6 - THE DEAD KING
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
Summary
There is a paradox about death. On the one hand, it is the great leveler, badge of our common mortality. As Hamlet reflects:
Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth
to dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam;
and why of that loam whereto he was
converted might they not stop a beer barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O, that that earth which kept the world in awe
should patch a wall t'expel the winter's flaw!
(Hamlet, Act V, scene i)Yet, earlier in the play, the worldly Rosencrantz conveys a very different sentiment:
The cess of majesty
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What's near it with it; or 'tis like a massy wheel
Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoined which when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.
(Hamlet, Act III, scene iii)It is to this latter theme that we attend in Part III of the book. We examine the funeral rites of great men in societies large and small: the Dinka “masters of the spear” and the pharaohs of Egypt; the chiefs of Borneo and the monarchs of Renaissance France. For present purposes, we stretch the word “king” to embrace them all.
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- Information
- Celebrations of DeathThe Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual, pp. 133 - 161Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991