According to various sources, the dead outnumber the living at least 15:1. Given that no one gets out alive, the numerical superiority of those who have gone before us seems unassailable. That should make this study of death rituals in the ancient world by Robert Garland required reading for everyone, not just scholars interested in cross-cultural studies of mortuary practices.
In 10 chapters and just under 300 pages of text, Garland takes us on an entertaining and educational tour of what you could expect after shuffling off this mortal coil if you were a Roman, Greek, Egyptian, early Christian, Jewish, or Moslem inhabitant of the areas generally encompassed by the designation “the ancient world.” Clearly, given the limited number of pages available, this is not a comprehensive study. Indeed, large areas of the globe, including East Asia and the Americas, are missing, and others, such as most of Europe north of the Alps, are mentioned only in passing. Also, as one would expect from a classicist, texts dominate the discussion, and the archaeological record gets relatively short shrift. As a result, the book is weakest when dealing with very early evidence for burial practices, and some claims regarding when certain kinds of mortuary ritual were first introduced are problematic. What defines a cemetery is never discussed, and there are earlier formal burials than the site in Morocco that Garland mentions, which dates to about 15,000 years ago, including Sungir in Russia and Dolní Věstonice in the Czech Republic. But these are relatively minor issues and do not detract from what is otherwise a well-written, wryly humorous take on how humans (including Neanderthals) have handled the dead since the first formal burials appear in the Middle Paleolithic.
The book covers a lot of ground by using a thematic rather than diachronic structure. The first two chapters discuss afterlife beliefs (chapter 1) and conceptions of the good death (chapter 2). According to Garland, when asked to define the latter on the day before his assassination, Julius Caesar is reported to have looked up from his work to briefly respond “Unexpectedly” before continuing to write—he obviously got his wish. These and other quotable nuggets, mainly gleaned from the Greek and Roman sources, make the book worth the price of admission.
Garland points out that elites tend to be more visible in death than ordinary people, with larger monuments and more grave goods: this results in a biased picture of death rituals in the cultures he discusses, which is indisputable. He also suggests that the mortuary record skews male because women in the ancient world were generally inferior to men, when in fact gender configurations in the ancient world were almost as variable as mortuary practices. Making such sweeping statements without qualification or further discussion contributes to a long history of erasure from narratives of the past of women, children, the unfree, and the elderly and is disappointing to encounter here.
In chapters 3–5, Garland discusses cultural differences in the existence of one of two possible destinations for the soul or spirit after death—one positively configured, the other a place of oblivion or pain. Garland does an exemplary job of maintaining a neutral stance toward the various, occasionally genuinely strange ideas that various cultures have posited with regard to what happens when you die. However, occasionally a critical tone emerges, as when he states, “Both the Christian belief and the Muslim belief in a post-mortem judgement have added greatly to the sum of human misery” (p. 98). He suggests that the prevalence of looting of burials is at least partly the result of afterlife conceptions that replicate systems of inequality in the world of the living, with Egypt being one of the most obvious examples of why “taking it with you” might not be the best strategy if the goal is to rest in peace. Egyptian looters were highly organized and professional; Gardner describes this activity as a “nice little earner” (p. 217) beginning as early as the Badarian period (around 4400–4000 BC).
The book gets a bit lost in the weeds of the classical texts related to the Eleusinian and other mystery cults, probably because this is an area of scholarship with which Garland is especially familiar. Material culture does not receive much attention until chapter 8, where Garland provides a useful list of the functions of various “containers” of the dead. Yet he does provide a comprehensive overview of afterlife concepts in the Old Testament, including a discussion of the changes in Judaism and later in Christianity and Islam regarding the final stages of existence. The word “hell” is never mentioned by Jesus, for example, but is an Old English term that first appears around AD 725 and means “a place that is concealed” (p. 129).
Amusing asides leaven the occasionally denser sections of biblical exegesis; in the major monotheistic religions, for example, the afterlife appears to be unremittingly dull, with little in the way of intellectual stimulation and much repetitive chanting. How well must your body be preserved for you to be resurrected in ancient Egypt? Gardner suggests that “the dead must at least have neural systems since otherwise it would be pointless to torment them” (p. 140). Will you be in your thirties forever, as in certain Islamic afterlife conceptions? Do you continue to age? Mummified children are depicted as adults on Egyptian coffin lids, suggesting that aging continues in some contexts but not in others. In some cultures, “taking it with you” was not only required if you wanted to restore your status in life in the Otherworld but it also included transport in the form of a boat, a cart, a chariot, or horses. These could be life size, miniatures, or pars pro toto, where only some part of the transport system represents the whole object.
Yet not every ancient society was concerned with material possessions; Spartan warriors (at least according to the textual evidence) were buried with nothing apart from olive leaves and their red military cloaks. (Here again it is notable that Gardner does not ask what was included in the burials of Spartan women or prepubescent children.) The idea of work in the afterlife is another topic that Gardner covers in fascinating detail, from royal burials with sacrificed retainers, like the Death Pit at Ur, to model proxies like the Egyptian figurines known as shabtis, who come with the tools they will need to keep your afterlife house in order.
In the section of chapter 9 on the hungry dead, the business of libations, offerings, and other postfunerary activities is addressed in detail. The restless and dangerous dead get a section at the end of the book, including revenants; cenotaphs and mass graves are also discussed.
The Appian Way in Rome, Kerameikos in Athens, various Egyptian cemetery contexts, and Mesopotamian city-states are all part of this whirlwind tour of what Pericles, the Athenian leader, called the global cemetery of the famous dead. The view of “the world” from Athens was not unlike that of Garland, with the various Mediterranean cultures playing a starring role. Another book or three could be written about the areas of the world that are not covered here, but for anyone interested in the many afterlives of our ancestors in the Mare Nostrum, this book is a veritable Baedeker’s guide to what to expect when you are dead.
