Burial

A "cemetery of the nameless" has been established near the coast in the western Turkish province of İzmir for Syrians who died while trying to cross over to Greece. 

The newly founded Doğançay Cemetery hosts dozens of graves bearing numbers rather than names, with an imam praying for the unidentified bodies during their burial. 

On Holy Friday - the worst day of the Son of God - do not celebrate the mass. In the morning in the temple they exported the holy shroud, which reminds wearing the Christ's body to the grave. In the evening takes place the symbolic burial of Christ.

Lines of people quietly walked the streets of Mocoa, followed by hearses carrying coffins to a cemetery where open graves waited.

The survivors of the deadly flood that washed through this city in southern Colombia were burying their loved ones on April 3 after authorities began to release the remains recovered from a disaster that has shaken the country.

BELGRADE - For the first time in centuries, archaeologists opened Christians' holiest spot - the tomb of Jesus Christ located in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem. This will give researchers an unprecedented opportunity to analyze the original rock surface where Jesus' body was laid.

Police seeking a toddler missing for 25 years have uncovered several ancient graves during a dig in a field on the Greek island of Kos, where he was last seen, according to reports Thursday.

It is believed that the area may have been an old burial ground.

Police said that the search for Ben Needham will continue despite discovery of the graves which could be 1500 years old.

Two Italian designers, Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel, have put forth a green alternative to cemeteries, funerals and burials – even cremation. The Capsula Mundi concept uses an egg-shaped burial pod of biodegradable starch plastic as the coffin where the body is placed in a fetal position.

A horse burial which contained an unusually well preserved skeleton of a horse, intact even down to the hooves, was discovered during landscaping works around the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre in the Faliro Delta.

The find was presented to the Central Archaeological Council in a session held on Tuesday.

Cemeteries in Greece are overcrowded and have nowhere to expand . For this reason bodies are often kept underground for three years before being exhumed so that bones can be stored at an ossuary.

Families have the option of leasing for another three years, but the costs are prohibitive. Most people choose to exhume the graves.

Ancient Greeks had a real fear of the dead rising from their graves to stalk the living. Passo Marinaro, the necropolis of a Greek colony in Sicily, used from the 5th through to the 3rd centuries BC, shows a number of tomb occupants forcibly pinned down to prevent them from rising.

The BBC feature on Greece, titled “Graveyard Overcrowding Stokes Cremation Debate in Greece”, focuses on problems concerning burials at cemeteries in Athens and Thessaloniki that are overcrowded. The cost of a permanent grave plot is at 100,000 euros, meaning that cremation – legalized in 2006 – would be a more viable option.