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OSSUARY*
A small stone coffin (Latin, ossuarium), vase, or casket for the reception of the calcined remains of the dead, or a sepulchral house, where the bones of the dead were deposited. Sarcophagus was the name given by the Greeks and Romans to a big stone coffin. Some religious ideas were involved in calling a coffin a “body eater” (Greek, sarx, “flesh,” and phagein, “to eat”). In many cases, the burial was not completed until the bones were taken up from the earth or from the sarcophagus. The bones were cleaned and put into their final deposit, that is, into an ossuary, usually a small coffin of stone. The tendency to postpone the final burial, where it involves exhumation or the collection of bones, is accentuated by making a common ossuary for a number of the departed. This exhuming and collecting the bones is connected with the idea of final reunion with one’s fathers.
The Ossuary of the St. Catherine Monastery
The famous ossuary of the St Catherine Monastery in Sinai is situated in the corner of a garden. For the bone remains of the monks, there is a house, where the bones are piled up in regular order, arranged according to their kind, as skulls, legs, and arms. In an uncovered porch before the bone house, there are vaults and pits in which the corpses of the monks are usually interred without coffins until the flesh is changed into dust, and then the bones are collected into the common ossuary.