11 Feb 2012 - The Taj Mahal is a tomb

I was having dinner and drinks with friends of mine tonight and we were discussing their recent trip to India and how they visited the Taj Mahal. I have always loved this building and it is a place that I would love to visit, but I have never really known a great deal of detail about it. My friends were telling me that it was originally built as a tomb for one of the past sultan's wives. This surprised me because I had never imagined that the Taj Mahal would have been built for this purpose. Unlike in Egypt where all the of the Pharaohs built amazing tombs to mark their graves, I had always thought the Egyptians were the only race that went to such an effort. I had visited burial mounds in Scotland where ancient civilisations had built rock domes, called cairns, to mark the graves of people who passed, however these were never on the same scale as the pyramids. This got me to thinking about how much effort people put into their tombs many years ago and how we differ these days.

I mean you think of all the space taken up by the Pyramids or the Taj Mahal, which marked the graves of individuals, or perhaps a couple of people and then you think of the urn of ashes that some people choose, there is a rather large discrepancy. Imagine if everyone built such lavish tombs who could afford it these days, there would be no space left in the world. I am just conjuring up images of the type of tombs that people who have means might choose to build, Steve Jobs would have built a giant apple with a bite taken out of the side, Bill Gates I guess would just have a giant window somewhere. Overall I am glad that we don't build lavish tombs anymore because in this day and age where all the celebrities are trying to outdo each other, I think our earth would just be covered with a whole bunch of monuments that we don't need, especially considering we already have more celebrities than we need!