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XVII.

MOURNING AND BURIALS.

173. Hysterical Display.-Mourning in the East, like other customs, varies in different Oriental lands. Sometimes the mourners are hired, but they do not take the place of mourning by the relatives. Sometimes, also, the mourning begins before the person is actually dead. There are often formal exercises, with as much pomp and display as the condition of the sick or dying person will permit. The bereaved beat the breast, tear the hair, throw dust over their persons, fall in hysterical or cataleptic paroxysms, and in India the widow throws herself on the funeral pyre. To the Oriental the quiet, deep sorrow of the West seems cold and unfeeling.

174. A Syrian Case.-When death comes the wailing and violent emotions of the impulsive nations of the East are alarming and terrible to Western beholders. Prof. Post describes such a scene witnessed in his medical practice as an average example of the extravagant grief of Asiatics. "The patient had fallen into an old stone quarry, a depth of sixty feet, and suffered an injury of the spine. For a week the lower portions of the body had been paralyzed, and he had suffered in his whole body from the shock of the fatal injury. . . . As I sat watching, the wife, observing the anxiety of my countenance, fell on her knees at her husband's feet, and began to weep and beat her breast. In a few minutes the eyes became fixed, the breathing shallower, and the pulse was gone. The sister then burst into the room like a maniac, shrieking with anguish, and threw herself down by her brother's side, as he lay on his bed on the floor, seized his hand, and implored him to give her one look. Immediately, while he yet breathed, the crowd of women surged into the room and filled it with their loud wailings, tossing their arms in the most extravagant gesticulations.

The men pressed back the wife and sister, and endeavored to check the shrieks, until at least the sick man should have expired. Presently they too yielded to the infection and joined in the tumult. No voice of remonstrance or sympathy could be heard, and no strength of will or power of persuasion could restrain the wild mass which now filled the room and clogged the approaches to the house. The chief mourners tore their hair, rent their garments, beat their breasts, threw themselves wildly on the ground, invoked the dead, implored the bystanders, did everything but pray to God for patience and comfort. Little children added their songs and screams to the clamor, and I was glad to retire from the harrowing scene, and to reflect on the blessing of a calm trust in God and patient resignation to his utmost will. These wailings last for hours, and but for the speedy burial of the dead, would end most disastrously to the living. As it is, the chief mourners are often made ill by the violence of their grief.”

Dr. F. J. Bliss, the explorer of Lachish, tells of a mourning delegation at the mahal, or mourning house, for a great man. As they approach, no matter how gaily they may have been chatting, they rush forward, handkerchiefs to face, sobbing, weeping, with demonstrations of great grief, going through these for perhaps the tenth time in the day.

We

175. Death Shriek.-Thus the late Dr. Amelia B. Edwards, the Egyptologist, describes her first experience in hearing this death shriek. "All at once we heard a sound like the far off wavering sound of many owls. It shrilled, swelled, wavered, dropped, and then died away, like the moaning of the wind at sea. held our breath and listened. We never heard anything so wild and plaintive." Such a custom is alluded to by the prophet in bemoaning the desolations of Samaria, "For this will I lament and wail, I will go stripped and naked; I will make a wailing like the jackals, and a lamentation like the ostriches." Another old prophet tells of the mourning over the desolations of Israel: "Wailing shall be in all the broad ways; and they shall say in all

1 Micah 1:8, R. V.

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the streets, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husband unto mourning, and such as are skillful in lamentation to wailing." The mourning of women is also repeatedly mentioned, both in the Old Testament and in the New. Thus, the prophet breaks out, "Call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for the cunning women, that they may come: and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters." "

176. Lamentations.-The calamity of being denied a proper burial finds a pathetic lament in the prophet's exclamation, "They shall not lament for him, saying, Ah, my brother! or, Ah, sister! they shall not lament for him, saying, Ah, lord! or Ah, his glory! He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem." But the most pathetic dirge of lament is that of David over his son, “The king . . . went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!"♦

177. Cries and Dirges.-Sir J. Chardin speaks of the ungoverned and excessive grief of Eastern peoples, which he heard at Ispaham, when the mistress of the house died. "The moment she expired, all the family, to the number of twenty-five or thirty people, set up such a furious cry that I was quite startled." This happened in the middle of the night, and Chardin imagined that his own servants were actually murdered. "The suddenness of the outcry is terrifying, together with a shrillness and loudness which one cannot easily imagine." And Lane speaks of the same custom in Egypt, "Even before the spirit has departed, the women of the family raise the cries of lamentation, call welweleh or wilwal; uttering the most piercing shrieks and calling upon the name of the deceased. In Syria the custom also prevails at some remote villages, and the women singers chant the same song at funerals as the men singers often sing at marriage feasts. The dirge or death song

1 Amos 5:16. 2 Jer. 9: 17, 18.

8 Jer. 22: 18, 19.

42 Sam. 18:33.

is mentioned by Lane as common in Egypt. The chant is in Arabic; this is a translation of the beginning of the chant:

"The glory of him who createth every form,
And reduceth his servants by death,

Who bringeth his creatures to nought with mankind,
They all shall lie in the graves,

The absolute glory of the Lord of the East,

The absolute glory of the Lord of the West,

The absolute glory of the creator of the two lights,
The sun and also the moon,

His absolute glory; how bountiful is he!

His absolute glory; how gracious is hel
His absolute glory; how great is he.”

In Egypt this dirge is sung by a procession of boys who precede the body. Behind the body come female mourners, with hair disheveled, but concealed by the head veil, who are crying and shrieking, often aided by hired mourners, who likewise celebrate the praises of the deceased.

178. Endangers Life.-Even to this day in that region mourners are so violent in their emotions that often serious injury comes to the health and persons of the mourners. One physician says that the women especially beat their breasts in such a way as to develop tumors and bring on serious disease. They wail until they are so hoarse that they cannot speak, they fall fainting to the ground, and refuse to eat or sleep. The neighborhood of the house where the dead is resounds with the frantic cries of mourners, and professional mourners are hired to add their artificial wailings to the agony of real sorrow. No wonder the apostle reminds the Thessalonians that such sorrow is not born of Christian hope.1

179. Burial.-Burial usually takes place soon after death. Prof. Post says, "It seldom occurs more than ten hours after death, almost never on the succeeding day. The rapidity of decomposition, the excessive violence of grief, the reluctance of Orientals to allow the dead to remain long in the houses of the living explain what seems to us indecent haste." Notice

1 Thess. 4: 13.

the case of Ananias and Sapphira. So, too, the quickness with which the bodies of Nadab and Abihu were carried out of camp is in strict accordance with present Oriental custom.2 The dead are often in their graves within two or three hours after death. Thus the dead son of the widow of Nain was carried outside the walls of the city, where Jesus and his disciples met the procession going to burial. Tombs and cemeteries within the walls of a city were, and still are, repugnant to Oriental ideas.

180. Wrapping the Body.-Dr. Tristram, from his observations in Western Asia, says: "Interments always take place, at latest, on the evening of day of death, and frequently at night. There are, and can be, no elaborate preparations. The corpse is dressed in such clothes as were worn in life, and stretched on a bier, with a cloth thrown over it."4

A native of Syria states, “It is still the custom to wrap the dead. The face is covered with a napkin, the hands and feet are bound and swathed in cloths, usually of linen. This binding is sometimes by a napkin and sometimes by the corners of a sheet. The body is then placed on a bier, which has a pole at each corner, by means of which it is carried on the shoulders to the tomb." Christians use coffins, but this is quite a modern custom there. Moslems do not use them.

Prof. Grant adds, Death, among the peasantry, is an occasion for long mourning. The body is wrapped and placed in the ground, and protected from the falling earth as well as may be by the use of stones. On the top of the grave the heaviest stones obtainable are packed, to make it difficult for hyenas to secure the body. It is customary to watch the grave many nights to keep these creatures away.5

181. Spices in Burial.—It is still common to place with the wrappings of the body spices and preparations to retard decomposition. Thus, the friends at Bethany wrapped the body of their brother Lazarus, and he came forth bound

1 Acts 5:5, 6, 10.
Eastern Customs, p. 94.

? Lev. 10: 4.
Compare Job 21: 32.

Luke 7: 12.

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