Customer Reviews

In Search of History: Last Rites [VHS]

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This History Channel presentation of Last Rites: Death Ceremonies is nothing short of fascinating. While I was familiar with a number of ancient burial practices, this video introduced me to others I had never heard of at all - with some of the most fascinating ones extending well into the modern era. As to the origins, which necessarily bespeak some concept of the afterlife, we know that archaeologists have discovered ritual burials as far back as 44,000 years ago in what are now Europe and the Middle East. Most interestingly, some of the oldest buried individuals found in caves in southwestern France were bound - as if the living sought to deter the dead from returning as ghosts or spirits.

Not surprisingly, the video opens with an examination of the customs of ancient Egypt, going into some detail on mummification and pointing out that even the mummified person could only enter the afterlife if the appropriate spells and rituals were performed. I think the documentary writer is wrong when he describes Egypt's pyramids as tombs, but he does deliver a solid theory on the origins of mummification in that desert land. This makes for a natural shift to burial customs in Naples, Italy, where the soil at the foot of Mount Vesuvius serves to preserve bodies in much the same way that the Egyptian deserts did. I was quite surprised to learn that, even today, bodies in Naples are buried without coffins, literally dug up some 18-24 months later, and then officially put to rest in a family vault.

The documentary then turns to cremation, which a number of disparate cultures have practiced over the millennia. Christians, Moslems, and Jews tend to shun the practice for different reasons, but it is certainly worth noting that less orthodox Jews who had begun to accept cremation began to shun the practice anew (for obvious reasons) in the wake of the Holocaust. Special notice is taken of the Hindu customs of India, which involves burning the dead body and then sweeping the ashes into the Ganges in order to purify and release the deceased's soul (and thus prepare it for reincarnation). The practice of sati, wherein a widow immolates herself on her husband's funeral pyre, extended all the way up to 1829 (when the British outlawed it), much to my surprise.

The greatest strength of the documentary, though, is its ability to put the most "shocking" of burial rituals into the context of the different cultures that practice them. That's a great accomplishment when you consider just how alien some of these rites are to western sensibilities. Consider the Sky Burial practice of Tibet, wherein vultures are called down to feast on the body of the deceased. Then there are the cannibalistic practices of both ancient and surprisingly modern times. The women and children of a certain tribe in Guinea, for example, ate the corpses of dead men in order to gain the wisdom and dignity of the deceased well into the twentieth century - the practice was stopped only after a deadly nerve disease threatened those who partook of the brains of infected victims. Less extreme but just as interesting are the continuing traditions of a certain tribe in Indonesia, who basically go through a months-long charade of pretending their loved one is still alive during the extended time it takes to build an effigy to the "deceased" and give him a proper burial.

As you can see, there is some pretty mind-blowing information contained in this documentary. You have to have a somewhat morbid interest in death to really sit down and watch something like this, but Last Rites: Death Ceremonies should prove most fascinating to those with any interest in the subject.