A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Robert Garland explores the fascinating death-related beliefs and practices of a wide range of ancient cultures and traditions—Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Early Christian, and Islamic. By drawing on the latest scholarship on ancient archaeology, art, literature, and funerary inscriptions, Dr. Garland invites readers to put themselves in the sandals of ancient peoples and to imagine their mental state moment by moment as they sought—in ways that turn out to be remarkably similar to ours—to assist the dead on their journey to the next world and to understand life’s greatest mystery.
What to Expect When You’re Dead chronicles the ways ancient peoples answered questions such as: How to achieve a good death and afterlife? What’s the best way to dispose of a body? Do the dead face a postmortem judgement—and where do they end up? Do the dead have bodies in the afterlife—and can they eat, drink, and have sex? And what can the living do to stay on good terms with the nonliving?
Filled with intriguing stories and frequent humor, What to Expect When You’re Dead will be a morbidly delicious treat for every reader alive.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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