Death Imagined

Ancient Perceptions of Death and Dying

Karolina Sekita, Katherine Southwood (Herausgeber)

Buch | Softcover

336 Seiten

2025
Liverpool University Press (Verlag)
978-1-80207-758-2 (ISBN)

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A book about perception and imagination of death, dying and the ‘beyond’ in ancient cultures from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Rome and even the Incas. The collected studies explore apotropaic or celebratory rituals of death, the imagined processes of dying, and the imagination of the dead in the minds of the living and mourning relatives.

An Open Access edition is available on the Liverpool University Press website, thanks to funding from St John’s College, Oxford, through a ‘Meeting of Minds’ grant.

Death is common and inescapable – everyone will agree. Yet, how one imagines the experience of dying and the beyond is very individual. Ancient cultures were not indifferent to this grim and painful moment and ‘the unknown beyond’. Needless to say, representations of the final moments and transition to the world of the dead filled many pages and paintings of the past. Unsurprisingly perhaps, given that no one comes back to tell the story, the world of the after-death is stained by perception of the process of dying and a negative reflection of the world of the living. The present book explores the ideas regarding death, dying and the world beyond death of those who came long before us, living in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, ancient Greece, Etruria Rome, and Inca culture (for comparative purposes). Even though separated by centuries, the reader will be surprised that the ancient experience of ‘the unknown’ does not seem unfamiliar, but still has much to offer in terms of reflection on ‘when we are not’.

Karolina Sekita is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Tel Aviv. She researches ancient Greek religion and its interactions with the Mediterranean cultures. Katherine Southwood is Professor of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford.

Preface

Katherine E. Southwood and Karolina Sekita

Introduction

Karolina Sekita and Katherine E. Southwood

I. Processing Death

Section Introduction, Katherine E. Southwood and Karolina Sekita

Death and Mourning in Euripides’ Alcestis, Richard Hunter

The Mesopotamians’ Perception of Death in Metaphor, Dina Katz

The Perception of the Human Body in the Ancient Egyptian Funerary Literature and the Book of the Dead, Rita Lucarelli

Incan Death as Challenge – Conceptualisations of the Mysterious Way from kay pacha to hurin pacha, Lidia Ożarowska

II. Perceiving Death Through Ritual and Burial

Section Introduction, Katherine E. Southwood and Karolina Sekita

A Disregard of Decency: Concepts and Metaphors of “Waste” and “Binding” Behind Some Non-Normative Burial Rituals in Ancient Greece and Modern Greek Folklore, Dimitrios Bosnakis

The Bitter Taste of Death: Mourning for the Young in Ancient Rome, Valerie M. Hope

Rethinking Depictions of Altars on Etruscan Mythological Sarcophagi, Valeria Riedemann Lorca

Memory, Monumentality, and the Tomb of the Royal Steward, Matthew J. Suriano

III. The Beyond

Section Introduction, Katherine E. Southwood and Karolina Sekita

Where Does the Soul Go? Some Thoughts on Etruscan Afterlife, Cornelia Weber-Lehmann

Grief is Displayed as a Mix Between Festival and Rite: The Roman Emperor and the Experience of Death, Panayiotis Christoforou

Imagining the Afterlife in the Psalms: The Episode of Mitchell Dahood and His Commentary, Christopher B. Hays

Epilogue

Jan N. Bremmer

Erscheinungsdatum	24.04.2025
Reihe/Serie	Liverpool Studies in Ancient History
Zusatzinfo	40 black and white images; 40 Illustrations
Verlagsort	Liverpool
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Klassiker / Moderne Klassiker
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
ISBN-10	1-80207-758-8 / 1802077588
ISBN-13	978-1-80207-758-2 / 9781802077582
Zustand	Neuware