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

by Irving Finkel

Being Below In Chapter 8 it has been stressed that there is a perfectly intelligible chasm between the image of the Netherworld presented by literature and that implied by burial customs and grave goods. The strong literary tradition of the Netherworld Descents and sort of scene that greeted the new arrival cannot, however, be brushed under the carpet as unrealistic or non-authoritative in its context. The accumulative impression one gets of the Mesopotamian Netherworld is that it was a bit of a railway terminus; everyone is waiting around interminably, in a particularly intense kind of despair, for it is never articulated what they are waiting for.