Why can't there be two people in a coffin?

Answer 1

The use of a coffin is ritualistic to begin with; dead bodies do not really need to be protected since there is nothing more than can happen to them. So if you wanted to, you could certainly put two or more bodies in a coffin. You could also cremate the bodies and the resulting ash would take up much less space, and you might put the ash from a thousand cremated bodies in a single coffin. But the tradition of burying one body per coffin is simply intended to display respect for the person being buried, who is thereby shown to be important enough to be buried in an expensive piece of furniture that is reserved just for that person alone, despite the fact that once dead, people will never even know what kind of burial or funerary arrangements they had.