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The Bones of Death and other curiosities

Thursday, September 13, 2012 5:40

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(Before It's News)

Death is always a puzzle, and leaving the dead in peace is a concept that almost every society holds dear. After a passage of time the dead no longer seem to have a right to lie in peace, but are thought of as no longer dead, just archaeological curiosities. It seems that King Richard III is now having his bones disturbed. They might lie under a car park in Leicester. A skeleton has been found with pronounced curvature of the spine at a place that used to be a church but was since demolished and, as progress does, is now a municipal car park. Richard died on 22^nd August 1485, 527 years ago and we feel no compunction in digging up his bones. I am sure that we would feel compunction in digging up the bones of a monarch who died closer to our times, say Queen Victoria, and the thought of digging up any later monarch would horrify people.

Perhaps the passage of time makes behaviour that would be shocking and deplorable completely different. In London and in many other places we display the remains of Egyptian monarchs who died thousands of years ago; they have become a show, and entertainment. In Paris you can tour the catacombs where the skeletons of six million Parisians are neatly ordered in miles of tunnels. It is a sight that fills you with a mixture of winder, awe and emotion in unequal measures.

I have asked “what happens to life when we die” and no one has been able to answer me. I know what happens to the body when we die as does everyone, but the body is not life, just the wrapping or container for life. Gravediggers know this:

Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam—and why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

But the greatest puzzle is that the man who wrote those lines is supposed to have written of his own grave “Blessed be the man that spares these stones and cursed be he who moves my bones.” I wonder why he cared.

Filed under: climate change Tagged: car park, death, digging up bones, Leicester, paris catacombs, Richard iii, shakespear, shakespeare’s epitaph