Nothing remains here - only walls.<p>Most of these tombs have already, since ancient times, been looted and desecrated and most things inside including any human remains have long since been removed. It looks like this tomb is also in this category as all that remains of note are on the walls which cannot be easily removed.<p>I seem to recall a story that even at the time when they were building pyramids in ancient Egypt that they had a problem with looters of the older tombs.<p>Additionally: The use of the word "Sealed" in the title is not present in the text and I propose is click bait for attention and an emotional reaction. Looks like that strategy still works.
> they had a problem with looters of the older tombs<p>In the Valley of the Kings, I think they had a problem with the builders looting the same tombs they had just built.<p>Cursory searching found overseer Paneb: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paneb" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paneb</a> ... if I pieced it together right, he was in trouble for looting a tomb within 20 years of its construction.
If the tomb has been looted and desecrated, then in what sense is it <i>sealed</i>?<p>Edit: I'm asking about the title of this article.
Yeah, and "Filled"... with paintings and inscriptions: isn't exactly full of anything, then, is it.
When referring to really ancient tombs you're fortunately in a diminishingly small minority or we wouldn't know a fraction about some culture's history compared to what we know now. Whether it is Egyptian tombs like this one, Viking burial mounds, stone age Dolmen or any of the other ancient burial sites, those are where much of the knowledge of these cultures come from.
ive been to a few dolmen and places like those, a lot of them were already desecrated thousands of years ago and then desecrated again 2000 years ago etc. id much rather have those bones and artifacts dug up and placed somewhere they wont be destroyed and the symbolism of the structure can still remain to be appreciated.
What's the moral guidance and purpose of a tomb of someone who's mourning has passed for over 3 millennia and who has been forgotten due to time?
This. Forgetting is the biggest crime. Anything in the other direction is atoning.
well, it's clear from the objects still being in the tombs when the raiders came to plunder that they dead did not take the items into the afterlife with them. This clearly shows they are not being used by the original owners.
If I were in a tomb for 2000 year I wouldn't even mind if they can learn about the history of my era 2000 years later
Well, not 2000 years yet, but some people can get very upset if their tomb is opened: [0]<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Timur" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Timur</a><p>EDIT: typos
Kind of; gravesites are cleared out every once in a while when the families have moved on, iirc over here you buy the rights to a gravesite for like 50-70 years. The coffins / remains are then reburied in a mass gravesite, buried deeper, or (if chosen) cremated.
IMO once anyone living has given up caring about you it's fine, and in particular once your burial site has been long forgotten and becomes an archeological discovery then that requirement has generally been satisfied (outside of a few cultures).
I was just thinking this, do we regularly breaking into tombs in the rest of the world? I guess some of the cathedrals themselves are tombs and are big tourist attractions.
Most cemeteries in Europe have been destroyed to make space for urbanisation. The underground of Paris is full of bones from those cemetaries (catacombs of Paris). It's fairly common as outside of a few aristocratic families, people keep a very short memory of their ancestry. I have a very vague knowledge of who my ancestors were back to the mid XIX century and nothing prior. Hard to have any emotional attachment to people you never heard about. So if no one cares, better to build a parking lot!
Some cemeteries in London reuse graves after just 75 years<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Cemetery_and_Crematorium" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Cemetery_and_Cr...</a><p>I have very vivid memories as a child of walking through Brookwood Cemetary in south east England seeing a big machine crunching up headstones. Vast swathes of the place was flattened. The cheat code here seems to be "topple testing" for health and safety reasons.<p>It's the UKs largest cemetery and in a shocking state:<p><a href="https://lostlcp.com/brookwood-cemetery-reburials/" rel="nofollow">https://lostlcp.com/brookwood-cemetery-reburials/</a>
There is a park in Brussels where you literally walk on alleys paved with tombstones from the Jewish cemetery. You can still see some of the inscriptions there.
On the continent, afaik most countries work on a lease system, you rent a plot for a few decades (which may or may not be renewable). Some countries have a “perpetual” lease with an ongoing fee, a few years after the payment stops the plot gets cycled.<p>‘Course space requirements are also a factor, if you have a family plot in a depopulated village in the countryside odds are good plots will be cheap and renewable forever.
Old church with over hundred years old tombstones around it is literally an English landmark. Even in central London. Tombstones you mention belong to people from wrong social class.
I am not even sure about social class. In any case these old cemeteries are preserved probably more as historical artefacts, like an old Roman wall would be in London, rather than out of respect for the dead.
I've spent some time on genealogy, and really beyond grandparents and maybe great grandparents it's mostly curiosity and for the interesting stories, and I only care about the graves to the extent that it makes solving the puzzles easier. It's not like there is anyone alive in my family who knew older ancestors of mine than my great grandparents.<p>For my part I've only ever seen even my dads grave once, and feel no need to go back there, though I understand why some might feel it matters to have the grave of someone they knew in person because of the emotional attachment.
It's a bit of a paradox: burial rites are among the earliest and most fundamental elements of any society we know of; but long-term maintenance of burial sites has always been a challenge. That's probably because, after all the fanfare to honour the dead (which is mostly a way to minimize immediate social disruption), everyone eventually <i>moves on</i>.
When my dad died, the <i>funeral</i> mattered to me. But the grave does not. Of course to some it does, but it doesn't take long before everyone it mattered to are dead too. I think it's fine to keep graves for those who cares, but that shouldn't really obligate society to keep them around very long.
There is a park in my city that used to be the city cemetery. They moved the cemetery to a new place due to capacity and turned the original one into a park.<p>I think it is a very common practice. Everyone will be forgotten eventually, no matter the fame.<p><a href="https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyr%C5%A1%C5%AFv_sad_(Brno-Veve%C5%99%C3%AD)" rel="nofollow">https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyr%C5%A1%C5%AFv_sad_(Brno-Vev...</a>
Yes, we regularly (for some definition of "regularly") uncover human burial sites (both as part of planned archaeological excavations and accidentally during construction) all around the world, including Europe, Asia, and the Americas. If you're asking specifically about <i>tombs</i> then the answer is also yes.
Christianity has an ancient tradition of relics in which even in the absence of an actual corpse people will just pick up some random bone and be like "this was some old ladies actual hand, it has magic powers now" and then parade it around the city every year.<p>I just got back from a triple to Naples where there's a church that had a secret skull collecting cult under it for decades, it's a tourist attraction now. Yes it is still full of peoples skulls.<p>So yes, it seems like there is a statute of limitations on our obedience to the dead.
It's really common to excavate Pagan burial sites in the UK, at least the ones that weren't deliberately built over by Christians.
US and UK phrenologists encouraged a lot of grave descration, often not even waiting for a corpse to be interned before shipping the remains out.<p><pre><code> Yagan’s murder by colonial settlers was, even by the day’s standards, an act of hideous violence. That his head was subsequently removed and dispatched to England as a biological curio, a specimen to aid the discredited voodoo science of phrenology – whereby racial intelligence and personality could purportedly be determined by cranial distinctions – added indignity to death.
</code></pre>
~ <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog/2017/aug/31/the-story-of-yagans-head-is-a-shameful-reminder-of-colonialisms-legacy" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/postcolonial-blog...</a><p>Easy to write off as the bizzarro actions of those gosh darned old timey folks ...<p><pre><code> A naked life size bronze of Aboriginal warrior Yagan, resting a spear across the back of his shoulders. It is quite evident that the head of Yagan is not the original one (rather oversized, has a far too long a neck and is an altogether different shade). I must say that because the statue’s head has been stolen twice (and given the way Yagan died), the sculpture now takes on a strange and ironic overtone.
</code></pre>
~ <a href="https://publicartaroundtheworld.com/public-art-in-australia/public-art-perth-cbd/yagan-statue/" rel="nofollow">https://publicartaroundtheworld.com/public-art-in-australia/...</a><p>but yeah, they just keep stealing that head.
We are closer to the Cleopatra than she was to the construction of the great pyramids. Some of those tombs are unfathomably old and anyone who cares has turned to dust a dozen times over.<p>Unless you believe as they did, I don't see a problem with opening up a tomb.
Is it still a tomb if someone already stole all of the human remains centuries ago?
Long after any living person has any memory or recollection of such a place? No, it’s not really wrong anymore. I think it is good to be respectful about it though.<p>The fate of all things is to become dust.
Is it desecration, though? I'm all in favor of putting remains back once we've learned what we can from them, but I also think opening graves is fine if it's for a good reason (such as archaeology).<p>I don't approve of putting bodies on display or storing skull collections in cabinets in universities, but before we ship them off to be buried again it's good to take DNA samples!
Yeah I don’t know if it is necessary “wrong,” but I am a little skeptical of the automatic assumption that disrupting tombs and putting them in museums is a good thing.<p>There is some educational value, of course, but it’s more just a relic of our “analyze everything, respect nothing” era.<p>If the past is another country, we certainly aren’t respecting the natives’ wishes.
In Paris they use the corpse of their heroes like Voltaire and Napoleon to flease tourists of their Euros<p>Using a tomb to expand our knowledge of the ancient world seems like small potatoes in comparison. Overton window is already far off
That’s a bit over-selling it. The Panthéon and the Invalides are not really touristic attractions. The Louvre, Versailles, and the Eiffel Tower are much more effective for that purpose. They are used for culture building, not to make money.<p>Besides, only ashes remain of Napoleon and even the bodies that are there are entombed. They are necropoles, not shows. There isn’t much to see there.
Fleece. But a good play--AI wouldn't make this mistake.
How is the Pantheon and the Invalides any different from a cemetery? Do you think the mere act of visiting a burial site is immoral?
If anything is wrong it is preserving human remains to begin with. Waste of space.
I don’t think anyone can lay claim to a plot of land in perpetuity. Reverence should and does fade over time. Maybe when you are initially buried, that plot of earth belongs to you for a while, but after hundreds of years, it’s the other way round: you belong to the earth.<p>By the way, I don’t think you deserve downvotes for expressing your opinion.
Why would we think that? The people in them (for the very few tombs that haven’t been visited or looted already) don’t care; they’ve been dead for millennia.
[flagged]
Please, must we introduce contemporary political flamebait in a story about ... archeology? We're trying for curious conversation here. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
Ah yes, Elon Musk's famous murderous path to wealth.