Lamps For The Dead
The pagan custom of burying lamps with the dead was to provide the dead with the means of obtaining light in the next world; the lamps were for the most part unlighted. It was of Asiatic origin, traces of it having been observed in Phoenicia and in the Punic colonies, but not in Egypt or Greece. In Europe it was confined to the countries under the domination of Rome.
Read more about this topic: Ceremonial Use Of Lights, Ancient Greece and Rome
Famous quotes containing the words lamps and/or dead:
“He certainly must be a son of Aurora to whom the sun looms, when there are so many millions to whom it glooms rather, or who will never see it till an hour after it has risen. But it behooves us old stagers to keep our lamps trimmed and burning to the last, and not trust to the sun’s looming.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin’d
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,”
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)