Humans sometimes do strange things and have strange rituals. We may all be made up of the same genetic material, but we can be as different as night and day in our customs and habits. There are so many factors that have to do with how we act and what we believe. If we were raised on an island and had no contact with anyone, but our tribe, we might believe that when airplanes were flying over, they were gods. On the other hand, those same planes flying over homes that are near an airport are called a damn nuisance. Our perception of that situation is formed by social interactions with a greater or smaller portion of the human race. No doubt that education plays some part in this perception also, as does religion to some extent. The religious angle might only apply to the islanders in this situation, because anything that they don't understand might be chalked up to it. Isn't it true though, when people see something that they don't understand, many of them will think that they had some sort of religious experience? It happens less and less to people, the more sophisticated and worldly that they become.

When it comes to death, different cultures have different ways of dealing with it. Somewhere in the ancient past, someone died and his or her family and friends decided that the body should be treated with respect and the first burial took place. Perhaps items that the person used in their lifetime were buried with them, we will never know this, because there is no way of knowing when and where that first burial took place. We don't even know if homo sapiens were the first to do this? We do know that as time went by, people who died were treated with greater respect and those people that were considered important had grander tombs and graves than the rest of the people. They were usually buried with items that they had considered precious, such as weapons and jewelry. This continued until some people who were considered really important, like leaders, were buried with their servants. Can you imagine being a servant for some Pharaoh and he is elderly. You knew that you might not have much time before you were put into a grave with him, when he kicked the bucket.

One strange habit that developed was the creation of a death mask. Maybe it started with the Egyptians. They believed that people lived on in the afterlife as long as their body was protected. They provided the bodies of some of the more powerful and even lesser powerful people with masks to wear when they died. I guess that one of the most famous is the golden mask of King Tutankhamun. The mask in ancient Egyptian culture was different from a death mask, even though it was put on the dead. It supplied the dead with a face for the afterlife. This was a completely different type of mask that had a different purpose than what we now commonly call a death mask. What we call death masks today, are forms that are made from wax or plaster casts of the face of a deceased person. This was a common practice years ago and is still being done today, but obviously not as much. Sometimes this was done, to give artists a way of painting a portrait of someone after they died, sometimes it was done so that it could be put on display for people to see what some famous person looked like and other times it was done so that the family would have a remembrance of the person, especially before cameras were invented.

Experts sometimes can pick out a portrait that was made using a death mask as a model. You might wonder how this can be, I know that I did? They claim that there is a slight distortion made by the weight of a plaster mold and it can be seen, if one is familiar with how the person looked when they were alive. There are death masks on display in many different places. A death mask of Pretty Boy Floyd, the famous American gangster, sits on the wall in the basement of what was the funeral home that he was prepared in. Today it is a bed and breakfast and poor Pretty Boy is hanging over a couple of washers and dryers in the laundry room. The town where his mask is in, is East Liverpool, Ohio.

An even more famous personage has his death mask in a Cuban Museum. The museum is the Oscar Maria de Rojas Museum in Cardenas. The death mask that they are exhibiting, is the original death mask of none other than Napoleon. When Napoleon died, his personal doctor, Dr. Francois Antommachi, brought it to Cuba. He thought that the emperor had some distant relatives there and wanted to present it to them. He ended up selling the mask to the Museum. This is not the only death mask of Napoleon, there are two others. One is in France and the other is in Havana's Napoleonic Museum. The mask in Cardenas is the most valuable.

One death mask has been constantly surrounded by controversy, it is the death mask of William Shakespeare, or so it is claimed. Some academics claim that this is the true mask of the great writer and others say that there is just not enough proof. There are many different theories on who Shakespeare was and some state that he was not even one particular person, but several writers. This tends to make claims of authenticity for the mask even harder to prove. One professor states that this is the true mask, because it is said that Shakespeare died of a progressive illness and you can see the final results of this in the mask. Will we ever be 100 percent certain that this is the mask of William Shakespeare, I just can't say?

Poncho Villa was a famous Mexican revolutionary. He was so famous that he had even appeared in movies of that time. When he died, doctors decided to make a death mask of his face. The mask laid in a garage for years. Then it was sent to the mistress of a girl's school and stayed there until she died. It then went into storage. In 1978 it was found in a paper bag. An artist got permission to make copies of it and then cast a bronze copy. By then Villa had been declared a national hero and Mexico requested the return of the mask. In 1983 the mask was returned to the governor of the city of Chihuahua. It is in the Museum of the Revolution, in Chihuahua., Mexico and is not available for public viewing.

Death masks were made of some very famous people. Dante, the famous writer has his death mask in a museum. Chopin's death mask is on display. You can go to Warwick Castle and see the death mask of Oliver Cromwell. Peter the Great has a death mask The famous Australian Ned Kelly has a death mask as does Blaise Pascal. Here is an interesting fact that not many people know. Abraham Lincoln had life masks made. They are masks made of a living person. We know this for sure, because they were made five years apart. In 1881, sculptor Leonard Volk explained how he made the first Lincoln mask. Of the plaster casting process, Volk said, "It was about an hour before the mold was ready to be removed, and being all in one piece, with both ears perfectly taken, it clung pretty hard, as the cheek-bones were higher than the jaws at the lobe of the ear. He bent his head low and took hold of the mold, and gradually worked it off without breaking or injury; it hurt a little, as a few hairs of the tender temples pulled out with the plaster and made his eyes water." Lincoln said he found the process "anything but agreeable."

There probably will always be a few death masks made for the purposes of art, but for most of us, the death mask is a relic of the past. Now that we have home videos and photography, we have alternate and better ways of remembering our dear departed. Still, looking at a death mask does invoke certain thoughts that make us feel that we are seeing the real person.