From Ancient Egypt to Greece, Rome, China and India. More than just a performance, public mourning helped to affirm the status of the deceased and create a collective space for grief.
For centuries, death was not lived in silence. In many cultures, mourning was public, noisy and ritualized, and there were women whose role was precisely to mourn the dead.
In Portugal, these women became known as carpideiras. In other contexts, grief professionals were called, points out. The craft, today seen by many as strange or even cynical, has crossed civilizations and reveals an ancient human need: to give visible form to pain.
The idea of paying someone to cry at a funeral may seem contrived. But in many societies, public crying was not just an emotional display. It was an essential part of the funeral ritual, a way of accompanying the living, honoring the dead and, in certain creeds, helping to guarantee passage to the Afterlife. Wailing also functioned as a sign of status: the greater the number of women crying, the more important the deceased seemed to be.
No Ancient Egyptthese figures had a deeply religious dimension. Women who cried at funerals were associated with the myth of Isis and Nephthys, the goddesses who mourned the death of Osiris and contributed to his regeneration. On the walls of tombs, stelae and papyri, there are representations of women with their arms raised, beating their chests, covering themselves in dust or rotating around the coffin.
Already Greecethe tradition took the form of moirology, a word linked to destiny and discourse, according to the scientific magazine. In villages across the Peloponnese, there are still elderly women hired to sing impromptu funeral dirges. These songs restore the life of the deceased, evoke memories and help the family say goodbye in community. The practice is in danger of disappearing: many of these women are advanced in age and there is almost no generational transmission anymore.
Roma He also experienced noisy funerals, with musicians, mimes and mourners. Some scratched their faces, pulled out their hair or screamed.
Already China by you Indiasimilar traditions marked various eras, sometimes in very performative forms.
Even in the Bible there are references to mourners.
The fact that these figures are virtually always women is no accident. For a long time, social norms associated the public expression of pain with the feminine and reserved an ideal of emotional containment for men. At the same time, mourning could be one of the few socially acceptable paid activities for women in certain contexts.
Today, mourners themselves are disappearing. Religious changes, new ways of viewing death and a culture that values discretion more have reduced the space for public mourning.
