10 Normal Items You Didn’t Know Were Once Part of Burial Rituals

We tend to think of everyday objects—pillows, perfumes, makeup—as inventions born from comfort, beauty, or practicality. But dig through the layers of history, and you’ll find that some of these now-ordinary items have surprising ties to ancient burial rites, funerary customs, or corpse preparation.

To be clear: not all of these items were originally invented for the dead, but many were shaped, popularized, or preserved by how they were used in death rituals. Whether they adorned mummies, masked the scent of decay, or marked the elite for the afterlife, these common tools all have one thing in common: they once helped humans navigate the strange boundary between life and death.

Related: 10 Intriguing Items Rock and Roll Legends Took to Their Graves

10 Pillows Were First for Propping Up Corpses

The earliest “pillows” were nothing like the cloud-soft cushions we nestle our heads on tonight. In ancient Mesopotamia, artisans carved headrests from hard stones—sometimes in the likeness of crouching lions or serpents—to cradle the skull of the deceased. Each angle, each chiseled groove, was calibrated not for comfort but to preserve posture, keep the airway open, and protect the spirit from malevolent forces. Over in Egypt, tombs of the Old Kingdom reveal alabaster headrests etched with hieroglyphs beseeching Anubis to watch over the sleeper, a guard posted at the very nape of the neck.

Japan’s Kofun period saw lacquered wooden pillows, their surfaces so cold and smooth that they were believed to stave off decay. In China’s Han dynasty, nobles were interred with jade headblocks—icy artifacts thought to both preserve the body and grant dreams of immortality. These funerary implements lingered in tomb depictions, a silent testament to humanity’s first experiments in head support—where the first heads they served were already dreaming no more.^[1]

9 Wigs Began as Burial Tools in Ancient Egypt

Long before fashion runways demanded wig caps and lace frontals, priests in Thebes would shave the heads of the dead to fit them with elaborate hairpieces. Made of human tresses woven with palm fibers and sheep’s wool, these funerary wigs imitated the striped nemes headdresses of pharaohs, complete with painted gold accents to catch torchlight in the sarcophagus chamber. New Kingdom tomb reliefs even depict priests pressing beeswax-curled ringlets into place, each coil a silent promise of eternal beauty in the underworld.

By the Late Period, wooden blocks carved to mimic celebrity coiffures—courtiers and queens—sat in burial vaults, stained with red ochre for that “freshly styled” glow. As Greek mercenaries and traders settled in Egyptian oases, they coveted these wigs for their own ceremonies, unwittingly turning a tool of mortuary magic into a living fashion statement. Thus, what began as a final adornment for the dead became a trend that outlived its funerary origins.^[2]

8 Straws Were Invented to Drink Offerings Left for the Dead

More than 5,000 years ago, Sumerian elites sealed jars of beer and fermented dates in tombs, draping them with reed mats and inserting tubes of gold and lapis lazuli for ritual sipping. These opulent straws, some capped with intricately filigreed filters, allowed priests to share in the funereal brew without disturbing precious sediment—an act of communion with ancestors. Cylinder seals illustrate mourners raising these jeweled tubes to their lips beneath mournful banners, the hiss of liquid echoing in the vaulted mortuary chapels.

In Old Kingdom Egypt, ivory and copper tubes surfaced beside sarcophagi, and the filters were woven from date-palm fibers so precise you could taste only liquid, no grain. These implements persisted in funerary feasts—the “Feeding of Osiris” ceremonies—long before anyone paused to think, “Hey, this might make my soda easier to sip.” Their original design, though, was always to bridge the worlds of the living and the dead.^[3]

7 Perfume Was Created to Mask the Smell of Decay

Imagine walking into a chamber where decay has already begun; ancient embalmers in Mesopotamia blended cedarwood, myrrh resin, and wild thyme into potent ointments to anoint both linen and flesh. Pottery jars from Uruk bear residue of these pungent concoctions, while cuneiform tablets list exact ratios—three parts frankincense to one part cinnamon—inscribed as divine prescriptions. In Egypt, New Kingdom workshops specialized in distilling aromatic oils, funneling them into alabaster vials labeled “Breath of the Gods,” destined for tombs of the elite.

Roman mausolea continued the trend: marble niches housed gilded amphorae marked “oleum sepulchri,” holding rose-infused oils strong enough to penetrate bandages and stave off the worst of the putrefaction. Across the Andes, Moche priests used clay ampullae filled with pig fat and copal resin to embalm warriors, sealing them with botanical scents that outlasted flesh. What began as a desperate fight against death’s decay eventually morphed into the luxury perfume trade we know—yet its origins were steeped in the aromas of mortality.^[4]

6 Makeup Was First Worn by the Dead (and Their Priests)

Long before beauty influencers duked it out on social feeds, Egyptian priests applied kohl—crushed galena and malachite pigment—to mummy eyes, following instructions from the Book of the Dead to “restore sight in Duat.” Green copper carbonate was pressed into eyebrows to mimic Osiris’s verdant hue, an emblem of regeneration. Inscriptions in the valley of the kings describe palettes of volcanic ash and red ochre, each stroke imbued with spells to repel evil and rejuvenate the flesh beneath linen wrappings.

At Saqqara, archaeologists have unearthed ivory spoons bearing traces of fragrance-infused pigments—tools of the mortuary cosmetologist whose final task was to “awaken” the deceased’s visage. Over centuries, these ritual implements filtered into daily life. By the time of Cleopatra, dramatic eyeliner and painted lips were more about allure than afterlife security. Yet every swipe of your modern lipstick carries the echo of those first mortuary rituals.^[5]

5 Coffins Inspired Modern Bathtubs

In 19th-century Britain, coffin workshops in Birmingham morphed into proto-plumbing factories, using the same molds and enameling techniques to produce watertight cast-iron baths. Trade catalogs from 1848 casually list “Bathing Caskets” alongside undertaker supplies, boasting removable lids and brass handles once meant for mortuary lids. One wealthy patron is rumored to have repurposed an actual coffin post-funeral—stripped of its lining—to create a personal tub, celebrating hygiene with an eyebrow-raising nod to mortality.

Illustrated ads from 1863 advertise “Mourner’s Baths,” boasting sloped interiors for comfort, designed by former coffin-makers who understood human contours best when crafting final resting places. As public health reformers extolled the virtues of daily washings, these early baths straddled the line between morbidity and cleanliness, their deep, oval shapes a direct inheritance from the crypt.^[6]

4 Nail Polish Was Originally a Tomb Marker

By 3000 BCE in ancient China, royal fingers were brushed with cinnabar lacquer mixed with egg white, each hue selected to mark status and cosmic alignment. Tomb murals at Erlitou portray monarchs with deep crimson nails—symbols of the rising sun—mirrored by the lacquered tiles in their burial chambers. Excavations of Shang dynasty tombs yield wooden nail guards coated in beeswax and orchid paste, preserving the delicate polish through the ages.

Han dynasty mausoleums reveal tiny silk pouches containing applicator sticks and powdered gemstones—sacrificial “manicure kits” buried beside nobles. Manuscripts from Mawangdui even list recipes combining camellia oil and crushed jade for long-lasting shine, a final brushstroke before entombment. What started as a ritual code for the dead filtered down to the living, who adopted tinted nails as badges of rank rather than rites of passage.^[7]

3 Sunglasses Began as Mourning Aids

In 12th-century Song China, magistrates donned smoky quartz lenses—called yanyan—to cloak their expressions when delivering stern verdicts. That same practice drifted into funeral rites: bamboo-framed quartz glasses shielded mourners’ tear-streaked eyes, preserving decorum in public displays of grief. Jesuit accounts from the 17th century describe Cantonese family members wiping these lenses behind silk screens, marking the boundary between private sorrow and societal expectation.

Fast-forward to Victorian England, where tinted “mourning spectacles” of brown glass and tortoiseshell frames became almost mandatory for widows at funerals. Patent records from 1869 tout “spectacles for ceremony,” emphasizing their role in safeguarding emotional composure. Today’s UV-blocking sunglasses may keep out glare, but their ancestors’ mission was to conceal heartbreak beneath a veil of solemnity.^[8]

2 Embalming Tools Became Modern Surgical Instruments

Ancient Egyptian bronze scalpels and hooked probes—engineered to excise brains through the nostrils—were marvels of anatomical precision. The Edwin Smith Papyrus catalogues these instruments with the same clinical detail as later found in Hippocratic texts. When Renaissance anatomists in Padua scoured Europe for cadavers to dissect, they borrowed these embalming knives, adapting their sharp, slender blades for live surgery.

In 19th-century London, Joseph Lister inspected a pair of embalming forceps in a museum. He modeled his first antiseptic tweezers on them, preserving the serrated grip designed to clamp arteries during evisceration. Dental drills, too, trace a lineage from mortuary augers used to hollow out skulls for brain removal. The fine line between morgue and operating theater was all but erased by these borrowed tools.^[9]

1 Toothbrushes Originated from Ritual Tooth Cleaning of Corpses

Priests in Mesopotamia wielded twigs from Salvadora persica—frayed to a natural brush—scrubbing residue from the teeth of the dead to honor the gods. In Egypt’s Late Period, tiny wooden spatulas applied myrrh-laden resins to seal gaps in molars, ensuring that even in death, mouths were pristine. Papyrus scrolls instruct embalmers to “cleanse and perfume” each enamel surface, a practice as much about reverence as hygiene.

By the Tang dynasty, Chang’an artisans crafted bone-handled brushes with hog bristles, burying them alongside nobles as part of their final rites. Chemical analyses of brushes recovered from Han tombs confirm oils of mint and sandalwood, foreshadowing the toothpastes and bristle toothbrushes that would one day grace the bathrooms of the living—tools born first to serve silent mouths in silent chambers.^[10]