./ For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow./ Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me."
• "One short sleep past, we wake eternally,/ And Death shall be no more;/ Death, thou shalt die. "

I was also surprised that none of his poetry was published until 2 years after his death - and now it has immortalized him.

Green burial

The word of the day is "green" and that extends to burial. Many companies cater to environmentally-friendly, green, or eco-burial. Organizations like the Green Burial Council, Natural End, and the Centre for Natural Burial have been formed to push the idea and put the public in touch with service providers. But natural burial is not a new trend. Green Funerals Vermont points out that until 150 years ago, almost all funerals were green. It was with the introduction of embalming, non-biodegradable caskets, and grave liners that burial became unnatural. And when that began to happen, there was soon a movement afoot to promote earth-to-burial by English artist and surgeon Sir Francis Seymour Hayden (1818-1910) and others, who decried the use of embalming chemicals and advocated the use of permeable caskets, like the Victorian wicker one pictured above.

Consider the logo of Green Burials (3rd image) and its message of recycling the remains into vegetation. Without it being trendy - or even intended - just such a thing happened to the body of English theologian Roger Williams (1603-1683). When he died, he was buried in the yard of his home in the town of Providence, Rhode Island, which he had founded. When a descendant decided to memorialize him 100 years later, Williams' grave was opened, but there wasn't much to exhume. The spot where his skull once rested had been penetrated by the root of an apple tree, which then entered the chest cavity, grew down the spine, forked at the legs, and turned up at the feet! Only a few bone fragments were left, so it is unclear if they had really found the remains of Williams, but the shape of the root at the head was said to resemble his profile, and the crook at the knee bore a strong resemblance. Scrapings from the grave were transferred to the base of a 14' statue erected in his honor, but the root (4th image) made its way to the John Brown House Museum. They call it "the tree that ate Roger Williams" and it remains above-ground.

Femur scepter

It has long been suspected - from sculptures like the one above - that the men of the Zapotec culture (500 B.C.-1,000 A.D.) carried human femurs as status symbols. The earlier excavation of a tomb containing 9 skeletons missing only their femurs lent credibility to the theory, but now more conclusive proof is offered by the discovery of a femur-less skeleton buried beneath a home in a grave that was reentered 25-100 years after the death. Zapotecs fluorished in the Oaxaca Valley in Mexico and I have seen the sculptures at Monte Alban while visiting the area with my sister and her husband in the early 1990s. We flew to Mexico for the Day of the Dead celebrations. My sister was the only one on whom Montezuma did not exact his revenge...

Placing of rocks

After the word "menhir" was misspelled in the championship round of the National Spelling Bee, I made a note to sort out the difference between a monolith, a menhir, and a cist. In the process of doing that, I found plenty of similar words. Killing two birds with one stone - or as a former boss used to say, in the interest of political correctness, releasing two birds with one gesture - I have sorted out the synonyms with both definitions and black and white photographs:
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dolmen n. Two large upright stones capped by a horizontal stone, usually regarded as a tomb; a cromlech. dolmenic, adj.
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menhir n. A large stone set upright in ancient times - either alone or with others - as a monument or memorial; a standing megalith.
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megalith n. A very large stone, esp. as used in prehistoric architecture; a menhir. megalithic, adj.
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cist n. A prehistoric grave lined with stones and often having a lid of stone; a dolmen. cisted, cistic, adj.
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cairn n. A heap of stones set up as a monument or burial marker. cairned, cairny, adj.
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cromlech n. A prehistoric monument of rough stones supported in horizontal position by others; a dolmen.
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barrow n. A large mound of earth or stones placed over a burial site; a tumulus.
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tumulus n. An ancient grave mound; a cairn or barrow.

Follow-ups

Knitting with hair My Mom noticed a comment on the post showing people in their dog-hair sweaters that left us laughing hysterically: someone had remarked (anonymously), "Finally! A sweater I can chase cars in!"
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Ngorongoro crater I heard from my Dad, my sister Melissa, and my follower Kent regarding Ngorongoro. Dad commented that it is also one of his favorite words to say (and mentioned at the same time that the number of words in the English language has just reached 1 million). Melissa loves the photos by Nick Brandt. And Kent reminded me that his daughter and family live in Tanzania. He visited in October of last year and spent a day in Ngorongoro, seeing all but one of the "big five." He reports that there is a nice road from the airport to the rim, but the one-way dirt track down into the crater is "nightmarish." His photos and post about the safari are here.
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Apparitions of Mary and Jesus In response to this post, Kent tells me that he has always thought of these religious images as just amusing and compares them to seeing a particular person's image in the clouds or thinking you see someone in a crowd after you've just thought about them. He understands from the 10 Commandments that God wants us to avoid making images of him and refers to numerous instances in the Bible where bad things result from idolatry. He points to the dog's butt to example of how silly humans can be when we try to make God in an image we devise, rather than understanding that God made us in his image, and that image is far more profound than the fact that we have a nose or fingers. Thanks for your enlightening perspective, Kent!
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Mortsafes I'm reading a book called Scottish Bodysnatchers that begins with this epitaph on a stone in the Howff Graveyard in Dundee:

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Here lies Nothing.

The impious resurrectionist
At night dared to invade

This quiet spot, and upon it

Successful inroads made

And when to Relatives the fact

Distinctly did appear

The stone was placed to tell the world

There's nothing resting here.

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Hamilton mausoleum Follower Carrie noted that she and her husband live only 15 minutes from Hamilton, and that he grew up and went to school there. They made a visit to the mausoleum, where she took this photo, and reports that she was only able to peer through the keyhole because the doors are only open to the public one day a year.
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Chihuahuas in the weird news Police in Cincinnati tasered and killed a 5-year-old's pet that had escaped from the yard when the family was not home, leaving blood, bullet holes, and a note on the front porch.

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Emmett Kelly Two remarkable coincidences in the news, one good and one bad. A female graduate who had just received her nursing degree from the Southwest Tennessee Community College exited the ceremony and saved the life of the Dean of Health Sciences. And an Italian woman who missed the flight and therefore was spared dying in the ocean crash of the Air France plane has died in a car crash in Austria.
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Bears in the news There have been a spate of grizzly attacks in the news: a 60-year-old Montana man joggging in Glacier National Park; a man and his 78-year-old father who were looking for moose antlers north of Grand Cache in Alberta, Canada; and a 34-year-old Idaho man hiking in Galatin National Forest near West Yellowstone, Montana.

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Ocean garbage dump An expedition called Project Kaisei - supported by the Scripps Oceanographic Institute and Brita - has set out this month to map the extent and depth of the garbage floating in the Pacific and retrieve 40 tons of plastic for trial recycling. If successful, they will attempt to recycle the entire the entire 100 million tons.

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Giants Another Chinese aquarium has tapped a long-armed man - in this case retired basketball player Zhang Youliang - to save a dolphin by reaching into its stomach to remove plastic it had swallowed.

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Poisonous plants Britain held its World Stinging Nettle Eating Championship on Friday. Contestants are supplied with 2'-long stalks from which they strip and eat the leaves - that are covered with microscopic needles that release boric acid and burn the skin. The winners are the male and female with the most accumulated length of stalks after an hour's competition.

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Kangaroo home invasion Following on the kangaroo home invasion in March, a koala entered a vacation home on an island off northeastern Australia, surprising the human inhabitants upon their return, but not threatening them or tearing up the house.
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Rats! A paper just published in Molecular Ecology after studying Baltimore rats shows that rats have "site fidelity," in other words, they spend their lives within the same few blocks in which they were born.

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Jayne Mansfield My sister sent me this amusing video by an actor named Mike Doyle who has found his niche playing the victim in television crime dramas including "Law and Order."

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More mammoths A researcher has determined a bone etching of a walking mammoth to be authentic. Found in Florida, it dates to the last ice age - some 13,000 years ago - and may be the oldest art in America.
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Octopus with attitude My stepmother Sarah e-mailed me this photo she took of an octopus at the Seattle Aquarium. Unless I am getting my stories confused, it was particularly active at the time this was taken.
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Fatal tiger maulings The family of Carlos Sousa, Jr. - killed by a tiger on Christmas Day 2007 - settled with the San Francisco Zoo for an undisclosed amount in February 2009. His two friends Amritpal and Kulbir Dhaliwhal, who were mauled in the same attack, just reached a settlement of a reported $900,000.

Burial shoes

Here we have a selection of lovely shoes that were, as the box in the 3rd photo proclaims, practical. Because it did not matter whether they pinched the wearer's toes - just whether the funeral director could get them on swollen or misshapen feet. That was, and is, the main reason for burial shoes. Unless the family gives other instructions, funeral directors will provide any clothing and accessories that the family does not supply. It is no longer the custom, as it was in cultures where shoes were too valuable to relinquish, to bury the dead in bare feet. And as you can see, these vintage burial shoes now fetch a fair price above ground.

Hamilton mausoleum

This rather phallic structure is the mausoleum constructed by Scottish nobleman Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton (1767-1852) for his family. Nicknamed "Il Magnifico," it stands 120' high, has a marble mosaic floor and bronze doors, and was built over several years at a cost of £130,000. The duke had several relatives exhumed and placed in some of the 28 niches in the crypt. He planned to join them upon his death - but atop an enormous black marble plinth in the chapel and as a mummy! His interest in ancient Egypt prompted him to secure an authentic sarcophagus and the services of surgeon and mummy expert Thomas Pettigrew (1791–1865) to preserve his body. The 10th Duke of Hamilton's wishes were carried out, but he did not rest there in perpetuity. In 1921, it was feared that the mausoleum would collapse, so he and his relatives were removed and interred in Bent Cemetery. The mausoleum still stands, but it did sink 18 feet! Though it no longer houses the duke's sarcophagus and mummy, the structure still holds some surprises. With a reverberation period of about 15 seconds, it is said to have the longest echo in any building in Scotland. In addition, the chapel has 4 "whispering alcoves": a whisper on one end can be clearly heard at the other end, 12' away.