Disarming the Dead
This evening I re-read a chapter from “The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death” by Timothy Taylor, 2002, Fourth Estate. The chapter, An Unexpected Vampire, recounts the post- mortem isolation of a prostitute who died in 1933 in a small Anatolian village. Buried close to the Neolithic mound of Catalhoyuk, far from the village graveyard, her staus as ‘other’ in death as in life was made clear. Some time after her death, her grave was re-opened and her gold teeth taken from her mouth. Perhaps these men included some who had paid her for sexual favours while she lived. As Taylor points out, by this action, “Her mouth was desecrated – made to return its profits – in an attempt to finally lay her ghost”. As if by taking back their money, the actions of those who had used her as a prostitute, or at least suffered her to exist on the edges of their community, could be neutralized, their guilt assuaged.
