The day my husband died, I chose life. My people cast me out; a widow has no business living past the dawn, but I would rather wither in the darkness of exile than share the world beyond with him. ``` ## AFTERWORD I don't write poetry often, and I wasn't planning to write a poem when I sat down to write this week. It just kind of happened, a moment of synthesis between so many pieces of information floating in my head that it was almost beautiful — more because I could _feel_ all of the different bits of research I've done coming together into a coherent whole. Sati (sometimes spelled suttee) is mostly known as a Hindu funeral practice where a newly widowed woman throws herself onto her husband's funeral pyre and burns to death with him. It's been on my mind for a while; I first wrote about [funerary practices](https://eleanorkonik.com/tombs/) %% ( [[2020-09-07 Tombs]] ) %% for this newsletter back in September 2020, and [sacrifice](https://eleanorkonik.com/sacrifice/) %% ( [[2021-09-27 Sacrifice]] ) %% almost exactly a year later. Even before that, though, I've had a big interest in Dido, and I started researching [evidence that she really existed as Elissa of Carthage](https://eleanorkonik.com/haegemans-elissa-of-carthage/) %% ( [[Haegemans on Elissa of Carthage]] ) %% almost from the moment I created this newsletter. If you're not familiar with her story, one of the reasons Elissa is still reasonably well-known is that medieval Christians held her up as a paragon of martial virtue. When a king from the region she settled in tried to marry her, she refused, claiming it would be disloyal to her dead husband (who was murdered by her brother). She was ultimately pressured into it by her own citizens, but built a big pyre that she pretended was for a ritual to absolve her of her marriage vows to her deceased husband, and threw herself into the fire. My personal take on this is that it has nothing to do with piety or marital loyalty — it's a statement that Dido, and by extension the city she founded, will not submit to a merger with the surrounding polities — Carthage remained independent and autonomous territory. Before I read the excellent _[Civilizations of Africa](https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/2705)_ by Christopher Ehret, I mostly thought of sati practices as an antiquated feature of patriarchy, unrelated to any other social phenomenon beyond low status for women. That was when I thought of it at all, usually while reading a fantasy series like Glen Cook's _[The Black Company](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780812521399/theblackcompany)_. Sometime around when I was researching the [Inheritance](https://eleanorkonik.com/inheritance/) %% ( [[2021-11-09 Inheritance]] ) %% edition, which touches on widows, I knew I wanted to dig deeper into sacrifice, and widows, and suttee. The big thing I want to push forward is the idea that sati isn't unique — not to India (as evidenced by Elissa of Carthage's actions) and not to women. It's a known phenomenon that elderly spouses who are particularly close sometimes die within weeks of each other, even now — they call it [broken heart syndrome](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/jan/09/why-elderly-couples-die-together-science-broken-hearts) or [the widowhood effect](https://www.oversixty.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/science-behind-couples-who-die-together). Is it so outrageous that ancient societies might have noticed something similar, associated it with close bonding, and ritualized it? There's also survivor's guilt, of course. It's most commonly associated with things like [veterans of war](https://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4176&context=luc_diss), especially [Vietnam](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.148.5.586?journalCode=ajp), but survivor's guilt isn't the exclusive province of modernity or war. The more I think about this, the more it feels like a weirdly common phenomenon in humans — not necessarily the widow aspect, but rather the part where a person follows an important loved one into the afterlife. Sacral chiefship is the practice of burying servants in tombs to accompany rulers into the afterlife, so that they can continue to serve. It was a core component of culture in the Middle Nile region 5,000 years ago — and can be contrasted with other sorts of human sacrifice, like those practiced by the Aztecs or Niger-Congo kingdoms. In [Brotherhood of Kings](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/brotherhood-of-kings-9780195313987?cc=us&lang=en&), Amanda Podany points out that sacral chiefships are not limited to kings. Although many of us are familiar with the idea of Egyptian servants following their Pharaohs into the afterlife, it's not limited to Egypt. There's a tomb site in Mesopotamian Ur (modern-day Iraq) with male and female royals (presumably kings and queens) buried with beautifully attired young attendants. Some of the 16 tombs were filled with dozens of attendants, each killed with a single sharp blow to the head. Sometimes I wonder if the idea of suttee evolved out of the ideal that a husband is the head of his household — wife following him into the afterlife the way a royal servant might follow her king. It's a patriarchal idea, certainly, but somehow never one I've seen mentioned when the practice comes up — and I'm not familiar with sacral kingship being much of a thing in India, either. Regardless of whether concepts of suttee and sacral kingship directly influenced each other, it actually doesn't seem _that_ outrageous for different cultures to have codified this sort of tradition. It's one way to deal with the kinds of grief that come from seeing a loved one die, as weird and horrific as this sort of sacrifice seems to be a modern Westerner like me. The main thing that surprises me is how often we talk about the Hindu practice of suttee in isolation from other practices of its type. I don't know much about the protagonist of _Wither_ — not yet. I haven't even decided on her name. But I'm very interested in exploring her culture and its neighbors, especially what other kinds of sacrifices are expected in the surrounding lands. I'm curious to figure out what kind of reception she'll have out in the world beyond her village borders — and whether she'll ever return. If you're also curious, shoot me an email (or [leave a comment](newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/wither/#cove) on the web version)  so I know to bump it up my priority list.