Search Results: Sky burial

The Girl Who Climbed to the Sky is a folktale from the Arapaho nation about a girl, Sapana, who is tricked by a supernatural sky-being into traveling to his home, where he keeps her, and then must find a way to return to her people, helped...

The Nebra Sky Disk is one of the most fascinating, and some would say controversial, archaeological finds of recent years. Dated to 1600 BCE, this bronze disk has a diameter of 32cm (about the size of a vinyl LP) and weighs around 2 kg. It...

Burial of the dead is the act of placing the corpse of a deceased person in a tomb constructed for that purpose or in a grave dug into the earth. Archaeological excavations have revealed Neanderthal graves dating back 130,000 years, marking...

Egyptian burial is the common term for the ancient Egyptian funerary rituals concerning death and the soul's journey to the afterlife. Eternity, according to scholar Margaret Bunson, “was the common destination of each man, woman and child...

Sky Woman, by Ernest Smith, 1936. Produced as part of the "Indian Arts Project" Federal Art Project. Collection of the Rochester Museum and Science Center.

Did you know that there was not just one deity for the night sky, but numerous gods, titans and nymphs all responsible for different aspects of the night sky, the winds and the seasons? When you think of the Greek god of the sky, or the...

Burial in ancient Mesopotamia was the practice of interring a corpse in a grave or tomb while observing certain rites, primarily to ensure the passage of the soul of the deceased to the underworld and prevent its return to haunt the living...

A photo of the Nebra Sky Disc, a Bronze Age artifact (c. 1600 BCE) found in Nebra, Germany.

Herodotus' section of his Histories on burial in ancient Egypt (Book II.85-90) is an accurate description of Egyptian mummification, but he purposefully omits the spiritual significance of embalming in keeping with his commitment to refrain...

The ancient Celts who occupied large parts of Europe from 700 BCE to 400 CE displayed a clear belief in an afterlife as evidenced in their treatment of the dead. In the absence of extensive written records by the Celts themselves, we are...