In many cultures the dead are seen as not permanently severed from the living. Some groups venerate their ancestors, some groups venerate heroic mortals as having god-like qualities, and some groups offer gifts to placate angry ghosts -- the approaches differ. This article will examine similarities and differences in the relationships between the living and the dead.
The minimum requirement for veneration offered to the dead is probably some kind of belief in an afterlife, a survival at least for a time of personal identity beyond death.
- Egyptian attitudes toward, practices in connection with, and festivals of the dead
- Celtic attitudes toward, practices in connection with, and festivals of the dead
- see Samhain
- Greek attitudes toward, practices in connection with, and festivals of the dead
- Hebrew attitudes toward, practices in connection with, and festivals of the dead
- Rabbinical Judaism's attitudes toward, practices in connection with, and festivals of the dead
- Early Christianity's attitudes toward, practices in connection with, and festivals of the dead
- Chinese attitudes toward, practices in connection with, and festivals of the dead
Roman attitudes toward, practices in connection with, and festivals of the dead
The ancient Romans, like many Mediterranean societies, had strong prohibitions against dead bodies. Bodies were often displayed, but were then taken outside the
pomerium or sacred boundary of the City - in effect, the City walls - for cremation. Ashes and bone fragments were then interred outside the walls. Aristocratic Romans had from their remote past observed the custom of keeping portraits of their male ancestors - they had probably borrowed this custom from the Etruscans
?. These portraits were originally in the form of masks - probably even death-masks moulded on the dead ancestor's face. On significant family holidays the living members of the family might wear the masks in procession.