What to Expect When You're Dead

An entertaining and enlightening book about how ancient peoples dealt with deathand what we might learn from them A lively story of death, What to Expect When Youre Dead explores the fascinating death-related beliefs and practices of a wide range of ancient cultures and traditionsMesopotamian, 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, Robert Garland invites readers to put themselves in the sandals of ancient peoples and to imagine their mental state moment by moment as they soughtin ways that turn out to be remarkably similar to oursto assist the dead on their journey to the next world and to understand lifes greatest mystery. What to Expect When Youre Dead chronicles the ways ancient peoples answered questions such as: How to achieve a good death and afterlife? Whats the best way to dispose of a body? Do the dead face a postmortem judgementand where do they end up? Do the dead have bodies in the afterlifeand 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 Youre Dead will be a morbidly delicious treat for every reader alive.