The First Ghosts Quotes

“It is an idea of great power and effect for us today, and a source of unexpected comfort. In this way do we conclude our study of the first ghosts, and how they arrived. They have been here ever since.”
― Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies

“Since the nineteenth century endless attention has been paid to the whole business of ghosts by writers, investigators, scientists, mountebanks, fakers and filmmakers.”
― Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies

“In ancient Mesopotamia, belief in their well- established and well-documented system was simple and un- questioning: ghosts were taken for granted as a fact of normal life and nobody, as far as we can judge, scoffed at another for ‘believing’ in them.”
― Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies

“This, the first ghost system that we can document in history, sets the stage in many ways for what came later. Central is the conception that ghosts tend to be restless due to unhappiness, returning to a scene of their former life and seeking closure for injustice, cruelty or violence. Coupled with this is the conviction that they can be dispelled by those who know how.”
― Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies

“Ghosts beyond Mesopotamia known to the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans can claim their counterparts ever after right across the span of the world; it is a simple matter to demonstrate the universal presence of ghosts in people’s minds and lives, dreams and writings.”
― Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies

“there was no post-mortem judgement of morals to be endured by a human spirit on arrival, let alone backward-looking punishment; the shadowy entrepõt was thus no waiting-room where the dead hung about waiting for good news (upwards) or bad (further downwards). They were already ‘down’.”
― Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies

“It is only the early human mid that grew to strive against the prospect of the final annihilation of the self, a hallmark rebellion that became hard-wired into, and always an essential element of, nature.”
― Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies

“He who can see will see He who can hear will hear”
― Irving Finkel, The First Ghosts: A rich history of ancient ghosts and ghost stories from the British Museum curator