Abstract
My paper outlines the funeral traditions of the Hungarian aristocracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I focus especially on the symbolical ritual practices, funeral decorations and sepulchral art engaged in the service of personal, social and political representation of the deceased. The central questions of my study are: what those funeral customs were which were used by the Hungarian aristocracy for representational purposes, what their origins were, and how they transformed or changed over time. Are the funeral practices specific to this particular social group and national entity or is funeral culture a common medium of the culture of the upper social classes, which apart from regional, cultural and social peculiarities and divergences had many common features?

Keywords
funeral culture, aristocracy, representation, alter ego, castrum doloris, funeral portraits, epitaphs, funeral flags.