Crown of Immortality

In ancient Egypt, the crown of justification was a wreath placed on the deceased to represent victory over death in the afterlife, in emulation of the resurrecting god Osiris.

It was made of various materials including laurel, palm, feathers, papyrus, roses, or precious metals, with numerous examples represented on the Fayum mummy portraits of the Roman Imperial period.

Among the Romans, generals celebrating a formal triumph wore a laurel wreath, an honor that during the Empire was restricted to the Imperial family.

The placing of the wreath was often called a "crowning", and its relation to immortality was problematic; it was supposed to secure the wearer immortality in the form of enduring fame, but the triumphator was also reminded of his place within the mortal world: in the traditional tableaux, an accompanying slave whispered continually in the general's ear Memento mori, "Remember you are mortal".

[citation needed] On Saint Lucy's Day, December 13, it is common to wear crowns of candles in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Italy, Bosnia, Iceland, and Croatia.

Ignatius of Antioch, condemned to fight beasts in the year 107, "asked his friends not to try to save him and so rob him of the crown of immortality.

[11] The Titian therefore appears to be the earliest such representation to survive, and it was also at this period that illustrations in prints of the Apocalypse by artists such as Dürer[12] [13] and Jean Duvet were receiving very wide circulation.

[14][15][16] Immortality seems to have been a preoccupation of Urban; his funeral monument by Bernini in St Peter's Basilica in Rome has Death as a life-size skeleton writing his name on a scroll.