It has been revealed why the dead British Queen is buried in a lead coffin. There is a rather surprising reason, which goes back 1000 years.
They will have to carry a huge weight at the funeral ceremony II. During Elizabeth’s farewell, as it turned out, the coffin that was the queen’s final resting place was lined with lead, writes Bors with reference to IFL Science.
The custom has a tradition of almost 1,000 years, and both Diana and Prince Philip’s coffins were lined with lead.
At the same time, there is a very understandable reason behind the mysterious custom: they want the queen’s body to remain in good condition for as long as possible. Lead protects the body from decomposition, i.e. it slows it down by keeping moisture away from it.
The tradition goes back to King William I of England. The ruler received a fatal wound in a battle in 1087, died for a long time, and then no one wanted to bury him, due to his unpopularity. His sad fate was that his body began to decompose on a stone slab. Finally, a knight agreed to carry his body 112 kilometers to Caen. But by the time he got there with it, the king’s body was so swollen that he couldn’t even fit in the coffin.
According to the account of the Benedictine monk Orderic Vitalis, the story took another terrible turn: when they tried to squeeze it into the narrow sarcophagus, the body practically exploded, the swollen intestines burst open, and an unbearable stench hit the noses of passers-by and the entire crowd.
After this, it is not at all surprising if the rulers do not want to meet a similar fate,
with a lead coffin, the decomposition of the body can be avoided for up to one year.
Moreover, formaldehyde was not known until 1869, so it was the only method to keep the remains of the monarchs alive as long as possible.
