The Bones of Women: Beads on a String
A poetic look into the history of multiple women entombed with kings. Also black holes and quasar constellations.
One of the signs an ancient civilization moved from a matrilineal society to a patriarchal society is the discovery of women’s bones buried with male rulers.
In ancient Egypt the queens and wives of pharaohs were buried with their husbands in the same tomb.1
Ramesses II had over 200 wives and concubines.
Hundreds of years before Ramesses II, retainer sacrifices were common practice. Servants, wives and concubines were killed immediately following a Pharoah’s death to be buried with him so his services would continue on uninterrupted in the afterlife.
King Djer had 318 retainer sacrifices surrounding his tomb. Most were his subsidiary wives, concubines and maid servants.2
“Astronomers have discovered one of the most powerful black hole eruptions ever seen — and this immense explosion, which occurred almost 4 billion years ago, formed a pattern of stars in clusters that resemble jewelry.
The starry necklace adorns a massive cluster made of hundreds of galaxies called SDSS J1531; some 3.8 billion light-years from Earth.” - Robert Lea reporting for space.com Feb 7, 2024
In the Ming dynasty of ancient China, the palace maids, servants and concubines would be buried alive with the recently deceased emperor. 46 concubines were buried alive in emperor Zhou Yuanzhang’s tomb.
“When it is time to enter the grave, the concubines and palace maidens will have to dress beautifully. They wear the best clothes and carry the most precious jewels.”3
“Any matter that doesn't fall into the supermassive black hole gets channeled to the poles of the cosmic titan… Here, these charged particles are accelerated to speeds approaching that of light. This eruption is typically accompanied by a blast of electromagnetic radiation...
As a result, AGNs and the quasars associated with them are often so bright they outshine the combined light of every star in the galaxies around them.” - space.com
On March 1, 1877, in celebration of his 70th birthday, future Mormon prophet Wilford Woodruff went to the Salt Lake City temple with 154 women to act as proxies for dead women to be sealed to him4.
In his journal he wrote, “I was there surrounded with one hundred and fifty four virgins, Maidens Daughters and Mothers in Zion from the age of fourteen to the Aged Mother leaning upon her Staff. All had assembled for the purpose of entering into the Temple of the Lord to make me a birthday present by being washed and anointed and receiving their endowments for and in behalf of one hundred and thirty of my wives who were dead and in the spirit world.”5
Afterwards, they all ate wedding cake.6
"As the jet propagated through space, it carved out a giant bubble in the cooling gas, uplifting and dispersing the surrounding material. Despite occurring almost 200 million years ago, the legacy of the outburst endures. The previously uplifted gas has now cooled and is gravitating back towards the center of the cluster, and provided the fresh fuel for the young 'beads on a string' star formation." - space.com
I like to follow space news. As I read about the quasars resisting being eaten by the supermassive black hole, I thought of the wives of Ramesses, Huang and Woodruff.
The women whose bones, bodies and souls were wrapped up and packaged as gifts to eternally serve kings, emperors and prophets.
I imagined their refusal to be sucked in like a vacuum to serve a supermassive blackhole. Resisting so hard and so fast that they outshine the combined light of every galaxy around them.
Whose bones provide fresh fuel for the next generation of quasars—a legacy of beading together and shining like jewels to all the galaxies looking on for the next billion years.
“…Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.
And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.
But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—….
Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen…
if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds
…after all of this is over?” - excerpts from Dead Stars by Ada Limon
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marriages in the LDS temple are called “sealings”
He gave himself the exact same birthday present for his next 4 birthdays and in total had 267 wives sealed to him.
Vive la resistance! How is it that women in history keep appearing as supporting actresses around these men with power? It's time to flip that script.
WoW. I learned so much new, disturbing stuff. Great piece Celeste!