Professional mourning or paid mourning is a type of public performance in which actors pretend to grieve for the recently deceased, with the goal of being indistinguishable from real mourners. As an occupation it originates from Egyptian, Chinese, Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures. Professional mourners, also called wailers, moirologists, or mutes, are compensated to lament or deliver a eulogy and help comfort and entertain the grieving family, or to improve the public spectacle of the funeral. Mentioned in the Bible and other religious texts, the occupation is widely invoked and explored in literature, from the Ugaritic epics of early centuries BC to modern poetry.

Most of the people hired to perform the act of professional mourning were women. Men were deemed unfit due to expectations of being less emotional. Mourning was sometimes one of only a few paid occupations available to women. Mourners were also seen as a sign of wealth and social status; The more wailers or mourners that followed a casket around, the more respected the deceased was in society.

In ancient Egypt, the mourners would be making an ostentatious display of grief which included tearing at dishevelled hair, loud wailing, beating of exposed breasts, and smearing the body with dirt. There are many inscriptions on tombs and pyramids of crowds of people following a body throughout the funerary procession. However, the most important of these women were the two impersonating the two godddesses Isis and Nephthys.

Isis and Nephthys were both Egyptian goddesses who were believed to play a special role when someone died. They were to be impersonated as a mourning ritual by professional mourners. In most inscriptions seen, one of them is at either end of the corpse. There are also rules for impersonation of these two goddesses, for example the portrayer's body had to be shaved completely, they had to be childless, and they had to have the names of Isis or Nephthys tattooed on their shoulders for identification. Evidence of professional mourning is seen in Ancient Egypt through different pyramid and tomb inscriptions. Different inscriptions show women next to tombs holding their bodies in ways that show sorrow, such as "hands holding the backs of their necks, crossing their arms on their chests, kneeling and/or bending their bodies forwards".

Professional mourners have been regular attendees of Chinese funerals since 756. The tradition of professional mourning stemmed from theatrical performances that would occur during funerary processions. There were musical performances at funerals as early as the third century. Scholar Jeehee Hong describes one such scene:

"they...set up wooden figures of Xiang Yu and Liu Bang participating in the banquet at Goose Gate. The show lasted quite some time." This performance was part of a funeral procession during the Dali reign (766–779) as the coffin of the deceased was being carried on the streets to his tomb site. The main funerary ritual had taken place at the house of the deceased, and now the mourners were walking in the funeral procession, along with a troupe of performers. The latter performance of this celebrated episode of the feast at the Goose Gate (Hongmen) from the Three Kingdoms saga was preceded by the enactment of a combat scene between two celebrated soldiers in history that was performed alongside the procession.

Most of the historical evidence of mourning exists in the form of inscriptions on the different panels of tombs. Each slab contains a different story, and by the analysis of these inscriptions we are able to tell that these were played out during the funeral. For example:

Each scene—the preparation of food, the groom with a horse, and the entertainment – is unfailingly reminiscent of classical representations that adorn many tomb walls or coffin surfaces created since the Han period...these motifs are generally understood by students of Chinese funerary art as a banquet for the deceased...it is clear they represent the deceased couple because of the motif's strong connection to traditional representations of performances prepared for tomb occupants