Mesopotamian ghosts

Christopher Josiffe explores a scholarly and accessible study of beliefs about ghosts gleaned from Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform inscriptions

TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM The First Ghosts Most Ancient of Legacies Irving Finkel Hodder & Stoughton 2021 Hb, 368pp, £25, ISBN 9781529303261 Dr Irving Finkel, curator of the British Museum’s collection of c.130,000 Mesopotamian clay tablets, here deploys his expertise in transliterating and translating Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform inscriptions, demonstrating that a belief in the reality of ghosts is both ancient and – based on the extant scientific knowledge of the time – entirely rational. Evidence of grave goods found in Upper Palæolithic burials (c.50,000 BC) demonstrates the great antiquity of the idea that some aspect of a buried human being would be going somewhere else. By logical reasoning, it then followed that this aspect of a person, if able to detach itself…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 419

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