Protonekrotapheio, 2018

My annual pilgrimmage to the Protonekrotapheio was this morning. Since 2011 when I happened upon the ossuary in a shameful state, I go check on it each year (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014).  This year it was pretty clean, though there are still some bone boxes opened up to the elements, though they are under a covered roof. 

The ossuary from above.  There is a lot of debris, but this time it doesn't seem to be human.

Under the roof there are a few open bone boxes.

To the left of the picture you can see other bone boxes stacked up, but they seem to be closed and orderly.

 The trip sparked some questions from the students, so I did some research.  One reason for the grave rental (rather than purchase) I hypothesize, is that Greece in general and Athens in particular is short on land you can dig.  It is mountainous and rocky, so it does not make a lot of sense to spend a lot of land in the city on graves.  Someone asked me about cremation, which seems an obvious solution from an American perspective. It turns out, though that the cremation rate in Greece is zero.  They were legalized in 2006, but none have happened here because the crematoria have not yet been build, according to a recent article in Ekathimerini.  People do cremate, but they have to bring their loved ones to Bulgaria to do it. It seems from the article that the church is against it.  And the shortage of land does seem to be playing a role in the acceptance of cremation.  As I did some research, I was surprised to see that the cremation rate in the US is around 50%, and in northern Europe is is 75% and up.

Death and Life

I've blogged before twice about my trips to the Protnekrotafeio, the big national cemetery in Athens. I go every year to see what is happening with the bone boxes. This year it was pretty well cleaned up, with just a few open boxes.  I decided to stretch myself again. I'd looked up the cemetery and found that there was a Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic section to it, and decided I'd find it.  I went with students, as I always do, because I like to think about the differences between American and Greek attitudes and customs related to death.  The combination of my long perspective and research with their fresh eyes is always useful.

This time I was primed in a different way, with conversations in class about Greek emotionality.  As the students and I noticed the photographs on nearly every grave, and the extensive text, and the images of beloved activities inscribed onto the graves, I connected to the observation that Greeks seem to express and perhaps even feel emotions we don't.  One student had talked to a Greek student who gave her a list of words to describe nuances of emotion that they have vocabulary for in Greek but not in English.  Another talked about the emotion and expressiveness with which Greeks speak (loud, passionate voices, broad gestures).  The cemetery seemed to be another place where in the US emotions are buttoned up and in Greece they are let out.  Details of the cemetery seem to encourage visitors to connect emotionally and perhaps even express their emotions.

Evidence of daily visits: potted plants with soil moist to the touch and a lit oil lamp.

This is hard to see-- in an abandoned grave, a small ceramic rabbit.  This must have housed a child.

So domestic -- this one has a pergola like someone's back terrace.

Not Greek, but incredibly touching. His wife was 86 when she died, and he wanted to memorialize his eternal adoration.

The Protestant section is not more uniform, but it is certainly less personalized than the Orthodox section.

I had made the observation in previous years that our cemeteries are excessively orderly:  neat rows of similar types of monuments (Arlington Cemetery is the epitome with its rows of identical crosses), manicured lawns, minimal information about the dead.  Greek cemeteries are sometimes orderly (particularly graves connected with war), but mostly not.  There is little uniformity and a lot of information about the inhabitants.  I've written about that multiple times, but this time I made a different connection:  about our willingness to feel painful emotions.  The Greek graveyards I've been to are striking in the emotions they stir, even for an outsider.  You connect to the inhabitants through their pictures, the information about them, or personal objects left there.  You have to remember that these were real people who lived and were loved. The connection begs you to feel grief over them.  I don't think our cemeteries ask you to grieve.  Remember, perhaps, but there is so little information, it is hard to connect.

These are from Monemvasia, a relatively new graveyard.  Here are pictures of a woman as a young woman and as she was closer to her death.  You see her live lived in the contrast.

An unbelievable view.

Another one with items that invoke pathos:  the informal picture of the young man who died in his 20s, the personal items in the windowbox...

  It made me connect to other conversations the students and I have had about Americans needing alcohol to let go and connect with each other, where the Greeks can find "kefi" regardless of alcohol.  About Americans who really like to communicate through social media which allows for editing, presentation of the "best self" and distance in relationships even while connecting people, whereas in Greece the Greek students we ask have been shocked at the idea that you don't call your closest friends daily at least, and "have coffee", which lasts a minimum of 2 hours, very often.  Then we went to see a performance of Elektra, and everyone was startled by the amount of physicality between brother and sister.  After the cemetery, I suddenly saw the play as realistic in the expressiveness of emotion, the amount of intense feeling that was happening.  I had the startling realization that maybe we are buttoned up tight emotionally and socially compared to Greeks. I think we might not only not express as much emotion, but we might not even allow ourselves to feel it.  I'm still thinking about this.

Yes, another cemetery... and for good measure, an ossuary.

Wandering through Kalambaka (the foot of the Meteora monasteries), I stumbled on a graveyard that looked more like an American one than a Greek one:  neat rows of identical crosses. So naturally I investigated. 

The graves were all from 1946-1949, and there were clearly titles before the names.  Military.

Not World War II, of course, so must be the Greek Civil War which happened immediately after the German occupation of Greece ended.  Presumably these are all from the winning side.  Phil says that the area was very communist, though the winning side were the nationalists.  Interestingly at one of the monasteries there was a very nationalist display about wars in Greece which neglected to mention the Greek Civil War at all.

At Barlaam Monastery, I gravitated towards the ossuary, of course.  This was not bone boxes, but the older style, where the individual is completely integrated into the community.

I know it seems macabre, and Phil thinks I have an unhealthy fascination with death in Greece, but I find it tremendously comforting to find a culture that integrates death into life in so many different ways.  I also learn so much about the cultural differences by exploring this central passage.

Protonekrotafeio 2013

It is my third visit to the Protonekrotafeio.  The first time, I stumbled onto the ossuary which was poorly maintained and had the bone boxes stacked outside and some were even blown open, revealing the bones inside.  A scandal, really.  I went back the second year and it was the same.  This third year at last it has been cleaned up, which is a good thing, but makes a less dramatic end to our tour of the cemetery.

The cleaned up ossuary.

I always talk with the students about what is different at the cemetery.  They notice that the green grass, neat rows and relatively uniform gravestones are absent.

We seem in America to want to sanitize death, anonymize the dead, and assert tight control over our graveyards with these things, where in Greece the graves are personalized with photos.  The dead are brought to life with the pictures.

This was clearly someone associated with the film industry.

The pictures remind me of icons sitting on the altar of the tomb, but I don't think the analogy holds, as I don't think the dead person is being worshipped, but rather memorialized.  It gives a focus to talk to when one brings the news to the person as they clean the grave.  Also there is often a separate icon in a tiny shrine as part of the grave with an oil lamp and matches tucked inside as well.

The icon and lamp are on the shelf at the back.  I didn't get the right angle. but there was a small bucket and mop right inside the door.

This one even had Christmas and Easter decorations from the holiday visits.

The graves are not uniform in any way.  It isn't just the Protonekrotafieo, either, with its marble sculptures.  I've heard that the Protonekrotafeio is often visited by art classes to study the wealth of sculpture.  It isn't just the grave markers.  Live plants grow on the graves, and surprisingly some are even food plants.  We saw a pomegranate... a relevant choice and perhaps not understood as food.

What struck me this time was the domesticity.  Death isn't being sanitized in a Greek graveyard, it is being domesticated.  There are cleaning supplies often tucked into a corner of a big mausoleum, because just like the house, a grave needs to be cleaned frequently.  Just like the corner shrine in a house, the oil lamp needs to be lit regularly.  Just like at home there are live plants and even holiday decorations.  Shade seems important, just like a balcony.

The arbor here could belong to a garden rather than a grave.

I think this is the May, a wreath celebrating May 1 on the door of a mausoleum.

This lovely memorial to G.G. is not the most recent person buried in this family mausoleum, but the second most recent.

I believe this is essentially an ossuary, but one that still emphasizes the individual.  It is in Athens, where the community identity is not as strong, so perhaps that is why.  No oil lamps here, but there are photos, candles and flowers.

The dead aren't gone so much as moved out on their own?  Emigrated perhaps?  Whatever the metaphor, it is a very different relationship than we have with our dead.

At the entrance, near the church are the tombs for the priests.. note the fancy hat on the top.

Yes, more bone boxes

These are from Samos.  We stopped really for water, but Phil took a group to see the ancient ruins and a church and castle called me.  I never made it past the cemetery.

The door to the ossuary was open...

Neatly stacked boxes with photographs of the deceased inside.

And cleaning supplies...

The outside of the ossuary.

Bone Boxes

We are used to bee boxes (portable hives that are brought in to the benefit of both the apiarst and the farmer), but bone boxes are something else.  I went on one of my favorite field trips this week to the Protonekrotafeio (First Cemetery).  I've been gradually letting the students do more travel on their own, but I really wanted to go on this trip because of the bone boxes.  I was talking a Greek friend who lives in Athens who confirmed that the custom of renting a grave for 3 years and then digging up the bones and moving them to an ossuary is still the norm (though now the reason given is about space).  In a village, if the flesh wasn't completely decomposed, that meant that there was some unfinished business that needed to be taken care of, but here, the bones are simply moved to the part of the cemetery with better soil to finish their business.  It sounds gruesome to American ears, but I wonder if it isn't psychologically healthy to have final confirmation three years after a loved one's death that the person is really and truly gone.  Death is so unimaginable that perhaps one needs a visceral experience to truly accept it.  I actually really like the Greek death rituals and found them helpful when I lost my mom (I spent the second year after her death in Greece).

Bone Boxes 2011

The bone boxes 2012

The boxes are stacked up, some still with photos of the inhabitant on the outside, some left open to the elements.  Are they people who were abandoned by their families and never dug up?  But 3 years isn't a long time... Are they people whose relatives emigrated and couldn't care for them?  Is this the "village ossuary" for Athens?

These same boxes were open last year.

This is the most startling  box.  It is on top of a large pile, so perhaps the caretakers can't see that  it is open?

Apartments surround the cemetery, and the boxes are just on the other side of the church at the entrance.  People were looking at us from the church (there was a funeral happening on our way out), but I don't think they had any idea of what we were looking at.

Burial Customs

I posted last year about the cemetery, and was focused on what looks different at first glance, which was the photographs on the tombs.  They still fascinate me.  Phil says he's seen similar things in a few American cemeteries, but I can't think that I have.  I am always drawn to the things that make the inhabitants real:  inscriptions, names, relationships between gravestones (family groupings).    These photographs make the inhabitants real for sure.  I've not spent enough time to figure out if the photos are always from close to when the person died or if one chooses how to remember the person.  Some show photos of old people, others of young people.  I need to go check to see if the young ones are always people who died young.  But Greek gravestones don't always have the date of birth, so it may be hard to find the pattern.

The other thing I was thinking about is order vs. chaos.  Too many newer American cemeteries seem to be about imposing order on the ultimate chaos of death.  Neat rows of identical grave markers, carefully trimmed grass... Whereas here (and maybe it is in part because it is an old cemetery) there is a riot of different styles of architecture, statuary, and levels of upkeep.  A friend asked if I was studying sculpture when I mentioned I was going to the Protonekrotafeio with students... apparently famous sculptors have done funeral art as well as art-art.  So there is much more individual expression in the grave markers, but then the bones are mingled with those of the community, while in the US, we leave the bones alone (maybe simply because we have space) where they stay in their individual marked spaces, but the markers are identical.  In both cases there seems to be an expression of individuality and community, though in different ways.

The jasmine growing on the side here reminds me of a story of a red and white rosebush growing over a pair of star-crossed lovers' tomb.

Photograph and candle

 I love that in this cemetery there is so much living plant life.  This one is almost hidden in plants.

Audrey Hepburn?

These photos are of people who lived full lives, not of young people.

 Other graves seem to simply be neglected.  I would have thought with the shortage of space, there would be some rule about keeping the plant life under control or lose the right to the spot, like an American gated community with standards for length of grass and type of plant grown...but apparently not!

This vault was open.  It looks like perhaps this is the family ossuary?  I need to go eyeball the size of the vault to see if the spaces at the back are small for the decomposed bones, while the ones on the sides are larger for newer occupants?  This one is getting full....only one space left.  But it was neglected and open, so maybe it won't fill?

Turkish Graveyard

Phil and I love graveyards.  We've spent an awful lot of time in graveyards.  Even in Jacksonville, a couple of weeks before we left for Greece our evening volta included a spin through the neighborhood cemetery we call the "cemetery of tragic families" because it contains so many graves of young people and children.

This cemetery on Rhodes was a Turkish cemetery, the first I'd ever seen.  The graves of those who'd made the pilgrimmage to Mecca wore turbans, and others had fezzes.  I guess they are truly "headstones?"

When half of the population lives in one city, where do you bury the dead?

Fresh plants and a lit candle -- someone was here today.

The students all have class during the week (every day!) so the weekends are our really big field trip times.  Today we went to the Agora, the Acropolis Museum, some shopping in Plaka and then we split up.  I (Leslie) went with 3 others to the Protonekrotaphio (the main cemetary of Athens, like Pere LaChaise in Paris or Highgate in London) where all the notables are buried.  We also went to the National Gardens.

Inside a family crypt.  It is like a little chapel.

 The Nekrotaphio was utterly fascinating.  There has been a lot written about traditional Greek burial customs, and I've read it all.  The customs are so different than what we do in the US, and maybe are more humane than ours.  Quick summary:  The family takes care of the body, washes it, and dresses the person.  The body is taken to the cemetary and buried, with much emotion -- in the past you could even hire professional mourners.  Then you have regular obligations to the dead person that lessen over the first three years:  daily the first 40 days, then periodically the first year, then on particular holidays after that.  You bring an offering of food, clean the grave, light an oil lamp, and chat with the person.  You bring the news.  In return, perhaps your loved one visits you in dreams.  What I like so much is that there isn't the sharp distinction between life and death; there is a slow shift.  Death is a process, not a moment. 

Then, after three years (again, this is traditionally, and I don't know how much it happens in Athens), you dig up the bones, wash them in wine, and inspect them.  If they are clean, you deposit them in the village ossuary, and they become essentially part of the village ancestors, bones mingling with everyone else's.  If they are not, there is some obligation that needs to be fulfilled.  The bones are reburied, then dug up later and reinspected once the obligation has been cleared.  You don't buy a gravesite, you rent one.

Tomb with a photograph of its occupant.

Photographs are common on the tombs, which makes the occupant much more real for visitors; you get a sense here of Mom in the photograph above.  But I don't think the point of the custom is to make visitors feel pity.  I think the point is to help visualize the person when you are talking to them.

The dead are humanized and death is made real through these customs.  You touch the body and the bones, giving yourself visceral understanding of what has happened.  In our culture, the body is whisked away as fast as possible, and some family members may never see the body.  In a culture where parents and children can live apart, so that they are already primarily known as disembodied voices, lacking the sight and feel of the body can make it very hard to process a death. 

All of this was in my head when I was visiting the nekrotaphio. I know what I read was done in the past, in villages, but I've no idea what they do in Athens, and this is the only modern cemetary I've seen, so I'm very curious.  5 million people in Athens, and they are crammed in the valley and hillsides.  Where would you bury the dead?  In the Nekrotaphio the graves are mostly family graves, so clearly people are buried tightly together... too tightly for lots of coffins. 

Family grave with more buried here than could possibly fit.

Then there were other things:  Is the picture below for cremations or is it an ossuary of sorts?  Not sure. 

Cremations?

Finally, there was the strangest thing we saw.  We were wandering around on a hillside in the cemetary, and were trying to find our way down.  We followed a path and found ourselves going down a staircase near a sheer drop... to hundreds of boxes of bones.  We know they were boxes of bones because some were open, and you could see skulls and bones.  Each box was about the length of a man's leg bone, and about a foot or so tall.  Some had photographs on them; one had a flower-holder, as if at some point they were visible.  They seemed to be being stored in these boxes, but not so carefully as several were open to the elements.  I've no idea what to make of that.

They seemed to be about the size of the squares in the picture I thought might be for cremations, and some had pictures and one even had a holder for flowers, so they might well be.  No idea what this was:  a storage  area for those skeletons whose families had finished paying the rent?

I've centered an open box on one of the rows towards the front.  You can see the round skull and the other bones beneath.