Cremation or Inhumation?

During the Ptolemaic period a distinctive type of subterranean tomb for multiple burials proliferated in the cemeteries around the city of Alexandria. Underground chambers cut into the living rock radiated from a central courtyard open to the sky. Most chambers contained a number of loculi, long narrow niches cut into the walls, which served as burial slots. Some loculi were sealed with painted limestone slabs in the form of small shrines. - Metropolitan Museum of Art

Roman columbaria were often built partly or completely underground as well. Most columbaria were managed by funeral societies and used by the lower and middle-classes. Niches could be quite simple or elaborately decorated with inscriptions, paintings, and mosaics depending on each family's economic means.  

The Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas is a 1st-century CE Roman columbarium, situated near the Porta Latina on the Via Appia, Rome, Italy. It was discovered and excavated in 1831 by Pietro Campana. Though its name derives from Pomponius Hylas, who lived in the Flavian period (69-96 CE), the building itself has been dated to between 14 and 54 CE due to inscriptions on two of its niches (one dedicated to a freedman of Tiberius and the other to a freedman of Claudia Octavia, daughter of Claudius and Messalina). It was later bought by Pomponius Hylas for himself and his wife.

 Inhumation was practiced regularly in archaeic Rome although cremation was gaining acceptance and a practice known as os resectum ("cut-off bone") was developed to satisfy both economy and spiritual traditions. According to Plutarch, King Numa Pompilius (r. 715-673 BCE) had forbidden cremation so perhaps in at least partial obedience to this prohibition, and perhaps on the understanding that "a part implies the whole", a complete finger was sometimes cut from the corpse before cremation and buried separately, unburnt, to complete the household's purification, return the deceased to mother Earth and make the grave inviolable. 

But, cremation became the most common burial practice in the Mid- to Late Republic and the Empire into the 1st and 2nd centuries. Interestingly, this appears to correspond to the military expansion of Rome and the increasing lack of ability to return intact war dead from distant battlefields.

Patrician members of the gens Cornelia seem to have resisted this change, though, and continued inhumating their dead until the first century BCE. In 79 BCE, the dictator Sulla was the first patrician Cornelius to be cremated, perhaps because he feared his body would be defaced by his former enemies.

Eventually, however, cremation remained a feature of imperial deification funerals, and very few others.  Building columbariums was finally halted during Hadrian’s rule from 117 to 138 CE as inhumation once more preferred.

Painted limestone funerary slab with a man controlling a rearing horse, 2nd half of 3rd century B.C.E. at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Here, a lively depiction of a Thessalian man named Pelopides trying to bridle a horse, while a boy stands behind him, commemorates a man from Thessaly in Northern Greece, who must have been one of the many foreigners who congregated in the wealthy, cosmopolitan Ptolemaic capital.

Painted limestone funerary slab depicting a soldier and two girls from Alexandria, 2nd half of 3rd century BCE at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier taking a kantharos from his attendant girls from Alexandria, 2nd half of 3rd century BCE at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at ease, 2nd half of 3rd century B.C.E. at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A soldier wearing a long blue cloak stands alone, with a spear in his right hand and a tall ovoid shield at his left. Celtic groups from Europe migrated eastward in 279 B.C. and established independent kingdoms in Thrace and central Asia Minor. Known as Galatians, they were used extensively as mercenary soldiers. Inscriptions identifying at least three Galatian soldiers who must have served under the Ptolemies occur on loculus slabs in a rather simple tomb found in 1884.

Interior of the Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas (Rome, Italy) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Tyler Bell. 

 

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Phoenician mortuary practices of the Achaemenid Period

The Phoenicians as a politically, religiously, and perhaps even ethnically distinct entity on the Levantine coast emerged at the end of the Late Bronze Age about 1200 BCE, as one of the successor cultures to the Canaanites.  From their homeland on the coast of the Levant, the Phoenicians spread throughout the Mediterranean and its islands including Cyprus, Sicily and Malta. Some scholars have observed that Iron Age Phoenicia was not a nation, but rather a collection of cities built around natural harbors along the coast. While they shared a common culture, these small states remained independent, competing with each other in the international marketplace. 

"Depending on how evidence is weighed [based on Ugaritic texts and classical sources], Phoenician religion might be presented on the one hand as inclusive and diverse – a “conservatively” polytheistic society easily able to incorporate or syncretize new deities, customs and traditions or on the other hand as highly place-specific – a model in which Phoenicians were devoted to city-gods only, with little shared pantheon above the local or regional scale," Helen Dixon, University of Michigan, observes.

This variety in religious practices initially resulted in the use of both cremation and inhumation in mortuary practices and funerary art often expressed influences by non-Phoenician ruling administrations like New Kingdom Egyptians, Assyrians, and Achaemenid Persians.  By the Achaemenid period, however, adult cremation abruptly disappears from sites in the Phoenician cultural sphere.  This corresponds with the increasing importance of Zoroastrianism in the 5th century BCE. In Zoroastrianism, water (aban) and fire (atar) are agents of ritual purity, and the associated purification ceremonies are considered the basis of ritual life. A corpse is considered a host for decay. Consequently, scripture enjoins the safe disposal of the dead in a manner such that a corpse does not pollute the good creation.

For inhumation burials, the use of sarcophagi during the Achaemenid period along with epigraphic evidence points to a consistent and insistent emphasis on the integrity of the burial. Deities, including Astarate, are invoked to assist with the procurement of blessings and to enforce curses and righteousness is defined by political accomplishments or the building of religious shrines.  Although Egyptian iconography persisted, it was supplemented by Persian iconography. A paucity of grave goods was referenced in inscriptions as a deterrent to grave robbing and what few ceramic vessels have been found in Phoenician burials have been ceremonially broken. Wealthier burials, though, apparently included the use of expensive resins such as myrrh to anoint, perfume or preserve the body and the deceased were dressed in special garments with head ornaments, particularly royal women whose head ornament was described as a gold bridle. However, there apparently were no extensive preparations for a “next life,” no large quantities of food or drink on which to survive or any biographical depictions or texts to accompany the dead. With the exception of the occasional appearance of amulets or other possibly apotropaic items, there was no preparation for an encounter with an underworld deity or space or expectation of  a future meeting one's deceased ancestors.

Read more about it in Dixon's dissertation, "Phoenician Mortuary Practice in the Iron Age I – III (ca. 1200 – ca. 300 BCE) Levantine “Homeland”:

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/99972

Sarcophagus made from Greek marble. burial grounds of Antarados, northern Lebanon. 480-450 BCE courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor McLeod

Anthropoid sarcophagi, from Sidon, 5th century BCE, National Museum of Beirut, Lebanon courtesy of Carole Raddato.

Phoenician sarcophagus of the fifth century BCE, from the Carthaginian colonization of Sicily. Discovered in Palermo. Regional Archaeological Museum of Palermo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Giovanni Dall'Orto.

Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, king of Sidon, Phoenicia, ca first quarter of the 5th century BC.E. at The Louvre courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Fred Romero.

Marble anthropoid sarcophagus, last quarter of the 5th century B.C.E., Graeco-Phoenician found on Cyprus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Phoenician sarcophagus of the fifth century BCE, from the Carthaginian colonization of Sicily. Discovered in Palermo. Regional Archaeological Museum of Palermo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Giovanni Dall'Orto.

Marble anthropoid sarcophagus, last quarter of the 5th century B.C.E., Graeco-Phoenician found on Cyprus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Phoenician marble sarcophagus found in Cádiz. Spain, 5th century BCE, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Professor Ángel M. Felicísimo, University of Mérida.

Phoenician marble sarcophagus found in Cádiz. Spain, 5th century BCE, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Professor Ángel M. Felicísimo, University of Mérida.

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