Rituals

Prothesis and Ekphora

Also Known As Prothesis (Greek) · Ekphora (Greek) · Greek Funeral Rites (English) · Choai (Greek)

Funerary Rituals

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Prothesis and Ekphora." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://www.divinityatlas.com/rituals/prothesis-and-ekphora.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Prothesis and Ekphora. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.divinityatlas.com/rituals/prothesis-and-ekphora

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-prothesis-and-ekphora,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Prothesis and Ekphora},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.divinityatlas.com/rituals/prothesis-and-ekphora},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The classical Greek funeral had three named stages. The prothesis was the laying out: the body washed, anointed, dressed and crowned, set on a bier in the house for a day, with the women of the household keeping the lament beside it and visitors coming to see it. The ekphora was the carrying out, to the burial ground beyond the city walls, which Athenian law required to take place before dawn. Then came burial or cremation, and the pouring of offerings at the grave, the choai, repeated on set days afterwards and again at the annual commemoration of the dead. A house with a corpse in it was polluted, and said so by setting a vessel of water fetched from another household at the door, so that anyone entering knew; the pollution ended when the rites did. What the funeral was for was not the fate of the soul, which the Greeks argued about, but the obligation of the living to complete the rites, which they did not.

Facts

Practice

Who Performs It

Lay people 1Ancient Greek Religion

Practitioner Detail

The women of the household washed, dressed and laid out the body and led the lament; the men carried it out 1Ancient Greek Religion

Obligation

Obligatory 1Ancient Greek Religion

Obligation Detail

A death polluted the household until the rites were complete, and the house marked the fact with a water vessel at the door 1

Frequency

Once, or at a turning point in a life 1Ancient Greek Religion

Cadence Detail

Laying out for a day, removal before dawn, then graveside offerings on set days afterward and at the annual commemoration of the dead 1Ancient Greek Religion

Origins

Place of Origin

Ancient Greece 3

Historical Origin

The sequence is already depicted in the Iliad, in the funerals given to Patroclus and to Hector, the earliest literary evidence for it; the earliest surviving legal regulation of it is Solon's funerary legislation at Athens in the early sixth century BCE, which restricted the scale and conduct of both stages. 1

Form

Implements and Materials

The loutrophoros, set on the graves of the unmarried, and the white-ground lekythos, an oil flask made as a grave offering 2Ancient Greek Religion

Status

Legal Status

Funerary display was restricted by law at Athens and elsewhere, limiting garments, offerings, hired mourners and public lamentation 1Ancient Greek Religion

Meaning

Literal Meaning

The two Greek nouns simply name the two acts in order: prothesis is a setting forth or a placing before, naming the laying out of the body for view, and ekphora is a carrying out or a bringing forth, naming the procession that bore the body from the house to the burial ground. 1

Attributions

Purpose

Requiring the ekphora to take place before sunrise served a specific religious purpose in Greek thought: keeping the pollution, the miasma, that a moving corpse carried through the streets from being exposed to daylight and to the wider community using the same public roads during the working day. 2

Learn More

Three Stages and a Pollution

A Greek funeral moved the dead out of the house of the living in three steps, and the steps were named because each carried a different obligation.

The prothesis was the display. The body was washed, anointed with oil, dressed and laid on a bier with the feet toward the door, usually for a single day. This was work for the women of the household, and so was the lament sung over the body, which was performed rather than merely felt: the vase paintings show mourners with both hands raised to the head in a fixed gesture, and the poetry preserves the antiphonal structure of the singing.

The ekphora was the removal, before first light in classical Athens, with the body carried or driven to the burial ground outside the walls. The Greeks kept their dead outside the city, and the road out of a Greek town, like the road out of a Roman one, ran between graves.

Then came the disposal, cremation or inhumation according to period and place, and the offerings poured at the grave: wine, oil, milk and honey, given on the day and again on set days afterward, and once a year at the general commemoration of the dead.

Running through all of it was miasma, the pollution a death put on a household. It was not sin and not contagion. It was a state that had to be marked and then discharged, and a house in it announced the fact by setting a water vessel outside the door, filled from somebody else's supply.

Sumptuary Law and the Painted Record

Twice in the archaic and classical periods the Greek funeral became a matter for legislation, which is the strongest evidence there is that funerals had become a way of competing. Solon's laws at Athens, and comparable measures elsewhere, are reported to have limited what a family could do: the number of garments, the size of the offerings, the hiring of mourners from outside the household, the tearing of cheeks by women, and public lamentation for anyone other than the person being buried. The point of the restrictions was not piety but politics. A great funeral procession was a display of a family's following, and the cities that limited them were limiting that.

The result for us is that Greek funerary practice is unusually well documented in images. Because display was constrained in life it went into the grave and onto the monument. Two vessel shapes carry most of the evidence: the loutrophoros, which held the water for the bridal bath and was set on the graves of those who died unmarried, and the white-ground lekythos, a slender oil flask made specifically as a grave offering and painted with scenes of the tomb, of the laying out, and of the dead attended by the living.

These are a record with a bias in them. They show the funerals of families who could afford painted pottery and carved stelai. What the poorest Athenians did at a death is largely invisible, and the archaeology of simple burials cannot supply the words that went with them.

Cross-Tradition Connections