Death and the Afterlife

By Alli Sinclair

Call me morbid, but I’ve always held a fascination for the way different cultures deal with death. It’s not uncommon for me to take a Sunday stroll with hubby through a cemetery and us spend time imagining what kind of lives the people now buried there used to lead. When I was in Bali, I was fascinated and honored to be included in a burial celebration for a distant relation of a tour guide I met and Varanasi in India had me entranced with the funeral pyres. And every year, while I lived in South America, I liked celebrating Dia de los Santos Difuntos--Day of the Deceased Saints, with my friends and their families.

When I first started writing VESTIGE, I researched Incan weddings and funerals for the historical component of my story. I was lucky enough to meet an anthropologist with a passion for all things Inca and we spent many afternoons discussing the various practices used throughout the Incan empire. His incredible knowledge could easily fill five hefty books, but alas I’m limited to one blog post, so here goes:

According to the Incas, when a person passed from this world, their thirsty spirit travelled the land in search of chicha (Incan fermented maize), and in need of food. The loved one’s dressed in black and grieved, and for five days mourners would be accompanied by musicians and sing songs of sorrow, drink alcohol and eat. The women closest to the deceased would cut off their long tresses or tear out their eyelashes as a sign of grief.

People would gather at the deceased’s most favorite place or where his or her greatest success had been achieved, and while there, the loved ones could recount significant events and fond memories.

When the commoner’s were buried, they would be accompanied by their tools of trade and perhaps some food or chicha, while the Lords would be dressed in their finery and buried with their wealth. Occasionally their wives and servants accompanied them.

The funeral for a kuraka, a regional ruler entailed the mummified body placed in a pucullo, a burial chamber, along with various goods to accompany the deceased into the afterlife. The community would band together and offer llama sacrifices, textiles, cuy (guinea pig), and ceramics at the burial site.

The death of a royal was celebrated in much the same way as a commoner, but on a grander scale. Once the ruler died, his passing would be kept secret until a successor was named. The ruler would be embalmed and placed in Qorikancha Temple Qorikancha Temple. Of course everything was on a grander scale, including the sacrifices. Unfortunately, the Incas not only sacrificed llamas when their ruler died, but 1,000 children were sacrificed in pairs at mountain shrines throughout the region.

The mourning period for a ruler spread across ten days and a further couple of weeks were spent traveling to the ruler’s significant sites—battle victories, agricultural fields, and monuments—where people would speak of the emperor’s greatest acts and victories.

Royal mummies were dressed in a fine tunic and jewelry then wrapped in six layers of precious textiles woven with vicuña fur and feathers, shells, and threads of gold. A piece of silver or coca leaf was placed in his mouth and the emperor’s grave contained several changes of clothing, food, and weapons for the afterlife.

A group of relatives, known as panaqa, were charged with the care of the deceased emperor and they ensured the mummy was kept in food and water. Often, the mummy would be consulted in difficult matters and the people carried on as if the mummies were still living. They even went so far as to gather mummies together for celebrations.

Traveling through the regions that were once part of the Incan Empire, it’s easy to spot pucullos of both the commoners and royalty. Which type of pucullos people were buried in depended greatly on where the deceased person lived.

In the eastern quarter of the empire, in Antisuyu, the people in this rain forest buried their dead in hollowed out trees. The northern quarter, Chinchaysuysu, people held open-air burials where the mummified remains were left out in the elements for five days before being placed in the pucullo.

In the southern quarter of the empire, in Collasuyu, the people were placed in pucullos away from the towns of the living. The cluster of pucullos were commonly known as the “village of the dead.” And in Cuntisuyu, the south western corner of the Incan Empire, the people utilized the dry, mountain environment and placed their dead in natural nooks and crannies.

Some pucullos were made from the traditional method of fitting stones together without mortar (Cuzco is famous for this work), while other regions used adobe bricks. Along the coast, pucullos had numerous chambers and in the mountains, some pucullos towered over 30 feet in height.

I could go on, but I’ll stop here for now. Death, like life, has many facets and through exploring the different belief systems of cultures from around the world, we can learn so much.

How about you? Have you ever experienced or read about a burial from a culture you find fascinating?

The Mystery of the Persian Mummy

An ancient mummy turns up in Pakistan in the hands of a corrupt antiquities dealer. As three countries quarrel over ownership of the find, speculation grows over who actually lies inside the gilded sarcophagus: a 2,000-year-old Persian princess or a modern Pakistani woman? Sounds like the premise for a Steven Spielberg movie.

But it’s not. This really happened.

In 2000, Pakistani police arrested a man in Quetta, a town near the Iranian and Afghan borders, for attempting to place an antiquity on the region’s thriving black market. The artifact in question was a carved wooden sarcophagus in which lay a gold-crowned mummy, complete with face mask and breastplate. The sarcophagus was carved with inscriptions in cuneiform, the writing system of the ancient Persians, and decorated with images of Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian deity. The Iranian antiquities dealer handling the sale claimed that the mummy had been found near Quetta following an earthquake.

When archeologists at the National Museum of Pakistan examined the mummy, they were thrilled. A preliminary examination showed that the embalmed woman was likely Rhodogune, the daughter of Xerxes I, who ruled Persia in the fifth century B.C. If proven authentic, the mummy would be an amazing find, since no Iranian mummies had ever been found before. Not surprising, since Persians of that time were Zoroastrians, who neither mummified nor buried their dead, but left the bodies out in the open to by consumed by vultures. The Egyptian-style mummification led to further speculation about the princess’s identity: had she been the Egyptian wife of a prince during the reign of the earlier Persian king, Cyrus I?

A few months after this announcement, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran began to squabble over rights to Her Highness. Taliban officials in Afghanistan insisted that she’d actually been found across the border in their territory. The Iranians claimed that she’d been a member of the Persian royal family and therefore belonged to them. They threatened to turn the matter over to Interpol. The Pakistanis had possession of the mummy and were determined to keep her.

But the evidence didn’t hold up to further scrutiny. The cuneiform inscription stated that the princess was Rhodogune, a later Greek translation and not the Persian name used in her lifetime. A forgery expert concluded that the image of Ahura Mazda was not authentic. It had been carefully copied but was missing some essential elements. Carbon dating showed that the wooden sarcophagus was only 250 years old, while other tests revealed discrepancies in the Egyptian mummification practices. Some elements were correct—removal of internal organs hands crossed over the chest, bandages properly applied. But the heart was missing. The Egyptians believed that the heart was the repository of wisdom, a quality the deceased would likely need in the afterlife, and therefore they would have left it inside the body.

The plot thickened when scientists examined the princess herself. Far from being 2,000-year-old royalty, she turned out to have dyed blond hair, a broken neck, and the physical traits of a local Pakistani. An autopsy revealed that she had not been dead for more than a few years, likely the victim of a murder. So had the forgers killed her themselves when they needed a body for their fake mummy?

When I first read about this story, I found the whole thing bizarre and intriguing. To pull off such a fraud would require a great deal of planning, equipment, and secrecy – and possibly someone willing to commit murder. You’d need experts in archeology, mummification, and people with the skill to do the job properly. But the whole fraud unraveled due to sloppy attention to historical detail. Did the forgers think that no one would notice?

Perhaps not. Maybe they’d intended to sell Her Highness to an unsuspecting millionaire wanting a unique artifact for his collection and not caring enough to put authenticity to the test. If they’d intended the princess to be the Archeological Find of the Century, you’d think they’d have paid closer attention to archeological accuracy.

Still, it makes for a good story. Maybe someone should call Spielberg.