By Rana Zalghout | Staff Writer
A few days ago, I was visiting the grave of a dear family member. As I reached the designated gravestone spot, I sat and observed the other gravestones surrounding it. Some of them were recent, they had flowers and some pictures along with religious verses, while others were just stones covered with mud. While I was staring at the cemetery, I was able to tell which graves were left unvisited and which ones were frequently stopped by. I wondered how upsetting it is that many of the people who have passed away are left forgotten and unvisited; they just disappeared from Earth. Their legacies are no longer alive, and their gravestones have no stories, just their names, religious verses, and dates of birth and death.
After this small visit, I went back home and watched a documentary about ancient Egyptian tomb art. Ancient Egyptians created art on their tombs which spoke stories of the pharaohs and others, maintained the dead’s legacies and were aesthetically pleasing. The culture emphasized tomb art because it was believed that art is the point of contact between the living and the dead as the paintings would come to life and accompany the dead into the afterlife. The tomb walls celebrate activities that were done by the deceased in their daily lives such as singing, dancing, fishing, along with the greatest achievements of their lives. Indeed, the ancient Egyptians seem to have known that there would come a time in the future where new civilizations would discover their tombs and learn more about them. For that, they aspired to show the future generations the times they enjoyed in their lives and how their legacies remain alive in the world.
Seeing so many interesting examples of Egyptian tomb art led me to thinking about modern cemeteries–the ways in which they look dull and quickly forgotten. People stumble across different gravestones of strangers without knowing their stories and their journeys in life, which makes death seem scary because it means people’s experiences and achievements will ultimately die with them. However, imagine if we had colorful cemeteries that foreshadow people’s lives, their hobbies, their appearances, and their loved ones. A visit to the cemetery would be less depressing and more of an opportunity to discover what other humans have achieved on earth. Bringing back some form of tomb art to the modern world would make humans immortal, because their experiences would be known and appreciated by others for a much longer time.