It is astonishing, in fact, how familiar the long-dead of archaeology emerge to us in this regard. The cynical process of second-guessing the meaning of evidence from antiquity serves no one; my conviction is that the voices that cried out about their ghosts, argued with them and battled against them over nearly three millennia of texts in cuneiform writing must be taken at face value and hearkened to. The important judgement is that their ghosts are not symbols or metaphors but, in their lives, realities.
