On Orphic Funerary & Burial Practices

or, On the Gold Tablet Graves & Other Sites

Although Orphism centers on the fate of the Soul after death, its actual funerary practices are rarely discussed beyond the contexts in which the Gold Tablets or Derveni Papyrus were found. This essay examines what the conditions of those discoveries can tell us about Orphic practices regarding death itself.

The earliest-dated Orphica are the Bone Tablets of Olbia, from the 5th century BCE¹. Although these were not found in graves, they will set the stage for our investigation. The Bone Tablets contain Orphic symbolism, and they are often considered precursors to the Gold Tablets, which were more elaborate, more widespread geographically, and came later. The Bone Tablets also contain the earliest written proof of Orphics, with one tablet reading:

Life. Death. Life. Truth. Dio[nysus]. Orphics.²

The city where those tablets were found, Olbia (on the north coast of the Black Sea), is one of the largest and best-known Greek colonies, founded in the 7th century BCE by settlers from Miletus³. The Bone Tablets were all found within the central temenos or sacred precinct, which was approximately forty square meters, with a small building and altar dedicated to Zeus or Athena in the center, and a path leading away to a temple built in the 5th century BCE to Apollo Delphinios (although where specifically the tablets were found within all this is unclear)⁴. There was also a Western temenos area, which had sanctuaries to Zeus, Hermes, the Dioscuri, Aphrodite, Apollo Iatros, and the Mother of the Gods⁵.

M.L. West says that the Orphic cult at Olbia was

not an open state cult in which all citizens took part at times fixed by the calendar. Nor was it merely a minor fringe cult. It was a prominent but circumscribed part of the town’s religious life, requiring an act of initiation from would-be participants, but accessible to all who wished to come, even non-Greeks. It attracted a significant following, and the public part of its ceremonies provided a spectacle. Its status is not really unlike that of the Eleusinian cult in Attica. ⁶

This tells us that Orphism was a recognized part of religious life in Olbia, but treated with a special reverence which implies a (negligible) level of exclusivity. West compares the cult to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were similarly secret in content and open in participation around the same period of time. Continuing about the Bone Tablets, he says:

The little bone tablets scattered about the town seem to be connected with this cult. We may guess that they were membership tokens - bone chips symbolizing participation in common sacrifices. The graffiti are consistent with this. They tell us that the initiates rejoiced in specially revealed knowledge, ἀλήθεια, connected with the soul and with a life after death, and that they honored the name of the prophet Orpheus.⁷