Above ground burial

Philip Mataranyika
THE rain season has just started. Most parts of the country have by now received some rains and we are getting ready to put seeds into the soil.

The coming of the rains is a welcome development in terms of food security for the country.
A few years ago I was the undertaker on duty, providing services to a bereaved family and the burial was done after weeks of heavy downpours. As we lowered the casket, the sky was dark and the clouds were pregnant with rain. It was an experience.
After we dug a hundred and fifty centimetres into the ground, water started gushing out of the same ground. By the time we finished digging, it was like we were digging a shallow well as water flooded the place. Any part of the ground we tried to dig presented us with the same problem. Eventually, we bought a few bags of cement that we used to dry up the pit.
We knew however, that it was a temporary arrangement, for as soon as we lowered the coffin, water would rush to fill the casket and thus drench the body of the loved one.
Before we finished the burial, the heavens opened and we were soaked to the borne. Underground burial can be a real nightmare in summer.
If cremation and resomation are not your preferred choice in the disposal of human remains, there is another option, it is called above ground burial. It is practised in Zimbabwe in two ways. Rock pavement (Paruware) and Cave (Mapako) burials. It could be said that these two forms of above ground burials are early Zimbabwean Mausolea burials. This week we look at the western type Mausoleum.
Mausoleum
A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or persons.
The name derives from Mausolus who was a provincial governor of the then Persian city of Caria (modern day city of Bodrum in Turkey). When King Mausolus died around 353BC, his wife and his sister Artemisia commissioned the best architects of the time to design a big monument for his burial.
The rationale behind the project was that because Mausolus was a king, he could not be buried in the ground like his subjects. It must have been the same reasoning that gave rise to the construction of pyramids more than 2000 years earlier.
His large tomb became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Historically, mausolea were, and still may be, large and impressive constructions for a deceased leader or other person of importance.
Before the construction of King Mausolus’ mausoleum, and burial, most people, then as is now, except for very important rulers who had achieved god-like status, were buried in the ground and soon forgotten.
Certain pagan rituals favoured cremation on a funeral pyre, but their remains were seldom marked or memorialised. And, of course, there were those early Christians who were cremated against their will, their remains were deliberately scattered by their tormentors to prevent any hope of resurrection.
Ordinary leaders and people in general did not exactly clamour to build mausolea, but the Mausolus’ tomb marked the beginning of a fundamental change in how they memorialised their dead.
Once a good number of people were sold to the idea of mausoleum burial, smaller mausolea soon became popular with the gentry and nobility in many countries. While the commoners found it expensive to build communal mausolea, the cream of European royalty elected to go out in style in a big and ostentatious way by commissioning the finest sculptors and architects to design Mausolea for the their entombment like King Mausolus’ wife had done earlier.
Some of the finest examples of these royal tombs can be seen in the Gothic cathedrals of France and England today. Gothic refers to the time between the Classic and the Renaissance periods.
In the Roman Empire, these were often ranged in necropolis (cemeteries) or along roadsides for miles outside Rome. However, the practice fell out of use when Christianity became dominant.
In the later years, mausolea became particularly popular in Europe and her colonies. The Taj Mahal in India and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles are some of the more popular ones. The Taj Mahal, in Agra, India is the world’s most famous Mausoleum. In the United States, the term mausoleum may be used for a burial vault below a facility, such as a church.
Structure of a mausoleum
A mausoleum encloses a burial chamber either wholly above ground or within a burial vault below the superstructure. This contains the body or bodies, probably within sarcophagi (stone coffin) or interment niches. Modern mausolea may also act as columbaria (a type of mausoleum for cremated remains) with additional cinerary urn niches.
Mausolea may be located in a cemetery, a churchyard or on private land. The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, California, for example, has 6 000 sepulchral and cinerary urn spaces for interments in the lower level of the building.
Wealthy or prestigious families often have a ‘family mausoleum crypt’ or ‘vault’, in which, all members of the family are interred. Many royal families, for example, today maintain vast mausolea containing the bodies of dozens of former royals.
There was a trend in the 1800s of building mausolea on medium to large size family estates, usually subtly placed on the edge of the grounds or more commonly incorporated into the cellar. After a change of owner these were often blocked up and the house deeds would not allow this area to be re-developed.
At Roakwood cemetery and memorial park in Sydney, they have one Mausoleum that has capacity for 18  000, while others with bigger capacity are found in Europe and America.
For example, Inglewood Park Cemetery in California has over 90 000 mausoleum spaces on its 350 acres, with plans to build even more.
The Gothic cathedrals of France and England are burial places of the Royalty of Europe. Most people in Europe today would shudder at the thought of attending religious services in the same space as the bodies of their dead, but medieval Christians held the belief that the closer the deceased was to the altar, the better chance of their soul being pushed towards the heavens by the parishioners’ prayers.
Royalty was considered special and therefore, nearer to God. For commoners a tomb of any sort, even a family tomb with room for many generations, was out of the question. Alas, their fate was to be tossed into the ground. If they were buried in the city where space was at a premium, they had to be dug up in a few years and have their bones placed in an ossuary. Well, maybe that wasn’t so bad after all. Next week we look at factors that help promote wide acceptance of Mausoleum burial.
-Philip Mataranyika is the CEO of Nyaradzo Funeral Assurance Company. He can be contacted on mavmat67@hotmail.com