Clear evidence of a rectangular wooden coffin was found in Tomb 152 in an early Banpo site. The earliest evidence of wooden coffin remains, dated at 5000 BC, was found in the Tomb 4 at Beishouling, Shaanxi. The side of an Ancient Egyptian sarcophagus The modern French form, couffin, means cradle. The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek ko-pi-na, written in Linear B syllabic script. Receptacles for cremated and cremulated human ashes (sometimes called cremains) are called urns.įirst attested in English in 1380, the word coffin derives from the Old French cofin, from Latin cophinus, which means basket, which is the latinisation of the Greek κόφινος ( kophinos), basket. A distinction is commonly drawn between "coffins" and "caskets", using "coffin" to refer to a tapered hexagonal or octagonal (also considered to be anthropoidal in shape) box and "casket" to refer to a rectangular box, often with a split lid used for viewing the deceased as seen in the picture. Any box in which the dead are buried is a coffin, and while a casket was originally regarded as a box for jewelry, use of the word "casket" in this sense began as a euphemism introduced by the undertaker's trade. Recreation of President Abraham Lincoln lying in repose in replicated coffin at the National Museum of Funeral History, Houston TX, with a policeman standing guardĪ coffin is a funerary box used for viewing or keeping a corpse, either for burial or cremation.Ĭoffins are sometimes referred to as a casket, particularly in American English.
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