Ellie Cawthorne:\u00a0You argue that \u201cmost, possibly even all, human beings everywhere truly believe in ghosts\u201d. Why do you think humans are inclined to believe that the dead might return to exist among us?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Irving Finkel:<\/strong>\u00a0In the modern world, ghosts have a funny status. Most people don\u2019t wear their ghosts on their sleeves, because there\u2019s a good chance they\u2019d be branded idiots for believing in such things. But when you look into the matter historically, we have plenty of testimonies concerning ghosts, coming from all over the world and covering a huge span of time. They date right back to the very first written material that we have \u2013 cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq, developed before 3000 BC. And this earliest written evidence is what I focus on in my book.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Arguably, you can trace this ghost business back even farther than the beginning of writing. I would posit that the concept of something hanging around after death goes back to the very dawn of mankind. Take as an example a Neanderthal burial in which the body is laid out in a prepared grave, in a particular position, alongside special bits and pieces. The point here is this: if you bury somebody in the ground to get rid of them because they\u2019re smelly and dangerous, that\u2019s one thing. But burying them in a special way with goods implies that your expectation is that, once the horrible bodily chemicals have disappeared, something \u2013 most likely the essence of the person \u2013 comes out of the body and goes on to some kind of afterlife. And my idea is this: if you\u2019re willing to accept that someone\u2019s spirit can disappear over there, it\u2019s a short step to believing that it can come back again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I think we\u2019re hardwired to believe in ghosts. The most austere, clever scientist in two white coats might look at you as if you\u2019re crazy \u2013 but if you make them jump, they will shiver just like everybody else. It\u2019s beneath the skin.<\/p>\n Irving Finkel is the author of\u00a0<\/b>The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies\u00a0<\/em><\/b>(Hodder & Stoughton)<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> Your book focuses on the very first writings on ghosts, on ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets. Why are they so illuminating to study?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the reasons I wrote this book is that there is a general feeling that ghosts were invented in the 19th century, or perhaps in the Middle Ages. Not many writers even talk about the marvellous stuff on ghosts from Greece and Rome, let alone Mesopotamia [which included Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian cultures]. So I thought that I would put the Mesopotamians back on the ghost map to show that these beliefs are truly old and unchanging.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you learn to read Babylonian \u2013 it\u2019ll only take you 20 years \u2013 and you translate these messages written on cuneiform tablets, you\u2019ll find it extraordinary just how familiar the world of ghosts that emerges from them is. The underlying story is still fairly recognisable to us today: if a ghost is unhappy in the underworld \u2013 perhaps if they had a miserable death, or didn\u2019t get the offerings they were due \u2013 they could come back. And they could make living people jump or pull their hair, follow them around or make them ill \u2013 all kinds of things.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n You state that ghosts were \u201cnot symbols or metaphors, but literal realities\u201d in Mesopotamia. How so?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n From the king on the throne to the beggar in the street, the whole population didn\u2019t just believe<\/em> in ghosts \u2013 they took them for granted as a fact of life. Ghosts were just part of the everyday scenario, alongside all the other things you had to worry about, like children, housing, warfare and disease.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And since ghosts were an everyday reality, they also called for the undertaking of everyday chores. A household\u2019s oldest son was responsible for making offerings of food and drink to his dead family, who were often buried under the courtyard of the family home. They needed water and food because there was an understanding that the underworld wasn\u2019t very hospitable. Arriving there was a bit like arriving at an Airbnb with no towels or electricity. People had a responsibility to look after the ghosts of their relatives in the sense of reciting prayers in their honour, remembering them, talking about them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The explanations provided for ghosts returning were not metaphorical but literal \u2013 there\u2019s a big difference. The Mesopotamians didn\u2019t speak about them in elusive poetics but as something grounded in reality. In many parts of the world, this attitude survives unchanged. In villages in India, you can ask people about local ghosts and they\u2019ll have 100 stories to share immediately.<\/p>\n How did belief in ghosts connect to the wider religious system in ancient Mesopotamia?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n When we talk about deities in the ancient world, \u201creligion\u201d isn\u2019t necessarily the best word for the system. The Mesopotamians didn\u2019t have a word for \u201creligion\u201d, because their system of gods and goddesses was more than that \u2013 it was all-pervading. They had a huge pantheon of deities, and in some ways interactions with ghosts did trade on this system. If someone returned from the dead, a priest or exorcist would be recruited to drive the ghost back. These priests would call on the power of the gods, invoking names such as Ishtar the Goddess of Love to help them to deal with ghosts. On the whole, though, dealing with the dead was slightly unrelated to the prevailing main religion. It wasn\u2019t centrally what we would call a religious matter but more of a traditional matter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Were ghosts always figures to be frightened of?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Another jolly good question, because in the later tradition we think of ghosts mainly as clanking ghouls in hotel rooms, bearing frightening messages. In Mesopotamia, people could be startled and sometimes made unhappy by ghosts; if you saw a ghost, on the whole it wasn\u2019t good news \u2013 it generally meant that there was a danger that you needed to do something about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n However, because people tended to live in extended families, with their relatives and ancestors buried directly under the family home, so quite often you were dealing with a familial ghost. And I feel that the basic position towards a ghost from your own stock was a kind of sympathy. Of course, if that sympathy didn\u2019t work, you could always pay an exorcist to get rid of them with more heavy-duty tools.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In addition, there were also lots of unknown ghosts floating about who were nothing to do with your family, and who might be very dangerous indeed. They could go into your ear, torment you and make you very ill. Imagine that after a battle, for example, there\u2019d be thousands of dead soldiers who hadn\u2019t been buried properly, floating about. And the first thing they might do is head to Babylon and make life hell for anybody still living there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Can you give some examples of the types of ghost spells found on cuneiform tablets?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Babylonian scribes described a whole slew of simple spells and complicated rituals to get rid of ghosts. Some of these rely on lists of all of the different kinds of ghosts \u2013 a ghost who died in a fire, say, or a ghost who was run over by a chariot or drowned in a well or died in childbirth. Part of the spell to get rid of them would involve reading out this list, essentially saying: \u201cWhether you are this<\/em> type of ghost, or that<\/em> type of ghost, we know who you are. Go back where you belong!\u201d Identification of a troublesome ghost was a means of gaining power over it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Another tablet contains a list detailing what it meant if you saw a ghost. For example, if you saw a ghost in the bedroom, it could mean that your uncle was going to die, or you were about to lose all your money. Those are grim portents, but there were specialists who could use concomitant forms of magic to dispel the threat. And an omen wasn\u2019t a fixed fate but more like something in the air.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of my favourite spells is designed to help someone who keeps seeing a ghost. They have to recite a spell that essentially says: \u201cYou, who keep persecuting me, leave me alone \u2013 I\u2019m not going to Kutha.\u201d That was a city in Babylonia, the location of the entrance to the underworld. It had a big temple through which gods and ghosts came up. You can imagine ghosts beckoning with a bony finger, saying to a living person: \u201cCome with us.\u201d The person who has been seeing a ghost then calls on all these goddesses to back them up. It\u2019s fantastic, because it demonstrates that, though the gods are very busy, they will come over and thwack a ghost if needed. It\u2019s basically a way of telling the ghost: \u201cPiss off back to your underworld gloom!\u201d<\/p>\n Read more about the history of ghosts, from the practice of\u00a0phantasmagoria<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>to\u00a05 haunted sites around Britain<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> What can you tell us about the underworld?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of the main sources of information on this is a marvellous series of literary texts describing the descent of the beautiful goddess Inanna into the underworld. On a quest to rescue her lover, who is imprisoned there, she passes through seven gates, each manned by ferocious gatekeepers. Inanna journeys all the way down to the underworld, where her sister is queen, in order to sort out this problem. When she gets there, it\u2019s very gloomy indeed \u2013 there\u2019s no real light. All of the ghosts are lurking, their numbers increasing every minute as more people die. We\u2019re told in the Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic<\/em> that \u201cdust is their sustenance, clay their food. They see no light, dwelling in darkness. They are clad like birds, with wings as garments.\u201d One gets the impression of them all swaying with their shoulders together like dusty penguins. The lack of food and drink explains the evolution of a ritual of pouring out drinks and offering food for the dead \u2013 it theoretically went down to sustain them in the underworld.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\""Irving_F"\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2021\/10\/Irving_F-9a3c959.png?quality=45&resize=556,556"\" "\\"\"Irving_F\"\\"\/")
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