MOIROLOGISTS

Can you make money out of your emotions and simply being in pain? That sounds weird and unimaginable, but it indeed existed and I believe it still exists in some cultures. In Ancient Egypt, it was common for women to be a professional when it comes to mourning and paying the right tribute to a deceased person. This was not only a profession in Egypt, but also China and in Near Eastern cultures. These moirologists and mutes, as they were also referred to, where compensated by simply helping to comfort the family and also entertain them through their grieving. The women don‘t need to be

An Ancient painting of moirologists in Egypt

in any relation to the family and the dead person, they were simply hired to join them through the whole funeral. Their main task was to mourn and doing this as loud and obvious as possible. Dancing, loud mourning, singing – just to draw attention to the dead person. The more women were hired to mourn and grief for money, the more one knew how rich the family was to actually invest in such a ceremony. For the ritual and whole ceremony they wore simple white dresses without any jewelry and they clapped their hands together, also on their bodies, throwing around themselves with ashes, pulling their own hair, crying, and receiting prayers. It is a pure emotion that makes sense when griefing about a dead person, but it feels a little absurd when thinking about hiring a stranger to play this part. Nevertheless we can learn that the process of grief and coping with all your heart and essence is something that needs to be done to move on and start new chapters. There is so mucb to be learned from ancient cultures—we do not need to feel ashamed, but we can feel highly invited to create our own rituals to mourn, connect, and learn to deal with our emotions.