Royal Burials and the Death of the King

ROYAL FUNERALS IN THAILAND AND BALI

The funeral and then cremation a year later.  (The latest Thai Monarch dies...funeral)

• THAILAND and the enshrinement of royal relics
• "spiritual coronation" similar to the coronation the the throne, but the scale of the mortuary rites for a king are greater.
• clothing, jewelry and crown are more adorned on the corpse as he is placed in the burial urn, than when he was alive. 
• cremation in a large cremation temple is seen as a time of celebration for royalty and commoners alike
• POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE
• focus attention on the royal court (and its prestige)
• Format of death rites is able to combat claims to the succession of the throne during this vulnerable time (new king is crowned immediately and attends the final cremation later)
• secondary treatment of the corpse creates ROYAL RELICS (symbolically continue toocchupy and give power to the palace and its heirs).

• BALI and Royal cremations as public theater
• The cremation of an important man attracts people from all over the island. 

• tower is representation of the cosmos and only important people are cremated.
• preceding the tower in the parade are orchestras, dancers and the bearers of the animal shaped coffin in which the bones are to be burned, carriers of sandalwood, weapons, and trays of offerings and the priest on his lotus chair among others.
• women carry holy water, doll-like effigies of the dead, and offerings to the lords of hell.

• the height of the tower, the number of "heavens" on the top, the number of people required to carry it, the number of commoners to be cremated which follow (not seen here), all express the status of the deceased. (many commoners may be in a single tower or many towers that follow).
• cremation is the largest and the most expensive of the royal rituals.
• LIKE POTLATCHES where rival kings asserted their power and their allegiances

PYRAMIDS and the PHARAONIC STATE

• Like the Berewan, many cultures engage in building DEATH EDIFICES which express the dynamics of power and legitimacy
• PYRAMIDS OF GIZA
• Research has focused on what is behind the rituals which constructed these "corpseless tombs" with empty sarcophagus? Heavily guarded and massive (all nine that were completed in construction) during the pyramid construction era.
• pyramids seen as a long climax of increasing escalation of monumentalism of tomb design.
• the important design feature of the pyramids was visibility (no need for a corpse)-provides an index of the power of the central government in the Egyptian dynasties.
• Largest are from the early Pharaohs in their attempts to consolidate the unification of upper and lower Egypt. ---proof of royal authority

THE DIVINE KINGSHIP OF THE SHILLUK OF THE SUDAN

• king (reth) SYMBOLIZES the fertility and well-being of the nation, therefore, no decay of the body can be tolerated
• illness, sicknesss, age, impotency and death are all intolerable conditions for the king
• At first signs of any of these, the king is secretly suffocated and his body walled up in a mud hut. (regicide????). This, even though the king has only SYMBOLIC, but no political authority
• Reth is the King, but Nyikang, the immortal culture hero of then Shilluk. He reigns through the successors, who are receptacles of the kingship. - binds generations
• after death, wallet up bones of dead kings are returned home and buried in a private almost secret affair-no longer symbol of national unity, Nyikang reigns from an EFFIGY in which his spirit resides which is kept in s shrine during each king's reign.
• when a new king is chosen, a ceremony allows the spirit to possess the new king, as it leaves the effigy. (difficult problem of the royal corpse is to replace it with a effigy).

BODY POLITIC AND NATURAL BODY (Europe)

• The use of the EFFIGY in the history of the English monarchy is a symbol of the separation of the "body politic" from the "body physical". Allowed for a display of "both" at a funeral as a symbol of the ongoing "kingship" even as the kings change
• French Royal funerals use the EFFIGY as a symbol of the allegory of the STATE (borrowed from British practice)

DINKA BURIAL ALIVE

• chiefs were traditionally buried alive when on the brink of death, unlike other men. It was a symbol of the enduring nature of Dinka culture. IMMORTALITY
• this was disrupted during colonialism through assassinations of Dinka chiefs which led to the disruption of Dinka culture and political stability (in their minds). The death of a king should be a smooth affair).