Death Mask - Would You Want One?

Death masks are exactly what they sound like. They are a mask of the death. Essentially after a person dies, a mold of their face is made.

The death mask is a plaster or a wax cast. Often times these masks are used for displaying at the person's funeral.

Many years ago these death masks were also placed into the person's grave with them, but this practice is no longer used. Instead the masks would be placed in someone's home, library, or museum.

These are essentially used to capture a person's last impression in life. Once in a while the death mask was altered to make the person seem real, as if they were still alive. I think that something like that would be very frightening to see!

The death masks are also used to help create marble sculpture portraits and busts.

What interesting about these death masks is almost every country has it somewhere in their history of traditions. In ancient Egypt these were used during their important mummification process. They believed that these masks held special spiritual powers that would help them in the afterlife.

Not only were not only made of royalty but also some poets and philosophers. Shakespeare and Thomas Edison were even said to have a death mask made of them.

However, the most well known death is the one of Pharaoh Tutankhamen. It was made of gold and gems.

So why don't people really use them today? Now that there are means of photography, people have no need of this to record what the person looked like. They are still done today, nevertheless.

When looking at galleries of these death masks, I get a real chilling feeling from them. Every one looks different, but every one kind has the same expression on them. That expression is obviously, death. It really is something very surreal.

The one thing interesting about seeing a death mask over just a picture is you really get a sense of what the person really looked like. Photographs can always be a bit deceiving. Sometimes the death masks were made so that people could later make portraits of the deceased. And sometimes, portraits were all ready made couldn't be identified until seeing the mask.

I don't think this is something I would want done for myself. I think that reflecting on a person's life should be more important than capturing their moment of death. But I do not detest the idea of others doing it, and am still fascinated by these.