sarcophagus – מילון אנגלי-אנגלי
sarcophagus
n.
coffin made of stone
Sarcophagus
A
sarcophagus (plural, sarcophagi; sarcophaguses) is a box-like funeral receptacle for a
corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word "sarcophagus" comes from the
Greek sarx meaning "flesh", and
phagein meaning "to eat", hence
sarcophagus means "flesh-eating"; from the phrase
lithos sarkophagos ( ). Since
lithos is Greek for "stone",
lithos sarcophagos means "flesh-eating stone". The word also came to refer to a particular kind of
limestone that was thought to decompose the flesh of corpses interred within it.
sarcophagus
Noun
1. a stone coffin (usually bearing sculpture or inscriptions)
(hypernym) coffin, casket
Sarcophagus
(n.)
A stone shaped like a sarcophagus and placed by a grave as a memorial.
(n.)
A species of limestone used among the Greeks for making coffins, which was so called because it consumed within a few weeks the flesh of bodies deposited in it. It is otherwise called lapis Assius, or Assian stone, and is said to have been found at Assos, a city of Lycia.
(n.)
A coffin or chest-shaped tomb of the kind of stone described above; hence, any stone coffin.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), edited by Noah Porter.
About
Sarcophagus
Sarcophagus (Greek) Flesh-eating; limestone in Assus in the Troad had the property of consuming the bodies placed in coffins made of it, and so was called sarcophagos lithos (flesh-eating stone) or lapis Assius (stone of Assus), and the name came to be applied to stone coffins in general. A sarcophagus was placed in the adytum of a temple and mystically signified the matrix of nature and resurrection. In initiation ceremonies the candidate, representing the energizing ray, descended into the sarcophagus representing nature's fecund womb, and emerged therefrom, which symbolized resurrection after death. In the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, the candidate descended into the sarcophagus, where his body was entranced while his spiritual ego confabulated with the gods, descended into Amenti or the Underworld, and did works of charity to invisible beings; being carried during the night before the third day to the entrance of a gallery where the beams of the rising sun awoke him as an initiate.
The Mysteries of ancient times, and the rites connected with them, were very largely based on the secret and carefully hid events which occurred to a person after death, so that the secrets of death, and the resurrection from death, formed a large part of the initiation ceremonies of the ancient Mysteries. Thus it was that the sarcophagus or coffin, the emblem of death, held not only the physical body of the dead person, but likewise the entranced body of the neophyte whose soul was peregrinating into the invisible worlds and in and through the Underworld.
