Funeral Rites, the customs attending the burial or other disposal of the bodies of the dead, the various practical methods of which are discussed under the article BURIAL. These ceremonies of course vary with the method preferred, whether of burial in the earth, exposure upon the tops of trees and towers as practised by the Parsees, or of burning in the usage of the ancient Greeks and later also the Romans. The effect of Christianity was to add a new sanctity to the body from the belief in its resurrection in a glorified form, hence the burial in places specially set apart for that purpose with more or less elaborate religious ceremonies, the washing, anointing, stretching, and swathing of the body in white robes (once in England only in woollens), the strewing of the coffin with palms and rosemary rather than cypress, and its position in the grave with face upward and feet to the east, towards the second coming of the Lord. Nowadays in Britain and America there are few distinctive customs beyond the religious rites, the wearing of black as a mourning colour, and the accompanying the body to the grave, expressive of respect; but formerly many customs were in use, as the ringing of the passing bell to drive off demons who might be in waiting for the newly-released soul; the constant watching with the dead betwixt death and burial—the lykewake—once universal, and still surviving, with degrading circumstances and without meaning, in the Irish wake; setting a plate of salt upon the breast of the body and lighted candles at its head; and the serving of profuse repasts of meat and drink to all and sundry, as well as special doles of food and clothing to the poor. Aubrey in his Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme tells us of a singular custom as having been formerly practised in Herefordshire, of a man eating a loaf of bread and drinking a bowl of beer over a dead body, and thereby symbolically taking upon himself the sins of the deceased. The analogy is obvious between the sin-eater and the scapegoat of the ancient Jewish Day of Atonement.
Funeral rites symbolise affection and respect for the deceased and grief for his loss, or they may be attempts to deprecate the ill-will of a now powerful ghost. The belief in the continuance of life beyond the grave is a universal human possession, and most savages attach ghost-souls also to animals and even inanimate objects, which may accompany the souls of men into the spirit-world as in life. Hence the meaning of the North American Indians burying bow and arrow with the dead, the old Norse warrior having his horse and armour laid beside him in his barrow, the Hindu widow's inveterate desire to be burnt herself to death together with her husband's body, the head-hunting of the Dyaks in order that a man may not be unprovided with slaves after his death, the burying of money together with the corpse and even the obolus for Charon's fee among the ancient Greeks, as well as such a survival as our own leading the trooper's horse behind his master's bier instead of burying him in his grave.
The funeral rites of the ancient Egyptians were most elaborate, but it is scarcely safe to claim their preference for embalming as conclusive proof of their belief in a resurrection of the body, as they embalmed animals as well as men, and did not preserve some of the most important internal parts of the human bodies they embalmed.
See the articles ANCESTOR-WORSHIP, BURIAL, EGYPT, and EMBALMING; for the religious significance of funeral rites in Herbert Spencer's theory of religion, his Principles of Sociology, but for a safer guide to interpretation, Tylor's Primitive Culture (vol. ii.); also for the facts, Feydeau, Hist. générale des Usages funèbres et des sépultures des Peuples anciens (3 vols. Paris, 1858); De Gubernatis, Storia popolare degli usi funebri Indo-Europei (1873); Tegg, The Last Act (1876); and Somtag, Die Todtenbestattung (1878).