A facsimile of the Katumuwa Stela created by Travis Saul for the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A brief article\u00a0in the January\/February 2015 issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review\u00a0<\/em>reported on an exhibit that had just concluded at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, entitled In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East<\/em>.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The artifact most prominently featured in the exhibit was the Katumuwa Stela, a basalt slab set up more than 2700 years ago\u00a0in what is now southeastern Turkey,\u00a0to memorialize\u00a0a man named, unsurprisingly, Katumuwa.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Aramaic inscription on the monument provides detailed instructions concerning feasts to be held in his memory after his death. \u00a0His soul, the stela says, will reside in the slab itself and will participate in these feasts.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe essential thing,\u201d writes Virginia Hermann, one of the co-curators of the exhibit in the catalogue that accompanied it, \u201cwas not to be forgotten by the living, especially by your own family.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople who had the financial resources,\u201d comments the Biblical Archaeology Review<\/em> (\u201cM.S.,\u201d the author, is presumably Megan Sauter, BAR<\/em>\u2018s assistant editor), \u201cdid everything possible to make sure that they would not be forgotten by the living.\u201d<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Evidence has been found for such feasts for and \u201cwith\u201d the dead through the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and the idea may survive in such festivals as the Dia de los Muertos in Mexico and the Qingming Festival in China.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, of course, the dead are almost all soon forgotten anyway. \u00a0The poor, lacking\u00a0monuments, are forgotten soon, but even Katumuwa, who plainly had enough money to commission an inscribed and illustrated basalt monument standing more than three feet tall, has been essentially forgotten for nearly three millennia. \u00a0(His stela was discovered by archaeologists only in 2008.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mortal efforts to transcend death are inevitably pathetic and futile. \u00a0We still bury treasures in the grave with our loved ones and we still lay flowers on their graves, but, without God, we have no real hope.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Muslim prophet Muhammad had only one son, Ibrahim, and that son died as an infant. \u00a0With others,\u00a0Muhammad carried Ibrahim\u2019s body to a nearby cemetery, where, after a prayer, the tiny boy was lowered into a grave. \u00a0Muhammad himself carefully filled the hole with sand, lovingly sprinkled some water upon his son\u2019s burial place, and then marked the grave with a stone. \u00a0\u201cTombstones,\u201d he remarked, half speaking to himself, \u201cdo neither good nor harm. \u00a0But they make the living feel a bit better.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thankfully, we aren\u2019t left alone in such situations. \u00a0Mercifully, our sadly inadequate human efforts don\u2019t represent the last word regarding death.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 A brief article\u00a0in the January\/February 2015 issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review\u00a0reported on an exhibit that had just concluded at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, entitled In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East. \u00a0 The artifact most prominently featured in the exhibit was the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1727,7497,2247,5856,7503,7500,1008,1011,3529,3580],"class_list":["post-81612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afterlife","tag-anatolia","tag-art","tag-dead","tag-feasting","tag-funerary","tag-immortality","tag-life-after-death","tag-remembrance","tag-turkey"],"yoast_head":"\n
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