The First Ghosts, Irving Finkel
The First Ghosts, Irving Finkel
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The First Ghosts
A rich history of ancient ghosts and ghost stories from the British Museum curator

Author: Irving Finkel

Narrator: Irving Finkel

Unabridged: 9 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/11/2021


Synopsis

Dr Irving Finkel, curator at the British Museum, explores why the belief in ghosts is what makes us human.

There are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally 'believe' or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries - yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older...

The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?

(P) 2021 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

About Irving Finkel

Dr Irving Finkel is Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian (i.e. Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian) script, languages and cultures Department: Middle East at the British Museum, headquartered in London's Bloomsbury. He is the curator in charge of cuneiform inscriptions on tablets of clay from ancient Mesopotamia, of which the Middle East Department has the largest collection - some 130,000 pieces - of any modern museum. This work involves reading and translating all sorts of inscriptions, sometimes working on ancient archives to identify manuscripts that belong together, or even join to one another.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Thibault on May 07, 2024

What kind of ghost stories were told in ancient times? That's the question this book tries to answer, breathing new life into those ghost stories of old. This book looks at all the actual physical evidence we have of people describing ghosts in our ancient history. This is an archeological ghost hun......more

Goodreads review by Maitreyi on December 22, 2021

I'm currently writing a paper on the discrepancy between Mesopotamian Bronze Age grave goods and the literary depiction of the afterlife, and this book was very informative as a starting point. The geographical exploration of Sumerian vs Akkadian afterlife was unique and was even mapped out. Irving......more

Goodreads review by Kate on August 06, 2022

Fascinating, mind blowing, erudite and wry, I both enjoyed this and found that it has changed my view of life, as only the very best books do. Very detailed, which occasionally became a bit confusing, but not really one to read in bed (as I did), better to savour it at the desk or kitchen table, whi......more

Goodreads review by Dan on August 14, 2022

I first became aware of Irving Finkel a few years back through the British Museum's spectacular YouTube series. Although I've watched several of his lectures since that time, I'm afraid this is the first of his books which I've read - a sad mistake on my part that I shall soon rectify. "The First Gho......more

Goodreads review by Kevin on January 26, 2022

Wonderfully readable, scholarly, and even humorous. Finkel provides a much needed reminder that our ancestors--like five to seven millennia ago--weren't crude and ignorant savages, but had sophisticated cultures and belief systems that provided many of the seed beliefs for Judeo-Christian religious......more