"Stop, traveler, and read!" the gravestones called out to passersby two thousand years ago. Inscriptions spoke of the pleasures of the deceased, of profession and merit, character and family. The personality continued to live on in bound speech. Today, the hurried merely glance at a few numbers above which a name lingers in emptiness, unrelated, released from any context. No more dialogue between this world and the next, no spirits of the dead to appease. The little that remains is expressed in forgettable formulas. It has been a long time since the dead have ceased to speak in these parts. Cultural history knows times of eloquent remembrance and times of silent commemoration; it also knows speechlessness and empty silence. In cultures where death has become a taboo because they have hy.