‘Half-burnt on an Emergency Pyre‘: Roman Cremations which Went Wrong

2000 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Noy
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Emergency Procedure ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The City ◽  
Cold Liquid

In an ideal Roman cremation, the body was carried in procession from the house of the deceased to a place outside the city, where it was burnt on a pyre until it was reduced to bones and ashes (cineres or favilla). The pyre should be built specifically for the deceased; having to use someone else's pyre was a sign of poverty, or an emergency procedure. The cremated remains might be buried where they had been burnt, usually in a ditch which was filled in and covered or marked; in this case the tomb was called a bustum. More usually, the cremation was carried out somewhere other than the final resting place, at a spot designated ustrina in Latin literature. This might be within the same tomb-precinct or columbarium, as in many tombs at Ostia, or at a separate public site. The bones and ashes therefore had to be collected up and placed in a container, preferably a specially made and ornamented one (cinerarium, oss(u)arium, olla, urna), to be placed in the tomb. The force of the fire, the raking and collapse of the pyre during burning, and eventual quenching with cold liquid would together normally be sufficient to reduce the bones to small fragments which would fit easily into the container. This sort of burial of the remains is assumed in such wishes for the dead as:I pray that you rest quiet and safe in the urn, bones,And that the earth is not burdensome to your ashes.

Improving Climatic Comfort of Citizens by Adjusting the Orientation and Extension of Physics of City Squares: Case Study of Yazd

2017 ◽  
Vol 05 (02) ◽  
pp. 1750012
Author(s):  
Fouad KHEIRABADI ◽  
Hooshmand ALIZADEH ◽  
Hossein NOURMOHAMMADZAD
Keyword(s):  
Solar Radiation ◽  
Correlation Method ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The North ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The City ◽  
High Building ◽  
Software Measures

The heat of the earth is provided by solar radiation. A change in the angle of solar radiation and the surface of the earth causes changes in the ambient temperature. Sometimes, these changes reduce climatic comfort of human beings. Climatic comfort is established when there is a balance between excreted and absorbed temperatures of the skin of the body. Orientation and extension rates of physics of squares relative to the geographical north influence the amount of received direct sunlight in different months. Relevant studies show that the squares of the city of Yazd reduce the climatic comfort of its citizens; moreover, the physics of Yazd's squares apply various extension rates, which led to high building costs to citizens and relevant organizations. This study, by using the correlation method and R software, measures different orientation and extension rates of physics of squares in Yazd. It analyzes two models with orientation and physical extension as variables and evaluates the shade and sunlight in the space. The results reveal significant differences between desirable and undesirable options. Considering the climatic comfort of space users and residents at the same time, a rectangle with an extension ratio of one to several and the north-south orientation, making the lowest facade face the south, is the most appropriate physic for city squares.

scholarly journals The imprisonment of women in Greek tragedy

1990 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 76-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Seaford
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The City ◽  
Main Factor

In Kreon's famous edict in Sophokles' Antigone the punishment for attending to the dead Polyneikes is death by public stoning (36). In the event,at the climax of his bitter argument with his son Haimon, who is betrothed to Antigone, Kreon threatens to have Antigone killed in front of Haimon's eyes (760–1). But when Haimon then angrily departs, Kreon orders Antigone to be imprisoned in a deserted place, underground in the rock, with a little food (773–5). Various motives have been suggested for this change of penalty, e.g. that the city may not want to cooperate in the stoning of Antigone. But the main factor must be the aptness of imprisonment underground for the specific case of Antigone. As Kreon himself ironically puts it, ‘there she can ask Hades to save her from death, Hades who is the only god she reveres’ (777–8). Imprisonment underground, in what is described as a tomb, suits the crime of one who has seemed too devoted to Hades, and produces the complementary inversions described by Teiresias (1068–71): the dead Polyneikes is above the earth, while the living Antigone is below, in a tomb.

The Tomb of Aias and the Prospect of Hero Cult in Sophokles

1993 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Henrichs
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Epic Tradition ◽  
Hero Cult ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Important Link ◽  
Unusual Combination ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Oedipus At Colonus ◽  
Future Status

Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus has traditionally been regarded as the poet's primary tragedy involving hero cult; this essay explores the more subtle but no less ritually explicit hero cult of the Aias first outlined by Burian. The passage, as Burian saw, occurs when the young Eurysakes kneels at his father's body and Teukros conducts an unusual combination of rites: supplication, curse, offering of hair, and magic (1168-84). One crucial direction to the child, kai phulasse (1180), however, is here not understood to be a paradox of the suppliant who "protects" what he seizes but rather his physical attachment to the locus where he abides as well as his ritual dependence on the source of protection (as with Orestes in Eum. 242f., 439f.). By saying a curse and obtaining protection, Teukros and Eurysakes indicate how the still-warm body of the dead hero has already acquired special powers after death: specifically, the power to bestow both blessings and curses on mortals. The argument turns from the body to the tomb, the physical and lasting monument of hero cult, which the Sophoclean audience would know. The preceding scene ends with a pivotal choral passage where the hero's burial and cult are prescribed in highly Homeric terms (1163-67). This passage forms an important link between the opposing views of the fate of the corpse (Menelaos vs. Teukros) and also between the hero's death and burial. This choral celebration of the hero's future status is cast in traditional Homeric language, but with some revealing inversions. One is the reversal of the verb whereby the earth "holds" (katechei) or possesses heroes in Homer, while Aias occupies and possesses his tomb (1167, kathexei). The evolution of Homeric views of death is traced (Archilochos, Simonides). In Sophocles' Aias the chorus performs the burial as a ritual act establishing a cult, long before it happens at the end of the play. The article concludes with a discussion of the historical cults of Aias known to the Athenians and of the more significant way that Aias (a suicide) becomes a hero: not self-consciously, as Oedipus did, but through rituals performed by his family and community. In the Aias, the poet's sense of hero cult lies closer to Homer and the epic tradition than it does, for instance, to Aeschylus.

Mortuary Customs Of The Meiteis Of Manipur: A Historical Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 113-119
Author(s):  
Dr S. Jayalaxmi Devi ◽  
Dr Oinam Ranjit Singh ◽  
Dr Th. Mina Devi
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
Funeral Rites ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Local Dialect ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Dead

The rites of passage are the rites and ceremonies that mark a critical transition in the life cycle of an individual from one status to another in a given society. It covers birth, marriage and death. Death is the last crisis in the lifecycle of an individual. Siba means death in local dialect. It is believed that when the soul leaves the body permanently the man dies. The paper is an attempt to throw light on death and related customs of the Meiteis. There were four kinds of funeral systems such as disposal of dead body in the wild place, in the fire, in the earth (burial) and into the water (river). Disposal of dead in the fire (cremation) in Meitei society commenced from the time of Naophangba. But, the practice of cremation was prevalent among the Chakpas from the very early times. In ancient times, dead body was exposed; the dead body was kept throwing about in the Sumang (the space in front of the house) in the Khangenpham and a bird called Uchek Ningthou Lai-oiba which took away the dead body to a river called Thangmukhong in Heirok. Usually, funeral rites were considered as unclean; therefore, the performers had to wash and cleanse their body. They believe in a future life and in the survival of the soul. The data are based on available primary and secondary sources.

Grounded in the Body

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 292-306
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Boase
Keyword(s):  
Perspective Taking ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Embodied Language ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Human World ◽  
To Come ◽  
A Site ◽  
The City ◽  
The Voice

The personification of Jerusalem as female in Lamentations is often the entry point for interpretive engagements with the book. Although Daughter Zion metaphorically represents the physical city, the figure is most often interpreted as a poetic means of portraying the suffering and distress of the human inhabitants of the city. Descriptions throughout are dominated by images of human suffering and degradation, and the struggle to come to terms with the trauma of military defeat and destruction. The book is, in its essence, anthropocentric. Does this mean, however, that these poems are limited only to an anthropocentric reading? Drawing on Bakhtinian dialogics, this paper explores the possibility of reading Lamentations 2 from another perspective. Taking its cue from Lamentations’ opening image of the widowed city seated (on the earth?), the discussion explores the metonymic potential of reading the embodied language of the text as a site of engagement with the other-than-human world. Through an excess of seeing, Lamentations 2 is read alongside Jer. 4:5–31as a means of retrieving the voice of another (non-human Other) in the text.


‘Man Is Ill Because He Is Badly Constructed’: Artaud, Klossowski and Deleuze in Search for the Earth Inside

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Dolphijn
Keyword(s):  
Performance Art ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
The Body ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Body Without Organs ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
And Performance

Starting with Antonin Artaud's radio play To Have Done With The Judgement Of God, this article analyses the ways in which Artaud's idea of the body without organs links up with various of his writings on the body and bodily theatre and with Deleuze and Guattari's later development of his ideas. Using Klossowski (or Klossowski's Nietzsche) to explain how the dominance of dialogue equals the dominance of God, I go on to examine how the Son (the facialised body), the Father (Language) and the Holy Spirit (Subjectification), need to be warded off in order to revitalize the body, reuniting it with ‘the earth’ it has been separated from. Artaud's writings on Balinese dancing and the Tarahumaran people pave the way for the new body to appear. Reconstructing the body through bodily practices, through religion and above all through art, as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, we are introduced not only to new ways of thinking theatre and performance art, but to life itself.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

Pèlerinages barrésiens

2013 ◽  
pp. 116-123
Author(s):  
Claire Bompaire-Evesque
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
The Self ◽  
Joan Of Arc ◽  
The Third ◽  
National Importance ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
The Dead

This article is a inquiry about how Barrès (1862-1923) handles the religious rite of pilgrimage. Barrès stages in his writings three successive forms of pilgrimage, revealing what is sacred to him at different times. The pilgrimage to a museum or to the birthplace of an artist is typical for the egotism and the humanism of the young Barrès, expressed in the Cult of the Self (1888-1891). After his conversion to nationalism, Barrès tries to unite the sons of France and to instill in them a solemn reverence for “the earth and the dead” ; for that purpose he encourages in French Amities (1903) pilgrimages to historical places of national importance (battlefields; birthplace of Joan of Arc), building what Nora later called the Realms of Memory. The third stage of Barrès’ intellectual evolution is exemplified by The Sacred Hill (1913). In this book the writer celebrates the places where “the Spirit blows”, and proves open to a large scale of spiritual forces, reaching back to paganism and forward to integrative syncretism, which aims at unifying “the entire realm of the sacred”.

Forecasting the fl ood situation using space images in the city of Tavda Sverdlovsk region

2018 ◽  
Vol 934 (4) ◽  
pp. 46-52
Author(s):  
A.S. Bruskova ◽  
T.I. Levitskaya ◽  
D.M. Haydukova
Keyword(s):  
Water Levels ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Geoinformation System ◽  
Space Images ◽  
Geoinformation Systems ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Maximum Water ◽  
The City

Flooding is a dangerous phenomenon, causing emergency situations and causing material damage, capable of damaging health, and even death of people. To reduce the risk and economic damage from flooding, it is necessary to forecast flooding areas. An effective method of forecasting emergency situations due to flooding is the method of remote sensing of the Earth with integration into geoinformation systems. With the help of satellite imagery, a model of flooding was determined based on the example of Tavda, the Sverdlovsk Region. Space images are loaded into the geoinformation system and on their basis a series of thematic layers is created, which contains information about the zones of possible flooding at given water level marks. The determination of the area of flooding is based on the calculation of the availability of maximum water levels at hydrological stations. According to the calculated security data, for each hydrological post, flood zones are constructed by interpolation between pre-calculated flood zones of standard security. The results of the work can be used by the Main Directorate of the Ministry for Emergency Situations of Russia for the Sverdlovsk Region.

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