As verbs the difference between tomb and grave is that tomb is to bury while grave is (obsolete) to dig. As a adjective grave is (obsolete) influential, important; authoritative.
tomb
A small building (or “vault”) for the remains of the dead, with walls, a roof, and (if it is to be used for more than one corpse) a door. It may be partly or wholly in the ground (except for its entrance) in a cemetery, or it may be inside a church proper or in its crypt. Single tombs may be permanently sealed; those for families (or other groups) have doors for access whenever needed.A pit in which the dead body of a human being is deposited; a grave.* ShakespeareAs one dead in the bottom of a tomb .Verb To bury.
It may be partly or wholly in the ground (except for its entrance) in a cemetery, or it may be inside a church proper or in its crypt. Single tombs may be permanently sealed; those for families (or other groups) have doors for access whenever needed.
tomb, in the strictest sense, a home or house for the dead; the term is applied loosely to all kinds of graves, funerary monuments, and memorials. In many primitive cultures the dead were buried in their own houses, and the tomb form may have developed out of this practice, as a reproduction in permanent materials of primeval house types.
Thus prehistoric tomb barrows were usually built around a round hut, in which the body was placed, along with tools and other personal effects for use in the next life. With the more advanced technology of early civilizations, brick and stone tombs appeared, often of great size, but still preserving primitive house forms.
They were sometimes domical and sometimes rectangular, depending on which form was in common domestic use when the tombs began to be built. Being thought of as houses, such tombs were often lavishly provided with clothes, utensils, and furniture, so that they are major sources of knowledge about the cultures that built them.
In very early times, royal dead were apparently provided not only with all manner of necessary objects but also with actual servants, who were put to death at the time of the burial so that they might continue to serve their master. Typical is the tomb of Queen Shub-Ad of Ur (Early Dynastic Period in Mesopotamia, c. 2900–c. 2334 BC), which contained the bodies of more than 60 attendants. It became more common, however, to substitute statues or painted images for human beings. This was the practice in most Egyptian tombs; and from such painted pictures and statuettes, particularly in Old and Middle Kingdom tombs, a vivid picture of Egyptian life can be gained.
In many cultures and civilizations the tomb was superseded by, or coexisted with, monuments or memorials to the dead; sometimes, as in ancient Greece, the bodies were burned and the ashes put in funerary urns. In medieval Christian thought, the tomb was considered an earthly prototype and symbol of a heavenly home. This concept appeared in the Roman catacombs, the walls of which were decorated with scenes of the resurrected in paradise. The church building itself sometimes functioned as a tomb (e.g., Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was the tomb of Justinian).
grave
An excavation in the earth as a place of burial; also, any place of interment; a tomb; a sepulcher.*
11:17:He had lain in the grave four days.* (Madame Bovary) , Part III, Chapter X: They reached the cemetery. The men went right down to a place in the grass where a grave was dug. They ranged themselves all round; and while the priest spoke, the red soil thrown up at the sides kept noiselessly slipping down at the corners.death, destruction.
Derived terms
* begrave * dance on someone’s grave * dig one’s own grave * early grave * graveclothes * grave marker * grave robber * graverobbing * gravedigger * gravelike * graveside * gravesite * gravestone * graveward * mass grave * turn in one’s grave * war grave * white man’s grave
GRAVE TOMBSTONES or HEADSTONES
Grave headstones remain today the world’s most popular way to permanently memorialize deceased loved-ones. Following centuries of tradition, in cultures all across the globe, most people alive today can expect to be remembered through the ages by grave headstones personalized to include their names, dates of birth and death, special designs, and other relevant information. Even people whose bodies have been cremated (a tradition whose popularity is increasing dramatically) are often memorialized with grave headstones installed in their family cemetery plots.
CENOTAPH
cenotaph, (from Greek kenotaphion, “empty tomb”), monument, sometimes in the form of a tomb, to a person who is buried elsewhere. Greek writings indicate that the ancients erected many cenotaphs, including one raised by the Athenians to the poet Euripides, though none of these survive. Such existing memorials are distributed mainly in major churches—e.g., in Santa Croce, Florence, where there are memorials to Dante, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Galileo, and in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. The term is now almost wholly applied, however, to national war memorials, notably the London Cenotaph, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and completed in 1920.
CRYPT
The word “Crypt” developed as an alternative form of the Latin “vault” as it was carried over into Late Latin, and came to refer to the ritual rooms found underneath church buildings. It also served as a vault for storing important and/or sacred items.
The word “Crypta”, however, is also the female form of crypto “hidden”. The earliest known origin of both is in the Ancient Greek κρύπτω (krupto/krypto), the first person singular indicative of the verb “to conceal, to hide”.
A crypt (from Latin crypta “vault”) is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or religious relics.
Originally, crypts were typically found below the main apse of a church, such as at the Abbey of Saint-Germain en Auxerre, but were later located beneath chancel, naves and transepts as well. Occasionally churches were raised high to accommodate a crypt at the ground level, such as St Michael’s Church in Hildesheim, Germany.
BURIAL VAULTS
In more modern terms, a crypt is most often a stone chambered burial vault used to store the deceased. Placing a corpse into a crypt can be called immurement, and is a method of final disposition, as an alternative to, for example, cremation. Crypts are usually found in cemeteries and under public religious buildings, such as churches or cathedrals, but are also occasionally found beneath mausolea or chapels on personal estates.
Vaults are literally containers made of concrete, plastic, metal, or any material that’s built to last. Unlike some types of casket materials, they don’t degrade over time.
In simple terms, a burial vault is a type of lined, sealed outer container that protects the casket. These serve a structural and practical purpose, but they’re not always necessary depending on the situation.
These are placed within the grave before the casket. The casket is placed inside the burial vault, as the name implies, as a way to protect against the elements.
Why do some people use burial vaults?
Though they don’t stop decomposition, there are still many practical reasons to use burial vaults. They serve a structural purpose within the cemetery, and they also ensure the casket is safe over time. Some cemeteries even install these vaults in every grave as a landscaping tool.
Many families and individuals choose to use burial vaults because:
- Protection: If you live in an area where flooding and extreme weather are common, the vault protects the casket from anything getting in.
- Sinkholes: The ground can actually cave in around the casket in some parts of the world. This depends on the type of ground and the moisture content, but sinkholes aren’t uncommon.
- Coastal regions: In coastal regions, the ground is usually unstable and wet. A burial vault is usually required to keep the grounds safe, and also to avoid water from leaking into the casket.
MAUSOLEUM
A mausoleum is a stately or impressive building housing a tomb or group of tombs.
The plurals mausoleums and mausolea are both used in English, although mausoleums is more common.
The word mausoleum comes from the Ancient Greek king Mausolus who was buried in a magnificent marble tomb at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus is also known as the Tomb of Mausolus and the tomb was built between 353 and 350 BC. Mausolus died, his wife Artemisia made the tomb as a tribute for him in Bodrum, which is in Turkey. The construction was beautiful and unique therefore it gained the title as one of The Seven Wonders of the World.
The Taj Mahal is a mausoleum in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. Shah Jahan, who ruled the Mughal Empire (with its capital in Agra) for 30 years, had the mausoleum constructed to honor his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, after her death in 1631. The main mausoleum of the Taj Mahal took more than 15 years to complete.
The Taj Mahal , is an Islamic ivory-white marble mausoleum on the right bank of the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. It was commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658) to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself.
What is the difference between a mausoleum, burial vault and a crypt?
A mausoleum is a building to place a tomb that rests above the ground whereas a burial vault is an enclosure made of wood, brick, stone or concrete that serves as a container for the coffin when a burial takes place. The main purpose of a burial vault is to protect the casket or coffin from the weight of the earth and to act a barrier from water, insects or other natural elements.
A crypt, on the other hand, is an underground stone chamber, usually found beneath the floors of a church or cathedral, which houses a number of tombs. These were usually elaborate underground burial vaults which were owned by wealthy families who were often buried together.
SARCOPHAGUS
sarcophagus, stone coffin. The original term is of doubtful meaning. Pliny explains that the word denotes a coffin of limestone from the Troad (the region around Troy) which had the property of dissolving the body quickly (Greek sarx, “flesh,” and phagein, “to eat”), but this explanation is questionable; religious and folkloristic ideas may have been involved in calling a coffin a body eater. The word came into general use as the name for a large coffin in imperial Rome and is now used as an archaeological term.
The earliest stone coffins in use among the Egyptians of the 3rd dynasty (c. 2650–2575 BCE) were designed to represent palaces of mud-brick architecture, with an ornamental arrangement of false doors and windows. Beginning in the 11th dynasty (c. 2081 BCE), boxlike sarcophagi of wood or limestone were in use in Egypt and on the Lebanese coast at Byblos. In the 17th dynasty (c. 1630–1540 BCE), anthropoid coffins (shaped to resemble the human form with a carved portrait head) of pasted papyrus sheets and, later, of wood, pottery, or stone were used. In the case of royalty, some were made of solid gold (Tutankhamen) or silver (Psussenes I). In the 18th–20th dynasties (c. 1539–1075 BCE), the upper classes enclosed inner coffins of wood or metal in stone outer sarcophagi, a practice that continued into the Ptolemaic period.
CASKET VS COFFIN
- A coffin has an octagonal or hexagonal shape designed to accommodate the shape of a human body; a casket has a rectangular shape
- A casket has a split-lid on top for viewing; a coffin doesn’t have such opening.
- A casket is cheaper because it uses less wood compared to a coffin.
- The word casket may also mean boxes for jewelry, documents and other valuables. Coffin is always associated with mortal remains.
- A coffin has a metal lining inside, as well as metal handles on the exterior for the pallbearers.
- A coffin’s foot has a taper; a casket is purely rectangular.
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