Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
- For as long as humans have attempted to codify appropriate social behavior there have been either explicit prohibitions against necrophilia, or at the very least strong taboos against the practice. Yet despite the taboo, necrophilia also played a very important role in the imaginations of these same societies. Take, for instance, the case of Achilles, who allegedly engaged in necrophilic acts with the Amazonian Queen Penthesilea after killing her. Or Herod the Great, who allegedly preserved the second of his ten wives in honey and proceeded to have intercourse with her for seven years after her death. Some scholars believe Charlemagne frequently committed acts of necrophilia. And if you want to get slightly more modern, Sleeping Beauty has some pretty heavy necrophilic overtones.