Discussion on the culture’s funerary customs and burial culture

 Wed Feb 3 @ 10:42 am EST

1- Choosing a culture from chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, or 6, discuss the culture’s funerary customs and how such customs are manifested in art. To support your points, cite and discuss an image that specifically reflects the aspects of the funerary and burial culture you choose to discuss:

All cultures have rules for representing people, things, and ideas, but Egyptian conventions are among the most distinctive and long-lived in the history of art. Everything is represented from its most characteristic viewpoint: profile heads sit on frontal shoulders and stare out at viewers with frontal eyes. And Egyptian art is geometrically conceived and sleekly stylized, often abstract and conceptual in design. Symbols were established early on and endured for almost two millennia. Stability was clearly valued over change. (Art: a brief history, 2010, p. 67). We see in most of the art that the Egyptians believed not only in the eternal life after death, but they also believed that all of their wealth in this life will go with them in the afterlife, reason why we are seeing to this day new discoveries of tombs of ancient’s people with their belongings, but the most Interesting sign is the mummification process of their deaths. I am still asking myself; did they really think that they will just wake up again one day in that same body? But my believe in the Highest power is telling me that there is indeed something they did not know. 

 Egyptian art and history have been divided into three principal periods known as the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. The Old Kingdom was a heroic age of funerary art and architecture whose most famous works—the pyramids and sphinx at Giza—define the essence of Egyptian art for most people. The Middle Kingdom saw an increase in sensitive and more personal art. In the New Kingdom, proud rulers focused extraordinary resources on building temples and expanding the Egyptian Empire. During the Eighteenth Dynasty, Akhenaten even attempted to redirect the course of history, religion, and art, but the powerful conventions he tried to replace returned in the rule of his successor, Tutankhamun. The discovery of this late pharaoh’s tomb in 1922 ignited an international enthusiasm for Egyptian art that lasts to this day. (Art: a brief history, 2010, p. 67). The Art of the Egyptian display more of a picture of an Empire with extraordinary recourses dedicated to making the ruler Immortal in image and spirit. Most Cultures have a concept of the Afterlife, before the Islamic Culture, the Arabians in their Culture did not believe in the Afterlife, they said, we live, we die, and nothing kills us but time. The main question they were asking was, will we be decay bones and dust on the earth and brought back to life? then they said, who is going to revive theses dead and decade bones, the Quran says, the One who brought them to life the first time, he will do it the second time. From the Islamic perspective, we have the examples right in front of us, as the scriptures says, “We took a dead earth, send down rain from the havens, it mixes with the seeds and we bring the earth back to life again, and like that, you will be brought back”. There is a Hadith that says that the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon Him), said Every Human Being has a Seed.

2- How do these ancient ideas and practices compare to funerary rituals and beliefs of the afterlife in today’s culture/s? 

C. I. (2018) Muslim Funeral Traditions: Retrieved from https://cremationinstitute.com/muslim-funeral-traditions/.

The believe of the Muslim is that every Human Being has a seed, and from that seed every Human Being will be recreated from a divine rain. We also believe that we will all return the way we came into this life, alone in our grave to face our actions and deeds in this life that is just a test. Most people deny resurrection but in most today’s cultures, we hear people in science talking about recreating Human Beings from one cell by cloning because all of the information about us is contained in one of our cells. One of the verses of the Quran says: “We will continue to show them our signs in their selves and on the horizon, until it become clear to them that what we are saying is true”. The believe in the resurrection is fundamental to the Islamic tradition and there is a believe that every soul will be completely renewed but the body that is being recreated is not this physical body.

Reference Sources: Stokstad, Marilyn and Michael W. Cothren. (2010). Art: A Brief History.

C. I. (2018) Muslim Funeral Traditions: Retrieved from https://cremationinstitute.com/muslim-funeral-traditions/.

The Quran, The Hadith.

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