Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World

Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World
Author: Juliette Harrisson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2018-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351578391

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Human beings have speculated about whether or not there is life after death, and if so, what form that life might take, for centuries. What did people in the ancient world think the next life would hold, and did they imagine there was a chance for a relationship between the living and the dead? How did people in the ancient world keep their dead loved ones alive through memory, and were they afraid the dead might return and haunt the living in another form? What sort of afterlife did the ancient Greeks and Romans imagine for themselves? This volume explores these questions and more. While individual representations of the afterlife have often been examined, few studies have taken a more general view of ideas about the afterlife circulating in the ancient world. By drawing together current research from international scholars on archaeological evidence for afterlife belief, chiefly from funerary sites, together with studies of works of literature, this volume provides a broader overview of ancient ideas about the afterlife than has so far been available. Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World explores these key questions through a series of wide-ranging studies, taking in ghosts, demons, dreams, cosmology, and the mutilation of corpses along the way, offering a valuable resource to those studying all aspects of death in the ancient world

The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife

The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife
Author: Jan N. Bremmer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2003-09-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134768222

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Belief in the afterlife is still very much alive in Western civilisation, even though the truth of its existence is no longer universally accepted. Surprisingly, however, heaven, hell and the immortal soul were all ideas which arrived relatively late in the ancient world. Originally Greece and Israel - the cultures that gave us Christianity - had only the vaguest ideas of an afterlife. So where did these concepts come from and why did they develop? In this fascinating, learned, but highly readable book, Jan N. Bremmer - one of the foremost authorities on ancient religion - takes a fresh look at the major developments in the Western imagination of the afterlife, from the ancient Greeks to the modern near-death experience.

Underworld

Underworld
Author: David Saunders
Publisher: Getty Publications
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2022-01-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1606067346

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Abundantly illustrated, this essential volume examines depictions of the Underworld in southern Italian vase painting and explores the religious and cultural beliefs behind them. What happens to us when we die? What might the afterlife look like? For the ancient Greeks, the dead lived on, overseen by Hades in the Underworld. We read of famous sinners, such as Sisyphus, forever rolling his rock, and the fierce guard dog Kerberos, who was captured by Herakles. For mere mortals, ritual and religion offered possibilities for ensuring a happy existence in the beyond, and some of the richest evidence for beliefs about death comes from southern Italy, where the local Italic peoples engaged with Greek beliefs. Monumental funerary vases that accompanied the deceased were decorated with consolatory scenes from myth, and around forty preserve elaborate depictions of Hades’s domain. For the first time in over four decades, these compelling vase paintings are brought together in one volume, with detailed commentaries and ample illustrations. The catalogue is accompanied by a series of essays by leading experts in the field, which provides a framework for understanding these intriguing scenes and their contexts. Topics include attitudes toward the afterlife in Greek ritual and myth, inscriptions on leaves of gold that provided guidance for the deceased; funerary practices and religious beliefs in Apulia, and the importance accorded to Orpheus and Dionysos. Drawing from a variety of textual and archaeological sources, this volume is an essential source for anyone interested in religion and belief in the ancient Mediterranean.

Journey Through the Afterlife

Journey Through the Afterlife
Author: John H. Taylor
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2010
Genre: Book of the dead
ISBN: 9780674057500

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With contributions from leading scholars and detailed catalog entries that interpret the spells and painted scenes, this fascinating and important work affords a greater understanding of ancient Egyptian belief systems and poignantly reveals the hopes and fears about the world beyond death.

Imagining the Medieval Afterlife

Imagining the Medieval Afterlife
Author: Richard Matthew Pollard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2020-12-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 110717791X

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A comprehensive, innovative study of how medieval people envisioned heaven, hell, and purgatory - images and imaginings that endure today.

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion
Author: Esther Eidinow
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
Total Pages: 737
Release: 2015
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199642036

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This handbook offers both students and teachers of ancient Greek religion a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship in the subject, from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods. It not only presents key information, but also explores the ways in which such information is gathered and the different approaches that have shaped the area. In doing so, the volume provides a crucial research and orientation tool for students of the ancient world, and also makes a vital contribution to the key debates surrounding the conceptualization of ancient Greek religion. The handbook's initial chapters lay out the key dimensions of ancient Greek religion, approaches to evidence, and the representations of myths. The following chapters discuss the continuities and differences between religious practices in different cultures, including Egypt, the Near East, the Black Sea, and Bactria and India. The range of contributions emphasizes the diversity of relationships between mortals and the supernatural - in all their manifestations, across, between, and beyond ancient Greek cultures - and draws attention to religious activities as dynamic, highlighting how they changed over time, place, and context.

Afterlife

Afterlife
Author: Gary A. Stilwell
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2005
Genre: Death
ISBN: 0595342809

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Afterlife argues that proper conduct was believed essential for determining one's post-mortem judgment from the earliest periods in ancient Egypt and Greece. Part one examines Plato's eschatological myths regarding conduct as it affects one's afterlife fate. Part two traces the evolution of afterlife beliefs from Homer to the Dramatists and demonstrates that post-mortem reward and retribution, based on one's conduct, is already found in Homer. Pythagoreanism and Orphism further develop the afterlife beliefs that will have such enormous impact on Plato and later Christianity. The third part examines Egyptian religious texts of the 5th to 18th Dynasties for their understanding of virtues and vices that have afterlife consequences. In part four, the relationship between behavior and the afterlife beliefs of both societies are compared. In the earliest periods, the afterlife texts appear to be concerned only with the elite: the king in Egypt's Pyramid Texts and the heroes in Homeric Greece. Nevertheless, we show that, from the earliest times, both societies believed that the gods, primarily Maat in Egypt and Dike in Greece, were responsible for the proper ordering of the cosmos and anyone's violations of that order would reap the direst consequence--the loss of a beneficent afterlife.

Imagining Heaven

Imagining Heaven
Author: Ellen W. Williams
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2024-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1476690456

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Over the centuries, humans have conjured images--the stuff of dreams, convictions, and ardent desire--to describe our afterlife. The vision of heaven can appear as simple as a place among the stars or as complex as a universe filled with a multitude of busy souls. Positioned at the intersection of art, religion, and culture, this book sheds new light on human creativity in its portrayal of the afterlife. Beginning with prehistoric burial objects that help with one's heavenly needs, it travels through history to probe ancient texts, examines enigmatic carvings, dissects the meaning of paintings, and discusses contemporary perspectives in film and media. The author demonstrates that humans around the world have always had the capacity to confront the "final frontier" in spirited, hopeful, and beautiful ways.

Imagining the World into Existence

Imagining the World into Existence
Author: Normandi Ellis
Publisher: Bear
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2012-07-12
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9781591431404

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Reveals the secret language and words of power that enabled the ancient Egyptians to imagine the world into existence • Reveals ancient Egyptian Mystery teachings on immaculate conception, transubstantiation, resurrection, and eternal life • Explores the shamanic journeys that ancient Egyptian priests used to view the unconscious and the afterlife • Provides the essential spiritual tools needed to return to Zep Tepi, the creative source Drawing from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Pyramid texts, the Book of Thoth, and other sacred hieroglyphic writings spanning the three millennia of the Egyptian Mystery Traditions, Normandi Ellis reveals the magical language of creation and words of power that enabled the ancient Egyptians to act as co-creators with the gods. Examining the power of hieroglyphic thinking--how thoughts create reality--and the multiple meanings behind every word of power, the author shows how, with the Neteru, we imagine the world into existence, casting a spell of consciousness over the material world. Uncovering the deep layers of meaning and symbol within the myths of the Egyptian gods and goddesses, Ellis investigates the shamanic journeys that ancient Egyptian priests used to view the unconscious and the afterlife and shares their initiations for immaculate conception, transubstantiation, resurrection, and eternal life—initiations that later became part of the Christian mystery school. Revealing the words of power used by these ancient priests/sorcerers, she explains how to search for the deeper, hidden truths beneath their spells and shows how ancient Egyptian consciousness holds the secret of life itself. Revealing the initiatory secrets of the Osirian Mystery school, Ellis provides the essential teachings and shamanic tools needed to return to Zep Tepi--the creative source--as we face the transitional time of radical change currently at hand.

Sacred Thresholds: The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity

Sacred Thresholds: The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity
Author: Emilie M. van Opstall
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2018-07-10
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9004369007

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Sacred Thresholds. The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity offers a far-reaching account of liminal spaces within Christian and pagan sanctuaries, with interdisciplinary and diachronic perspectives on the experience of those who crossed from the worldly to the divine, both physically and symbolically.