CATACOMB, a grotto, or subterranean place for the burial of the dead.

Some derive the word catacomb from the place where ships are laid up, which the modern Latins and Greeks called cumbae. Others say that cata was used for ad, and catacumbas for adtumbas ; and accordingly Dadin maintains[7:6:238] that they anciently wrote catatumbas. Others, again, derive the word from the Greek καrα, and ryµĉo¢, a hollow, cavity, or the like.

Anciently the word catacomb was only understood of the tombs of St Peter and St Paul; and Μ. Chastelain observes, that, among the more intelligent of the people of Rome, the word catacomb is never applied to the subterranean burying-places hereinafter mentioned, but only to a chapel in St Sebastian, one of the seven stational churches, where, the ancient Roman calendars say, the body of St Peter was deposited, under the consulate of Tuscus and Bassus, in 258.

Catacombs of Italy, a vast assemblage of subterranean sepulchres near Rome, chiefly about three miles from that city, in the Via Appia; supposed to be the sepulchres of the martyrs, and which are accordingly visited by devotees, and relics thence taken and dispersed throughout the Catholic countries, after having been first baptized by the pope under the name of some saint. These catacombs are said by many to be caves or cells in which the primitive Christians held their interdicted assemblies, and where they interred such of their number as were martyred. Each catacomb is three feet broad and eight or ten feet high, running in form of an alley or gallery, and communicating with others. In many places they extend within a league of Rome. There is no masonry or vaulting in them, but each supports itself; and the two sides, which we may look on as the parietes or walls, were the places where the dead were deposited lengthwise, three or four rows, one above another, in the same catacomb, parallel to the alley. They were commonly closed with large thick tiles, and sometimes pieces of marble cemented in a manner which the moderns have failed to imitate. Sometimes, though very rarely, the name of the deceased is found on the tile; frequently a palm is seen, painted or engraven, or the cipher Xp, which is commonly read pro Christo. The opinion entertained by many Protestant authors is, that the catacombs are heathen sepulchres, being the same with the puticuli mentioned by Festus Pompeius; that although it was the practice of the ancient Romans to burn their dead, they, in order to avoid expense, threw the bodies of their slaves to rot in holes of the ground; that the Roman Christians, observing at length the great veneration paid to relics, resolved to have a stock of their own; and that, entering the catacombs, they added what ciphers and inscriptions they pleased, and then shut them up again, to be opened on a favourable occasion; while those in the secret dying or removing, the contrivance was forgotten, till chance opened them at last. But this opinion has even less of probability than the former. Mr Monro, in the Philosophical Transactions, supposes the catacombs to have been originally the common sepulchres of the early Romans, and excavated in consequence of the belief that shades hate the light, and that they love to hover about the places where the bodies are laid.

The Catacombs of Egypt are still extant, and have been described by various travellers, particularly by Belzoni. The bodies found in them are called mummies. The chambers containing these extend a great way under ground. In some of the chambers the walls are adorned with figures and hieroglyphics; in others the mummies are found in tombs ranged around the apartment, and hollowed out in the rock.

The Egyptians seem to have excelled in the art of embalming and preserving their dead bodies, as the mummies found in the catacombs of Egypt are in a better state than the bodies found either in the Italian catacombs or in those of any other part of the world.

Depositing the bodies of the dead in caves is certainly the original way of disposing of corpses, and appears to have been introduced by the Phoenicians in the countries to which they sent colonies; interment, as now practised in the open air or in temples, was first introduced by the Christians. When an ancient hero died, or was Killed in a foreign expedition, as his body was liable to conuption, and for that reason unfit to be transported entire, they fell on the expedient of burning, in order to bring borne the ashes, and oblige the manes to follow; that so his country might not be destitute of the benefit of his tutelage. It was thus that cremation seems to have had its origin; and by degrees it became common to all who could afford the expenses of it, and displaced the ancient method of interment. Thus catacombs became disused among the Romans after they had borrowed the manner of burning from the Greeks, and then none but slaves were laid in the ground.