[MR] History Blog: Early Children's Cemetery Excavated in Poland

[Evan da Collaureo]

On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 05:43:30AM -0400, Garth Groff and Sally Sanford via Atlantia wrote:
> The practice of placing a coin with the deceased is a pagan tradition from
> ancient Greece, and is called Charon's Obol. The coin was to pay Charon,
> the ferryman who took the souls across the Styx River to the place of the
> dead. It is perhaps surprising that this tradition survived through
> medieval Christian times in Europe, and actually into the 19th century in
> some areas.

Ths tradition of burying coins (or other shiny metallic objects) with the dead also existed in pre-Christian Celtic and Germanic peoples (and may have predated Roman occupation of their lands), so it's really not a surprise to me that the tradition carried over into Christian times, and probably even into the *twentieth* century.

"Now my advice to those who die:
Declare the pennies on your eyes." -- George Harrison, "Taxman"

-Evan