Tombstone inscriptions in honor of the deceased personcalled epitaphs. Traditionally they are poetic, but they are found, for example, in the form of aphorisms or excerpts from sacred texts, which are easy to remember. The goal of many popular epitaphs was to get the reader to think, to warn him about his own mortality. Some of them people choose themselves during their lifetime, others - those who are responsible for the burial. It is known that many famous poets, among them William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, composed for themselves epitaphs-poems.
Надгробные надписи ведут свою эволюцию с poetic speeches, which were pronounced in honor of the deceased on the day of his funeral and were repeated on anniversaries. In ancient Greece and ancient Rome, they formed into the genre of "epitaph" (from the Greek words "over" and "grave"). Later, in order to preserve the memory of other people who left the world, they were engraved on the monuments he had installed. Some were filled with pain and poetic tenderness, others - more than simple, although there were others who stated only the fact of death.
Tombstone inscriptions were varied, inAccording to the cultural traditions of this or that people. Thus, the Romans were extremely attentive to the epitaphs. They could read interesting descriptions of deceased people about their military career, political or commercial activities, marital status, and the like. In general, praise for physical data and moral virtues was contained. Short or long, poetic or prosaic, but all the funeral inscriptions reflect the feelings of relatives, friends of the deceased. Cicero, for example, at the grave of his daughter Tullius made a brief epitaph, in which the pain of loss is strongly felt: "Tulliola, Filiola" ("Tulliola, daughter").
The perfect place and the most accessible sourceto study the history of a community are cemeteries. Gravestones with the information they contain provide an ideal starting point for any genealogical research. Some of them can only have the names of the deceased and the dates of their lives, others include detailed stories about several generations of one family, relationships between people during life (husband, wife, son, sister, etc.), their professional activities. Tombstone inscriptions have long been popular with historians and genealogists. From the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, in Western European culture, for the deceased people who held high positions in society, they were very long, describing the almost legendary origins of their families, containing information about their activities, praising virtues, and often providing information about their immediate relatives.
Interesting also engraved on monumentssymbols of death, and not just gravestones. Epitaphs store the memory of dead people, they emphasize the fact that everything and everything is dying. As a rule, it can be a skull with crossed bones, a bell that rings at a funeral, a coffin and an hourglass hinting that time does not stand and brings us closer to death, or an hourglass with wings, also symbolizing the run of time.
