ABSTRACT
THE position of widows in many cultures is one of the saddest in society. The simple fact
that they were born women ensured their fate. The moment their husbands died, their
own function in life was regarded as ended. Often they were destroyed to accompany and
serve their dead spouses in the new life beyond death, as they had in his earthly life. In
pre-industrial societies, birth, marriage and death are seen as a natural, eternal cycle with
death as a happy inevitability, a step on the road to the next life. Life after death is the
reward for those who have completed their life cycle. Having married and raised children
to continue the family line, the death of the male head of the family is accepted with joy
and celebration by his family. The soul needs only to be sent ritually on its way with the
necessities for a happy life beyond death, for tranquillity to be ensured. These necessities
consisted of food, drink, weapons, vehicles and the animals to draw them, and of course
his wife, wives and concubines. It was necessary to kill these women in order to place
them in the graves alongside the dead husband. Women accepted this as their natural end
and were brought up to believe that if they died with dignity they would bring credit upon
their own spirit and upon their families. Women who resisted this fate were killed anyway
because there was no social rôle left for a wife after her husband’s death. Her sole
function in life was to give birth to his children, to rear them and to cater to her husband’s
physical and material needs. Her sexuality belonged to him and to his family line.
Without her husband she became unnecessary and therefore a social outcast.
