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ossuary
Sign in to saveAlso known as bone-house, bone house, charnel-house, charnel house, ossarium
An ossuary is a chest, box, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary ("os" is "bone" in Latin). The greatly reduced space taken up by an ossuary means that it is possible to store the remains of many more people in a single tomb than possible in coffins. The practice is sometimes known as grave recycling.
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
8 sectionsContents
- Persian ossuaries
- Jewish ossuaries
- In Christianity
- Roman Catholic ossuaries
- Largest ossuary
- Eastern Orthodox ossuaries
- See also
- References
An ossuary is a chest, box, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary ("os" is "bone" in Latin). The greatly reduced space taken up by an ossuary means that it is possible to store the remains of many more people in a single tomb than possible in coffins. The practice is sometimes known as grave recycling.
==Persian ossuaries== thumb|left|A Zoroastrian ossuary, 7–8th century CE, Hirman Tepe, Uzbekistan In Persia, the Zoroastrians used a deep well for this function from the earliest times (c. 3,000 years ago) and called it astudan (literally, "the place for the bones"). There are many rituals and regulations in the Zoroastrian faith concerning the astudans.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “ossuary” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.