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:
“And though thou notest from thy safe recess
Old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air
Love them for what they are; nor love them less,
Because to thee they are not what they were.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“We all run on two clocks. One is the outside clock, which ticks away our decades and brings us ceaselessly to the dry season. The other is the inside clock, where you are your own timekeeper and determine your own chronology, your own internal weather and your own rate of living. Sometimes the inner clock runs itself out long before the outer one, and you see a dead man going through the motions of living.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)