Burial Practices

This is a project I did for English:

Burial Practices

We will always remember past kings or great heroes whether they had a great temples or not. The Inca had a very religious burial practices and afterlife. Like the kings of Egypt, important Incas were mummified and typically buried with their rare objects and provisions that would be needed for the journey to the afterlife. Their long list of burial possessions even included, on some occasions, freshly sacrificed humans, for slaves to serve them in the afterlife.¹ If an Inca, rich or poor, had been a good Inca, the warmth of the Sun awaited. Bad Incas got an eternity or more in the cold, damp earth. There would not have been many “bad” Incas, since prisons were unheard-of and there was no need for thieving in a society of plenty. ²

Egyptian kings were the only people who could afford a pyramid. It took hundreds of slaves and rock to build a pyramid. When the Egyptian civilization was just starting out they built labyrinths underground, but as the years went by they got bigger and higher off of the ground. The pyramids have stood for thousands of years, although slightly diminished. The tombs use to have lots of jewels and riches to be taken into the afterlife, but over thousands of years many have been looted and are now empty. There are many different building styles of the pyramids including the step pyramid and the true pyramid.³

In The Lord of the Rings there are many different examples of burial customs. Like the deep pit/tomb that Rohan sends their past kings into. Also the closed rooms/tomb that Gondor puts their past kings into. But for the common soldier death in battle was honored. The wining army usually burns the dead of the losing army and buries their own dead. Sometimes if hast is great, and you have few casualties then you do what you can, and float them down a river like in chapter 5, of book 2 .

Footnotes:

1. Inca Burial Etiquette – http://latinamericanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/inca_burial_etiquette
2. Ibid
3. Overview of Pyramid Construction – http://www.touregypt.net/construction/