Feasting with the Dead - The BAS Library

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Cultures across the ages have held different views about the afterlife and what happens to the human body and soul after death. A scene from an Egyptian tomb reenacting parts of the Book of the Dead or an episode from Greek mythology, such as Cerberus guarding the entrance to Hades, comes to mind. While we no longer think that we must be mummified or memorize spells to safely overcome obstacles in the underworld or that we need a coin to pay Charon the boatman to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron in order to enter Hades, some ancient burial […]

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Endnotes

Dennis Pardee, “The Katumuwa Inscription,” in Virginia Rimmer Herrmann and J. David Schloen, eds., In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East (Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2014), p. 45. To hear this inscription read aloud in English or Aramaic, visit http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/catalog/oimp/oimp37/oimp37_Reading_Katumuwa.mp4.

Virginia R. Herrmann, “Introduction: The Katumuwa Stele and the Commemoration for the Dead in the Ancient Middle East,” in Herrmann and Schloen, eds., In Remembrance of Me, pp. 17–18.