Necropolises? Necropoli? I typed both of these words into a Word doc just to see what spellcheck would have to say about the matter, but oddly enough neither option is giving me anything. One second.
Okay, I just googled it, it’s necropolises. A necropolis, traditionally, is a large cemetery with elaborate tombs and ornamentation. So it's a huge, fancy graveyard, basically. Graveyards are one of those oddly liminal or transitional places, one of the few where the dead and living can coexist somewhat peacefully, even if only for a few moments. Think of the Arlington National Cemetery, where the rows upon rows of white gravestones sprawl out over the lawn. People go jogging, biking, walk their dogs through it’s paths- my mom used to take me there to walk when I was very young.
This memory is partially why I think graveyards and cemeteries are so important. It's a way to respect and honor the dead, and one of the few places that we come into somewhat close contact with the dead. However, cemeteries as we know them today have evolved from a long and often very weird traditions of burial and how we bury people. But it's not only how we bury people, but what we bury them in. Your gravestone is forever, and although it's forever and timeless in that aspect, headstones and other monuments are often extremely dated to the time period in which they were built.
I think it's important to understand exactly what has gone into creating places like the Arlington National Cemetery and the history behind it- because, one day, you'll end up somewhere like that too.
The word necropolis conjures up ideas that are the antithesis to the clean, identical headstones of the Arlington National Cemetery. Ornate mausoleums, elaborately carved gravestones, ivy covered sarcophagi- the atmosphere that this is the thriving city of the dead. That is, incidentally, the roots of necropolis- necro, meaning dead, and polis, meaning city.
However that imagery, of the family mausoleum and neat headstones, is a fairly modern invention. Up until the mid 16th century, headstones were mostly randomly placed, and wealthy families would actually bury their relatives inside the walls or under the floor of a church, which probably isn't the most solid foundation. Once the Reformation hit in the early 16th century, the building of monumental churches slowed down, and people began to have to look outside the traditional inside-a-church-burial that had been the custom for years before. This is what led to the invention of the elaborate tombs and mausoleums: rich folks had to show off their money somehow, even when dead, and necropolises were the perfect way to do this.
However, even those cemeteries are different from what we think that we know today. It was only in the early nineteenth century that the stereotypical Halloween “garden cemetery” with it’s sprawling, carefully manicured green fields, began to be developed.
Much of this dead development was due to the fact that, before this, people were buried in those huge and numerous churchyards or city graveyards. Edgar Allen Poe is buried in such a city graveyard, right in my city of Baltimore. However, cities are only so big, and people began to run out of room for these garden style cemeteries. Once the living start to run out of room, it’s the dead who have to make way.
I’ve sort of been throwing around these words, like mausoleum, and sarcophagus, and tomb, like they’re interchangeable. A mausoleum is a large, free standing building that actually contains tombs- they’re the big “houses” you see in graveyards. A sarcophagus is basically a stone box- the purest forms of sarcophagi actually contain bodies. They’re elaborately carved on top, often with a pictorial representation of the person while they were alive. A tomb is that vault that you put bodies in or underneath, and hoo boy are there a lot of types of them. Seriously, I didn’t know there were this many kinds of tombs: chest tomb, hip tomb, table tomb, bale tomb, hogback tomb, altar tomb- and that’s not even all of them.
What’s interesting about all these tombs (god, that doesn’t even seem like a real word anymore) and mausoleums is that their architecture accurately reflects the trends of the world around them at the time they were built. It’s the reason you’ll get Classical, Gothic, and Romanesque architecture all within three plots of each other.
That’s also the reason that you don’t get elaborately carved grave stones as much these days any more- with the advent of Modern architecture, elaborate stone carving has really gone out of style as opposed to what was goin' down in those aforementioned time periods. People these days just do not want to pay a guy thousands of dollars for fanciful, artisanal hand craftsmanship for their dead I guess, as a career that's really fallen by the wayside. Or should I say, grave side? Seriously though, because people don’t want stone work- which is very expensive- there’s not many people who are capable of the beautiful carvings that we can still see in older graveyards anymore either.
Graveyards are an excellent way to see how architecture changes throughout the years, and to see some beautiful art that really isn’t around anymore. It’s a little difficult to get used to the fact that you’re walking around a city of dead people, but hey, just think of it this way: you’re just getting preparing for the advent of the inevitable skeleton war. Then we’ll be around the dead all the time. So- anyone picked out their tombstone yet?
