Families
in Toraja in South Sulawesi dig up the bodies of their dead relatives
before washing, grooming and dressing them in fancy new clothes. Even
dead children are exhumed - one of these photos show the skeleton of a
baby wrapped in a print dress with a doll laid next to it. Damaged
coffins are fixed or replaced, and the mummies are then walked around
the province by following a path of straight lines. The ritual is called Ma'nene, or The Ceremony of Cleaning Corpses. According to the ancient Torajan belief system, the spirit of a dead person must return to his village of origin. So
if a person died on a journey, the family would go to the place of
death and accompany the deceased back home by walking them back to the
village.
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