Why read The First Ghosts?

Book cover of The First Ghosts

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'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed

'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire Post

'The book is a delight to read: each chapter is as academically astute as you would expect from this author, but…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The First Ghosts as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Paul Pettitt

Author

As a specialist in the funerary practices of our earliest ancestors, I avidly awaited the publication of Finkel’s latest, this time deploying his considerable scholarship to the question of how Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians thought of ghosts, spirits, demons, and the underworld.

You don’t need to be a believer to enjoy this intimate picture of the minds of some of the earliest known urbanites and intellectuals at a time when history was just emerging. Out of the fired clay leap stories of underworld journeys such as that of Gilgamesh, of spirits that rise up from below, of exorcisms, omens, and…

From Paul's list on understanding the evolution of the human mind.