"Cooney:" "The human corpse." "Some cultures preserve their dead to ensure a glorious afterlife." "Others burn the body to free the soul." "And many returning them to the earth." "From the earliest civilizations, human remains have been treated in strange and varied ways." "The question is why." "I'm kara cooney, an Egyptologist on a worldwide quest." "I look at human behavior, both past and present, through the lens of ancient Egypt." "And the more I travel the world, the more similarities I see." "Exploring why we are who we are often leads me out of Egypt." "This is the valley of the kings, perhaps the most famous burial ground in the world." "The men buried here were placed into incredibly elaborate and expensive tombs as mummies meant to last for eternity." "And even though these tombs and the mummies they contain are distinctly Egyptian, all over the world and throughout history, people have developed their own unique methods of caring for the dead." "Burial." "Cremation." "Mummification." "The many ways of treating a human corpse reveal an enormous amount about different cultures, periods of history, and religions." "Some techniques were born of necessity." "After all, everybody needs to remove the dead from among the living to avoid stench and disease." "But others were accidental, inspired by nature, like the most famous corpses of all -- of ancient Egyptian mummies." "This is a cemetery in the fayum, about 60 miles south of Cairo." "In terms of Egyptian history, it's not that old, dating back about 2,000 years." "But here we can see a phenomenon that must have inspired the very earliest of ancient Egyptian burial practices thousands of years earlier." "Everywhere you look, human bones litter the ground." "When we think of the ancient Egyptian dead, we usually think of carefully prepared mummies, but the reality is quite different." "Most Egyptians couldn't afford mummification, so the dead were simply buried in a shallow hole in the desert sands." "Over time, many remains have worked their way to the surface, exposed by wind and erosion." "You find cemeteries like this all over Egypt, where the bodies are actually exposed and visible." "If you're in the desert and it's dry and there's no water, everything is preserved." "So we have human remains, bones of all kind." "Not just bones -- you have the shroud that was placed over the deceased person." "Look, a kneecap!" "that's a kneecap." "And you can actually see the muscle." "That's amazing." "When human corpses are placed directly into the sand in a dry environment like Egypt, all the fluids are naturally sucked out of the tissue, so the body doesn't rot." "This is called desiccation." "If you lay the body directly into the sand, you get amazing preservation of all kinds of tissue, not just the bone, but sometimes the muscle." "Sometimes even get toenails and all of the flesh." "The Egyptians would see that." "They would see bodies that were preserved with the faces fully intact, with all of their flesh and bones and the body still held together." "To them, that was a magical thing." "They believed this process created an eternal body, as a corpse that could continue to eat and drink and to enjoy all of the sensual pleasures of this world." "This physical link between the corpse and the afterlife became so important that an entire funerary religion was built around bodily preservation." "Wealthy and powerful Egyptians wanted to live on, so they figured out how to mimic nature and control desiccation." "They were turned into mummies." "In the Cairo museum, among the wonders and riches of Egypt's past is an area where everyone is asked to lower their voices .." "A room where some of the mightiest rulers of human history still reside as extremely well-preserved mummies." "Here's how the process worked." "First, they removed the internal organs because fluids in the liver, stomach, intestines, and lungs cause quick decomposition." "Then they packed the body into a mineral salt called natron to pull all the moisture out of the muscle and skin tissues." "These are some of the same salts found in the Egyptian desert sands." "After it was dried out, they removed the corpse from the salts and treated the body with oils so that the flesh remained supple enough not to crack and disintegrate." "The resulting mummy was thought to have entered an other-worldly but still physical state." "And many of these corpses have survived intact to this day." "This is the mummy of Ramses ii, a man who lived around 1250 BCE." "And one of Egypt's greatest kings." "The treatment of his body reflects this." "It's a masterwork of mummification." "His facial features, his skin and hair, they're all incredibly well-preserved." "Yet his corpse is over 3,000 years old." "But the Egyptians believe that mummification of the corpse was not the only step necessary for a good hereafter." "On the west bank of modern-day Luxor," "Before he died, so this isn't representing his actual funerary procession as it happened but the ideal, perfect funerary procession that he wanted." "Depicted in this mural are the material objects that ramose wanted to bring with him into the afterlife." "The tomb was thought to be a permanent home, a physical place for the dead body to dwell." "On the day of the funeral, the corpse was buried with all of the material possessions the body would need for comfort." "A fan, a stool, a bed, a headrest, number of different chests -- his servants are bringing all of these different things with him into the tomb." "We have a number of women here kneeling down with their hand on their heads in a sign of mourning." "And they're all focused on this over here, which is the coffin of ramose, in yellow." "It was probably gilded." "It was probably very precious wood with all kinds of gold on the outside so that all the people present here could see how wealthy this man was." "But the possessions were useless without burial rituals allowing the deceased to actually use them." "One of these was thought to switch on the mummified body inside the coffin." "It's called the opening of the mouth ritual." "Priests stand before the body, before the mummy, with a number of different implements and a number of different offerings." "And they open the eyes, the nose, the mouth, and the ears so that the mummy can go into the afterlife and be able to see, hear, smell, and touch." "It can go in as an activated body." "Ensuring that the deceased reached the afterlife was a complex, expensive, and time-consuming process." "The more powerful the deceased, the more elaborate the burial." "The ultimate expression of this can be seen in the burial of king Tutankhamen." "When discovered in 1922, the tomb of king tut was filled .." ".." "...Dozens of pieces of furniture Model boats." "Even mummified food was found stacked in his tomb." "This was a king but also a man." "Tutankhamen was buried with everything that a normal person would need, everything that you would need to clothe yourself, to feed yourself, even furniture." "Here you see a pair of socks made of linen, an array of gloves, and Tutankhamen was also buried with hundreds of pairs of loincloths, ancient underwear." "That's because even the most important corpses needed the mundane items of daily living." "They also needed ways to entertain themselves in eternity." "From the number of objects that are associated with sport and hunting, it seems that Tutankhamen was a pretty avid sportsman." "And he also brought with him all of these throwing sticks, dozens and dozens of throwing sticks, that he probably used in his life when hunting in the desert." "These objects would have served Tutankhamen's every need and desire." "But perhaps the most important piece of funerary equipment was also the most valuable -- the coffin." "Tutankhamen's inner coffin was made from 269 pounds of solid gold." "A coffin was thought to bring immortality." "A gold coffin created a god." "The Egyptians believed in an afterlife that centered on the survival of the human corpse." "But what about other cultures who couldn't preserve the physical remains of their loved ones?" "How did they provide comfort and peace in the next world?" "Cooney:" "In the Italian countryside, an hour outside of Rome, is the ancient city of cerveteri." "Now an important archaeological site, cerveteri covers hundreds of acres, with more than 1,000 buildings." "This isn't an abandoned city or even a place like Pompeii, where people died tragically." "It was built for the dead in the first place." "In many ways, you could compare these to an Egyptian tomb." "These particular burial mounds were built by the Etruscans, an Italian people who lived here between the 9thand the 3rd centuries BCE." "living have long since disappeared." "dead have survived because they were built to last forever." "All of this was dug out of the live rock." "This is volcanic tufa rock, and it's meant to look like a house." "So the Etruscans are burying their dead in a home so that they'll have a house for all eternity." "And you can see this is supposed to represent a wooden beam." "We have a column over here." "And then everywhere you look, there's more of these beds for the dead." "So if we look in this burial space here, we see that it's much bigger, and this probably would have been for the patriarch of the family, somebody who was much more important." "Like the Egyptians, the Etruscans buried their dead with all kinds of stuff -- lots of wine, lots of food, lots of vases, clothing, jewelry." "And they would have placed a lot of it here, and they would have placed some of it on the outside rooms." "The difference, though, between the Egyptians and the Etruscans, main difference is that they didn't mummify these bodies." "They didn't preserve them." "They left them here to rot on these beds." "The climate is much wetter here in Italy compared to Egypt." "So there's no chance for any sort of natural desiccation, any sort of natural mummification." "The Etruscans knew that." "They knew that the bodies they put in these tombs would rot and decay." "Despite that, they still built these grand monuments." "To us, it may seem like the Etruscans wasted money and effort building such elaborate homes for the dead and then furnishing them with all the comforts of the living." "But even today we bury the dead with clothes, jewelry, eyeglasses, even a toy." "But at some times and in some places, the dead were given much less to take with them into the afterlife." "The ancient Romans, who controlled Italy after the Etruscans, also created special places for the dead away from the living." "Within Rome itself, burial was forbidden by law." "This was a matter of public sanitation, so the dead had to be deposited outside the city." "Even today, you can see the wall that divided the city from what was once its most prominent graveyard." "The Romans conducted various types of burials depending on the social status of the deceased to fashion and belief." "Unlike the Egyptians who put lots of money into preserving their corpses, many ancient Romans spent a lot of money destroying theirs through the practice of cremation." "Cremation was expensive because it involved burning wood and other materials adorning the dead, such as clothing and jewelry." "This high cost gave it great prestige, so more and more Romans chose this method." "By the dawn of the roman empire, cremation had become the norm for those who could afford it." "Although the body was going to be burned, the Romans cared a great deal how the corpse was treated before cremation." "After death, the nearest relative would close the eyes." "Next, the body would be washed and dressed in appropriate attire -- a toga for roman citizens." "Then there was a funeral procession to the site of cremation." "Many Romans believed that burning the corpse allowed the soul to rise from the body in the plumes of smoke and flame, setting the spirit free." "Although cremation destroyed the body, Romans still gave great importance to the final resting place of the ashes." "benedetta bessi of john Cabot university in Rome guided me through these roman burial grounds." "So this is what they call a columbarium, right?" "Yes. exactly." "It's a columbarium, a pigeonhole." "Pigeonhole." ""Columbarium" is Latin for "pigeonhole," and you can see why." "Each grave is a small cavity for the cremated remains of the dead, nothing like the house-like tombs built by the Egyptians or Etruscans." "So each of these cavities has a hole built into it, and each has a lid, right?" "And you just put the ashes in there bare." "And then you cover it with one of these lids?" "Yes." "So who was allowed to be buried in a space like this?" "In a space like this, we will find members of, let's say, the middle class." "We are not dealing with the aristocracy." "We would have maybe tradesmen, former slaves that had been freed and that would choose, for example, to be buried with other former slaves." "This is a family-type installation?" "The family would want to stay with other family members?" "It could be for a family, but it could also be for members of a professional type of association." "Many of the poor and middle-class citizens belonged to funeral clubs to which they made regular payments." "Dues guaranteed them a spot in the columbarium once they passed away." "So it's like an insurance policy for the afterlife." "You have to save your money, buy into it so that you get this little space." "And that not only guarantees you a place in the ground, but it guarantees you a place with this entire society." "Yes, with the rest of the group." "Even in death, ancient Romans cared about being in the right place with the right people." "But columbaria were for middle-class Romans, not for noble families." "For wealthy Romans who wanted to show off their elevated status, more conspicuous ground-level burial sites were available." "The appian way, built in the 4th century , quickly became the major thoroughfare into Rome." "Emperors, returning armies, and traveling merchants all used the road." "And it was here that the roman elite built elaborately decorated mausoleums." "So, here we've got a family group, right?" "Yes, we have the father, the mother, and then probably the offspring." "And this is obviously a very wealthy family." "They're here on the main road." "Everyone that's going into Rome will see their tomb." "Just like the Egyptians and the Etruscans, ancient roman burial methods benefited both the living and the dead." "Cremation and burials outside the city walls kept things hygienic for the living." "And the dead retained their identities as middle-class carpenters and goldsmiths, as wealthy senators or even as members of the same religious cult." "But around 200 CE., things started to change." "A new religion took hold in Rome that radically transformed funerary practices." "Cremation gradually fell out of favor." "Christians believed in salvation after death and the resurrection of the corpse itself." "Cooney:" "Outside Rome, along the appian way, there are lines of ancient burial monuments honoring the wealthy and noble roman dead." "But not far away are the roman catacombs, miles and miles of underground cemeteries." "Celani:" "We are in one of the oldest catacombs of Rome, which was very recently discovered in 1964." "Cooney:" "Oh, this is great!" "Alessandro celani is an expert in roman archaeology and my guide to one of the best preserved of these burial networks." "So, how old is this catacomb?" "This dates back to 200 CE." "And this was found intact, .." "You can still see this beautiful connection between the original materials, the offerings, the human bones that are still visible." "So it's a perfect example." "Can you assign religion to these burials?" "Can you tell if they're pagan or Jewish or Christian?" "Of course." "First of all, they were all buried, so there is no evidence of cremation." "Because the Christians expected not only the spiritual resurrection but also the bodily resurrection, so their intention was to preserve as much as they could the bodies." ", cremation had become the norm in Italy." "But Christians believed Christ was going to return to earth and that they would need their bodies again when the righteous were separated from the sinners." "This meant Christians needed a lot more room to bury their dead." "So the Christians were buying small portions of land, and they were excavating underground tunnels to optimize the space that they had." "The catacombs are a complex underground maze with side galleries branching off, then branching off again." "Many are three or four stories deep." "They contain millions of graves." "It's been said that if placed in a straight line, they would extend the length of Italy." "So it's new to have the burial underground." "It's new to have the body be buried whole and not cremated." "And it's new to be buried in a religious community." "Yes, in fact." "All those things were distinguishing the Christians very early in the roman society." "Oh, wow. look at this." "They have found a lot of remains of vases that were set in the catacombs as offerings to the dead." "As you see, remains of skeletons and bones." "And these weren't poor people if they were able to bring glass with them." "No, they were not poor people." "This one was owned by a single family which had very, very important relation with the leading families of Rome at that time." "And the bones are all still here, so we have a mandible." "And this person -- it looks like they died pretty old, just looking at the teeth in the back." "The Christians buried here were not concerned about displaying their family status." "But they were concerned about enabling the resurrection of their bodies." "They actually believed that they would walk the earth again when Christ came the second time." "Which is also the reason why, on every tomb, you find the personal name, the first name, because they believed that, at the end of times, after the final judgment, they would be called upon their personal name and then called back to life." "So the family name isn't as important." "It's the first name that's important." "What is important is the first name." "That's exactly the opposite that you can find in the roman tombs, where you find the name of the family that's the first, and the personal name is not very important." "Early Christians, like many groups and cultures before them, took extraordinary care of their dead." "Like the Egyptians and the Etruscans, they'd bury their bodies intact." "But there was another hallmark of early Christian burials." "Christians believed that being buried in these catacombs with other Christians, rather than being surrounded by pagans, helped them to enter into the kingdom of god." "If you were buried near a martyr or a saint, even better." "Their bodies were believed to have near-magical powers." "Rulers of an ancient culture on the other side of the world also believed that close proximity to special corpses would bring them power after death." "But they wanted to be buried near victims of human sacrifice." "Cooney:" "The city of chan chan, along the Peruvian coast, was the center of chimu culture." "The chimu ruled the area from 950 to 1460, when they were conquered by the Inca." "Spread over nearly 8 square miles, chan chan was the largest city anywhere in the Americas." "It was dominated by 10 walled compounds, palaces from which the chimu kings ruled." "8 Of the 10 contained a grand royal tomb, like this one." "Jason toohey is an American archaeologist specializing in Andean prehistory." "And this is one of the kings' burials?" "Yeah, this is one of the royal tombs." "This is the principle tomb, with the dead king at one end." "How do we know this is a royal burial?" "Partly the size." "The scale of the burial chamber itself is so much larger than the burial chamber that a normal person would have." "Like the Egyptians, the chimu preserved their dead kings." "They used the dry air and earth to create a natural mummy then buried them in these massive tombs." "And they also provided their rulers with all the things their bodies would need and want in the afterlife -- precious jewelry, furniture, even food." "But they included something else, something that expressed the king's absolute power." "When the ruler of an empire the size of the chimu died, he did go well-prepared, and more so than the material that probably was in his tomb, he went along with hundreds of sacrificed victims." "Surrounding this major tomb, there are at least 40 attendant tombs, or cist tombs, that would have contained probably human sacrifices." "So I see dozens of these subsidiary burials, and they've all been filled in." "Toohey:" "Initially, they were looted, and they've been filled in kind of since to protect them." "But this isn't unique to this burial platform." "Each of them had attendant cist tombs surrounding the primary." "And that's another marker that this is a royal burial, .." "This is the one that's been preserved and opened, also looted, probably, in antiquity." "But we can go down and take a look." "I'd love to go down and take a look." "Any time I get a chance to go into a tomb, I'm happy to do it." "Even though it's an empty hole now, it's hard not to visualize the haunting image of the space filled with dozens of sacrificial victims, most of them young." "Watch your head down here, kara." "Here at chan chan, excavations a couple of decades ago unearthed the remains of at least 80 or 90, probably female, burials." "80 Or 90 female burials." "Within these attendant cist tombs that we're in right now." "These women were extended. laid flat out." "So they were laid flat out and in a way almost kind of stacked up as offerings to that dead king." "The bodies are just laid one on top of the other." "Just as if you were offering anything else, you're stacking -- you're filling the space." "And that may have been the kind of thing that filled this tomb." "And you said, like, offerings." "Like, almost like you would offer in Egypt bread and beer for the dead, here you would have an offering of stacks of young ladies." "You're sending -- things that the king would have valued in life, you're sending with him into whatever form of afterlife the chimu believed in." "Rulers throughout history have taken material riches with them to the grave for use in the afterlife." "But the chimu kings were among those who took the practice to a chilling level." "They made sure their servants would continue to wait on them for all eternity." "The lords of chimu made clear they not only had authority over the living during their own lifetimes, but that this godlike power extended after death." "Other civilizations in the region also used human corpses to impose their will, bodies that had already been buried." "Cooney:" "This is pachacamac, one of the most sacred ancient sites in all of south America." "Located near modern-day lima in Peru, this religious center was active for 1,300 years." "From the year 200 UNTIL THE SPANISH CONQUEST IN THE 1500s, It was a massive site occupied by four different cultures." "The lima, the warl, the ichma, and the Inca -- all of them once lived here, and each successive society added to the site." "But even as they changed and expanded pachacamac, the sanctity of the burial grounds was preserved." "The site is full of temples and graveyards." "Pachacamac was a city of priests and pilgrims, the dying and the dead." "Archaeologist Rommel angeles falcón is an expert on the complicated history of this hallowed city." "[ Speaking Spanish ] Interpreter:" "Pachacamac was a sacred city." "You couldn't enter it easily." "You had to fast for at least one month, up to a year." "People came to seek favor from the temple priests and in many cases brought their dead and dying to be buried." "For at least 1,300 years, this site was used for sacred rituals." "When the Inca arrived, they conquered practically everything." "But they respected pachacamac too much to destroy it." "Cooney:" "Like the chimu, the Inca added their own structures -- temples and pyramids -- and dedicated these additions with human offerings." "But here in pachacamac, the sacred offerings were not all fresh sacrifices." "[ Speaking Spanish ] Interpreter:" "In some cases, they brought mummies as an offering to give the building an even greater value." "These cultures opened ancient tombs." "They removed the mummies and brought them here." "So they're actually consecrating this place with older mummies from an older culture?" "Yes, for the Andean people, ancestors have always been very important." "The ancestor provides the foundation for everything." "This gives the bodies great spiritual significance." "And death is an essential component of this." "Cooney:" "So the Inca dug up corpses from ancient burial grounds to legitimize their rule or to justify an invasion or consecrate a new temple." "I've been given the amazing opportunity to examine one of these mummies." "It's currently being studied in the onsite laboratory." "This woman's mummy is about 1,000 years old." "It was preserved through natural desiccation in this dry place." "[ Speaking Spanish ] Interpreter:" "This is the typical type of burial." "The dead were put in the fetal position because people believed that when a person died, they were also reborn." "They were placed in the position of a child inside the mother's womb." "Then the earth became the mother earth." "I've seen many mummies in Egypt, but this is the first Peruvian mummy that I've seen, and it's very similar." "I mean, you can see the tendons." "You can see the muscles. you can see skin." "Obviously, her hair is beautifully preserved." "Cooney:" "The textiles and jewelry buried with this woman suggest she died in the 9th or 10th century." "And because she was wrapped in several layers of fabric and wore exotic adornments, she was probably someone important and of high social status." "So she's got a necklace on that doesn't come from this area." "It comes from over the hills, from the jungles of Peru." "[ Speaking Spanish ] Interpreter:" "Also, she has mollusks and shells from the Peruvian coast." "Why would they use this body as an offering for the new temple?" "Why would the Inca do that?" "[ Speaking Spanish ] Interpreter:" "Because she was important." "That's why they used her as a human offering." "The mummy was taken from its cemetery and placed at an Incan construction site." "So this mummy had a second life after her first burial." ", and then, 400 to 500 years later, she's taken out of the ground and given as an offering for a temple that's built by the Inca." "[ Speaks Spanish ] this is the largest cemetery at pachacamac, and it's quite possibly where the woman's mummy was originally buried before later societies dug her up for their own purposes." "So, in some cultures, people can be buried more than once." "And secondary burials can have a very different meaning." "In fact, many cultures have exhumed their dead in elaborate public rituals." "Some people still practice these ceremonies today for very personal reasons." "Cooney:" "Hanoi, the capital of the socialist republic of Vietnam." "It's a modern urban city." "But here an ancient funerary practice is still very much alive." "During two months of the year, hushed voices drift through the nighttime quiet of Hanoi's graveyards." "The buried remains of dead loved ones are being uncovered, and I'm allowed a rare glimpse into this ceremony." "It's a funerary tradition known as secondary burial, a ritual foreign to the modern western world." "" to better understand why families would dig up the bodies of their dead relatives, nguyen, a government cemetery caretaker." "I see that one of the graves here has been dug up." "What's happening here?" "[ Speaking Vietnamese ] Interpreter:" "IT'S OUR JOB." "Around the end of the year, we dig up the graves." "Being buried for three years is the traditional practice here." "It's more sanitary for the men digging up the bodies." "It takes that amount of time for everything to decompose." "Practitioners of boc mo believe that for the first three years after death, the deceased are in a state of unrest and transition, almost a cocoon-like stage." "It's only by digging up the bodies, freeing them from the graves, that the dead can transform into powerful ancestors, spirits able to work for the well-being of their families." "The ritual starts when family members ask the dead if it's okay to disturb them." "The dead are thought to be in a confused and vulnerable state when their graves are disturbed, and they need to be calmed down with gifts and incense." "I notice a lot of weeping and crying when the bones of the deceased are seen for the first time." "[ Indistinct talking ] it's got to be a shock for family members to see their loved ones transformed from the dead person who was buried to wet cloth and a collection of bones." "[ Speaking Vietnamese ] Interpreter:" "Handling the bodily remains properly is extremely important." "This work can never be done a second time because this is an act of heart and virtue." "And this is the final task to take the deceased to a new home." "The bones are taken to a special washing area for the second part of the ceremony." "Once they're cleaned of flesh and dirt, the remains look black and glossy." "Family members surround the bones in a protective way." "Skilled caretakers assemble the remains into a smaller container lined with red cloth and gold paper." "The rearranged bones will eventually be taken to a place near the family home." "They put the vertebrae back together, and he's pretty good at it." "He knows which vertebrae go with which." "He's put the head facing out." "Pelvis goes in." "They're repackaging the body into a little box." "It's beautiful." "And in a way, if you think about it, three years, four years, it takes people that long to get over death." "The loved ones are all here watching this, and they're able to come to terms with the death of their loved ones over time." "Even the tiniest bones are placed into the new coffin." "This particular man died when he was 97." "And his family tells me he will be a very influential ancestor." "His body goes from a jumble of bones to an organized, compact, and powerful form -- a spiritual being that can work on his family's behalf, someone they can talk to." "To his relatives, this Vietnamese man, three years after his death, has now been transformed into a blessed spirit at peace in his new existence." "So what I've just seen, where people are removing the bodies of their loved ones, carefully cleaning the bones, and then watching them be repacked into a box is a real act of love, but it's not only that." "It's a way of coming face to face with death in a way that we don't do in the united states, actually touching the bones of your dead relatives and understanding that they've moved on to a different place." "But the most amazing part of it is that you take them, you repackage them, and you take those bones home with you." "In Vietnam, the graveyard is seen not as a place of eternal rest, but of transformation." "At the beginning of the ritual, the family seemed really worried about disturbing the dead." "But by the end of it, they seemed more at ease." "Some were even reassured by touching their loved one's bones, secure in the belief that they haven't left them to rot in the wet ground, but instead are honoring them with a new, secure home." "All over the world and throughout time, we have invented so many ways of caring for the human corpse." "But in the end, we all feel the need to do something special with the dead body." "Whatever shape it's taken, the rituals and methods of caring for the dead are a way for the living to maintain a physical connection with those who have passed on." "These are some of the many, many ways to honor, respect, and, ultimately, say goodbye."