After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Earliest Evidence of Ghosts

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

The earliest evidence of human belief in ghosts comes from 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Who were these first ghosts? What was the underworld they lived in like? What do these most ancient ghosts tell us about today?Maddy and Anthony's guest today, Irving Finkel, Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum and author of 'The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies'Edited by Tom Delargy. Produced by Charlotte Long and Freddy Chick.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here.

Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. To the underworld, Land of No Return. Ishtar, daughter of Sin, set her mind to the house of darkness, the seat of Irkala,

to the house from where no one who enters can leave, to the journey from which there is no going back, to the house whose dwellers are deprived of light, where dust is their sustenance, clay their food. They see no light, dwelling in darkness. They are clad like birds with wings as garments. On door and bolt dust gathers. Now this is an extract from the descent of Ishtar and is written originally in Akkadian,

a language spoken in ancient Mesopotamia from the 3rd millennium BCE and it was discovered on 7th century tablets. We will find out what happens to Ishtar whenlling and i'm anthonyaney. And this episode we are joined by Dr Irvin Finkel. Now Irvin is a curator at the British Museum where he's the keeper of ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and culture. So Irvin, welcome to After Dark. Welcome. I'm very glad to be here. I love that title, by the way. Keeper of ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and culture.

Yes, it's rather a mouthful. It is. I used just to be a curator. That was the old word. I frankly think I still am a curator because that's what we have to do, look after the things in the museum. But perhaps I'll get a badge with the whole thing written out one of these days. Just wear it around on the tube and let everybody know that you're keeping things.

Very important things. So, Irving, I'm intrigued by how one comes to these types of subjects and these very specific point in history, very vast point in history and a very influential point in history. What was it that brought you to these artefacts, these subjects and these things that you curate,

that you look after? Well, I had a funny experience before me which made it all unfold like a railway line ahead of me because when I was a boy at school, I was always very interested in ancient languages and dead languages and preferably hard writing. And when I went to university, I wanted to be an Egyptologist which fulfilled those qualifications rather admirably.

But the problem was that the day after we had the first class, the Egyptologist dropped dead. And this was a bit of an inhibition to further progress. And the head of department said, well, look, we have a man here who teaches Babylonian cuneiform and Sumerian cuneiform. Perhaps you will do a bit of that. And then when we get a new Egyptologist, you can cross back over. So I went and knocked on the door of this professor who was called Lambert. And he said, yes, like that. He wasn't very gratified to be interrupted. And he certainly didn't want a student. When I said that I wanted to learn

cuneiform, he was very disgruntled and gave me a list of signs, said, learn these by Thursday, and we'll see that kind of thing. Because in those days, professors used to pride themselves on not having any students at all so that they could do their research. I remember hearing professors boasting about having had a student for years kind of thing. Because now they take anybody who can walk, who has a little pocket money that they can squeeze out of them and fill the universities in a way that they were never intended to be filled. In any case, I went home, looked at this stuff, tried to commit it to memory, which one could do in those days, and went into class. And we started to read. He wrote something on the board.

After about four or five minutes, I knew for certain this was going to be my life's work. It was really, really extraordinary. And I was his only student for almost the whole of the six years I was with him, BA and PhD. And I can tell you something. When I was at university, all my mates did French or history or normal subjects like that. So when you went to a lecture, if you went to the lecture in the first place, there might be 180 other pupils and no professor was from the Blackpool. So that knew,

you just pass this word or something like this, you got away with murder and go to sleep and all that. Whereas if you're the only student, it's quite a different proposition. So I had to work very hard and he was a very Sherlock Holmes-y type intellect, very exact, very demanding. So I had hothouse training.

I was very fortunate. So when I survived that, I went to Chicago for three years and worked in the Oriental Institute on the ancient dictionary. And then a job came up in the British Museum. And well, mirabile dictu, they appointed me. In fact, at the interview, I folded my arms like this and said, look, you've got to give me this job because I was born to be a seriologist and you've got all the tablets in the world and I love tablets and I love the British Museum I've always wanted to work in the British Museum so there and they did so you bullied them I bullied them and now of course you'd be up against some kind of interview some inquiry how you could behave so brutally but they were all tough civil service persons who knew what to do with that kind of thing. Anyway, I got the job. I was very lucky. So I'd been there at the end of my first 100 years

in the British Museum. I'm looking for a sort of 200-year span, if all works well. Why not? There's plenty to do. You see, we have 130,000 pieces of clay. And they go from the beginning of writing, which is before 3000 BC, maybe 3500 BC, all the way through to the first century AD. So more than three and a half thousand years of inscriptions. And they're written on these bits of clay, which most people have seen once when they were dragged to the museum at primary school, so they know what they look like. But they're marvelous because they survive survive and everything written down more or less survived so we have daily life and we have poetry we have medicine and politics and all human endeavor is represented in this immutable material and in the 19th century when they first began to excavatevate in Iraq, the cities of Nimrud and Nineveh and Babylon, where they knew, of course, that's where the ancient sites were, the ones in the Bible, the ones the Greeks knew about.

They knew where they were. And when they started digging, they went to places that had big lumps in the middle that looked like a building. And lo and behold, there were. So they found sculptures and architecture and inscriptions about the whole of ancient times, and it's absolutely miraculously interesting. Something that I find really tangible about these clay pieces of writing is when we think about the ancient world in general terms.

I think about sculpture, I think about pottery, I'm thinking in particular doing classics or Latin at A-level. You do the ancient Greeks, you do the Parthenon, you do a bit of Roman stuff. But actually, it's a universal urge to set words down as well as images. And that's so tantalising and it gives such a, as you say, a sense of ordinary people as well as extraordinary people. Well, you've made a lot of really important points. extraordinary people. Well, you've made a lot of really important points. One of the things about writing on clay is that it survives in the ground, because we don't really know who else in antiquity might have had writing. And if it was on skin or wood or ivory or bone, sometimes it survives in

certain environments, but other times it disappears altogether. So we don't really know. We're lucky with Mesopotamia that the kings and the merchants and the scribes who use this clay from the riverbanks as their support system for the writing picked something which is practically speaking indestructible. And in the old days, when the British Library was in the British Museum, they used to have heart-rending posters outside on the gateway saying, adopt a book. And there'd be a 16th century leather-bound volume of great importance falling to pieces where a millionaire needed to put it through a rest home so it would be brought back to life. And I always used to think, and so did my colleagues as we walked past, we thought, because our tablets, we don't have that kind of trouble.

we thought because our tablets we don't have that kind of trouble and sometimes we fire them of course because being clay if they're fired into terracotta they really will last forever and even when god forbid the British Museum no longer exists the tablet collection will be in the ruins so remember that. I love this universality that's coming out and that actually it's these clay often or written on ivory or bone you know whatever these surfaces the form that they take that they actually represent universal experience potentially more so than a crumbling 16th century treatise on witches or something you know that it's there's so much universality in there Irving in terms of your work in recent years I think it's fair to say that you've become very well known outside of the British Museum and academic circles for discovering evidence of the first ever or the earliest example of a ghost in human history.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Well, the thing is, I've never seen a ghost. This is my opening point here. It's a source of great frustration and irritation to me because I know people who have and I've seen a reason to disbelieve, but I never have. frustration and irritation to me because I know people who have and I see no reason to disbelieve but I never have and I've always been slightly interested in it really since childhood and the crucial thing starting point I think is that in antiquity certainly in Mesopotamia and also Egypt probably it was a bit different under the Greeks and Romans but at least in the Mesopotamian situation people took ghosts for granted this This is a really crucial matter. It's not that they believed in them or didn't believe them and someone said, oh, I saw a ghost,

and someone else said, you don't believe all that nonsense. You know, come on, man. Because the kings down to beggars believed in them, and the textual evidence is clear. It was part of life. And when people die, they were buried, and they're supposed to stay down in the netherworld looking for Inanna. But they didn't all buried and they're supposed to stay down in the netherworld, looking for Inanna.

But they didn't all and they sometimes came back. And they often came back to where they used to live, which is a kind of familiar thing in even in this country, people know about that. And pull people's hair and get like, be a nuisance and make the children cry and then make you ill, get inside your ear and make you feverish and sick and all that. So there was always this idea that if they didn't rest they could come back and i think that that is a general human matter that all over asia you will find examples of this all over north and south america you can read accounts of it

by anthropologists by normal people by by clergymen it's one of the strata in the world which exists and my own opinion is that the stage one about the whole ghost experience is everybody took them for granted. And then a certain point came when you have science, whenever that becomes actual science, and you have monotheistic, militaristic religions which don't allow you to believe what you want to believe these two things combined to suppress in my estimation the normal belief about seeing the dead and they come back and they can be unhappy until it becomes something furtive and people don't talk about it so i can say that since i wrote this book i've done all sorts of things talk to people and people said to me actually i'm really glad to talk to you because something happened to me when i was a little girl and my auntie said it was nonsense my parents wouldn't talk about it but i know what i saw and never spoke about it since and this is my idea

you have a dinner party you can try this there are a dozen people this evening if you go to a dinner party i wear this clown from the british museum on today he thinks everybody believes in ghosts what a load of nonsense you know in this day and age, I mean, hasn't he read anything? You know, sometimes. And then there'll be a kind of silence, people playing with their napkin rings, and someone will say, well, actually, when I was a student. And then when somebody has said, well, actually, when I was a student, you will find out of 12 people, perhaps seven have an experience

in their memory of this type. Something they saw, something inexplicable, something they knew was a ghost, something they thought it might have been a ghost, and nine times out of ten have told nobody about it. So this is an interesting thing to me because it convinces me that despite science, where scientists will say, this is a load of nonsense, I will never ever believe in ghosts, whatever you tell me, which is not science, in my opinion, this attitude, or the clergy. But actually, the clergy often say, well, the spirit of your husband is now in heaven, you know, what is the spirit and another person talks about the ghost, the only difference between them is that the ghost is visible. So if you have the idea that the spirits of the dead, which from your pulpit you can comfortably expound about, and the thing that people think go ooh-ooh in a coattail bedroom, are the same, that sometimes you see them and sometimes you don't. How do they get out of that equation?

And of course, if you control access to them, if you talk about them as being invisible and that your religion gives access to them, then there's a power in that. There's always a power in it. They're always looking for the power. But I think, you know, in villages all over the world, if you went in in your special hat and shorts and a notebook

and sat down outside and said, well, tell me all about this. Do you believe in ghosts here? The person would say, well, actually, how much time do you have? Because firstly, I have to tell you about my aunt. You know, like that. And it's a kind of universal matter. So I thought the interesting thing about the Babylonian resources is that as far as we know, at least at the moment, it's the first

evidence we can point to because it's written down and often the documents are dated and we can see the people in other parts of their lives and everything. So it's a secure thing because if you ask, so to speak, normal people, I never know what to say about when you say normal people, I just mean everybody else, but if you ask them, people think that ghosts were invented by the Germans in the 19th century, or maybe the Anglo-Saxons, something like that. But of course, the Greeks and Romans left us the most marvellous literature about ghosts, some of it rather sardonic and sceptical, all sorts of escapades. But it was certainly wildly alert and the light in the classical world.

But this is old. I mean, we can show that ghosts existed on stage, card-carrying ghosts, in the third millennium BC already. And in my opinion, they go back to the beginning of time, because I think a plausible idea is that human beings are, unlike all the other animals of the world and arrogant and self-important and it's impossible for anybody to really believe they're going to die i'm sure you find this is true but not really there's going to be an exception in my case and how disgraceful it would be if it were true and you know it's intoler's intolerable. The human answer to this is that when the body rots and stinks and is buried as fast as possible out of sight, the bit that made Uncle Gregory go somewhere. You have the funeral process right back to the Neanderthals of

burying things with the dead. And it seems to me the only conclusion is that wherever Uncle Gregory went, he'd be needing the stuff that you put in his tomb. And if Uncle Gregory could go there, Uncle Gregory could come back. Because if all of it's true, why would it be any different from anything else? If you go to Newcastle on the train, if you're lucky, you can get a train back. So I think it's the same sort of idea. Newcastle on the train, if you're lucky, you can get a train back. So I think it's the same sort of idea. So I think that the inability of humans to come to terms with the fact that they all die

and their relatives die, it's a very hard thing to swallow. This is a kind of defense against it, which has come into being to cope the best bit. Then, of course, you have reincarnation and you don't have to worry, you'll see them again one day and all that hanky panky but the principle is to do with self-awareness of the importance of each of us wonderful human beings and how terrible it is if we disappear staying with the idea of universality as well i think there's something about the fact that whether we are in ancient mesopotamia or at a dinner party people want to tell their ghost stories, that that's a really important element of that experience. Only if they feel you won't ridicule them.

Because generally speaking, it provokes ridicule. Or they'll lose credibility in the telling. Or somehow, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And there's also a worry... You can make a mental note about them in future. Yeah, there's also a worry, and correct me if I'm wrong in thinking this is the same with the Mesopotamian ghost stories that you're discovering, that there's a desire to see ghosts, to experience them, but there's also a fear that they may do harm when they come back. And that feels like a tension at the heart of all ghost stories, that everyone wants to see one. People will think you mean invented narratives on Yorkshire moors and clanking chains

and all that kind of, we don't have anything like that. What we have is like newspaper reports of reality. So there's no fiction really to do with it. I think the best way to understand it is Mesopotamian is what I wrote in that deplorable volume. And you see a ghost like when you're, as it were, cutting a salad in the kitchen and a mouse runs across the floor. That's what it's like. You don't think mice don't exist. You know, I must be imagining a mouse. I think, blast, I have to do something about it.

And damn, I'll have to, what a nuisance. And the thing about ghosts is you have to get somebody else to do it because they know what to say, they know what to do. So you have to call somebody in and after a while it gets a little costly, probably probably if you have to do a whole load of hanky-panky stuff but the texts that are collected all combine to me to suggest that it was something not extraordinary to see a ghost that you might expect it and if you had rambunctious and irritable member of the family who was always drunk and always being noisy and violent and everything like that, then your conception of his ghost, even if he was buried down there and out of the way, would be that character. So that if he did come back, everybody's heart would sink,

we go again sort of idea. And of course, flimsy drip type persons, if they were a ghost, they'd be rather ineffectual and mournful and nothing to worry about so much. Well, let's talk about one of the places where these people might be going. And you indicated down below there. Let's talk specifically about the descent of Ishtar in that case. So we heard a little bit at the beginning of this episode. But can you tell us a little bit more who is Ishtar? Where is this set?

What is this world we're descending into? Well, Ishtar was the goddess of love. She was also the goddess of war and a few other moonlighting activities. But primarily and importantly was the goddess of love. And of course, she's a staggeringly beautiful person. Stands to reason. And Ishtar is the Babylonian form of a goddess who the Sumerians already had called Inanna. So Inanna was the Sumerian goddess of love.

And in her Semitic Babylonian form, she was called Ishtar. And the Sumerians already had called Inanna. So Inanna was the Sumerian goddess of love. And in her Semitic Babylonian form, she was called Ishtar. It's really the same sort of goddess. And the Sumerians in the second millennium BC wrote a very, very long thing about Inanna going to the underworld, down to the underworld, because her lover and partner Dumuzi was imprisoned there. And then in the tablet you mentioned before from the 7th century BC, that comes from the Assyrian capital, it belonged to the king Ashurbanipal, in his version of it, it's a much shorter narrative, but it's the same principle. So Ishtar

goes down to the underworld, which is literally down there, to rescue poor Dumuzi, who's in the clutches of her sister, who is called Ereshkigal. And Ereshkigal is the queen of the underworld and not to be trifled with. And she's got hold of Dumuzi. And the idea Ishtar has is to go down there and to offer herself in place so that Dumuzi can be freed. And he's in charge of livestock and the new animals being born. And if he's not there, then everything will fall to pieces.

And then she'll sort out Ereshkigal herself. So it's a short and spicy thing. Well, shall we continue with a little bit of that narrative? And we have some more questions for you about this bit after I'll do my reading and we'll get into that.

OK, great. We have some more questions for you about this bit after I'll do my reading and we'll get into that. Okay, great. When Ishtar reached the gate to the underworld, she addressed speech to the gatekeeper. Gatekeeper, she said, open your gate for me. Indeed, open your gate for me so I can come in. If you don't open the gate, I will be unable to come in. I will break down the door and I will smash the bolt. I will break down the door frames

and knock over the door panes. I will smash the hinges and rip off the knob. I will make the dead rise up so they consume the living. The dead will outnumber the living. Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. www.cannadians.com for you and your wallet. Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your

podcasts. so Irving we've heard about ghosts and how pervasive they are potentially in Mesopotamia and how they're sort of an everyday occurrence that people might expect to see can we talk a little bit about the dead now and what happens in this world when you die or when your relative dies? How is your body treated? Well, when people died, they were buried as soon as possible because it's a hot climate. So it was always a peremptory matter to get the stiff safely out of sight and hidden. But the principle is that in many periods, people lived in a sort of household with a grandfather, uncles and brothers and all together and all the wives and all the children

and around a courtyard in that sort of household. And not always, but that's a common thing for what you might call the middle classes. And when somebody died, they were usually buried under the courtyard. Sometimes there was in fact a whole tomb structure where the dead would be laid to rest, maybe with steps down and a structure or maybe just buried, but it was a common thing for that to happen.

And the oldest son theoretically had the responsibility of, there was a special access thing like a drain pipe i suppose vertically orientated where offerings or food and drink would be given to the dead who would need them so this was the kind of conception that your grandfather was there he would need his issue of stuff and it was up to you to do it and the default position was that if you didn't do it grandfather would get cross and grandfather would eventually come and make a fuss to get the services that he required that's the kind of simple and childlike picture which is part of the whole thing but we know that the offerings were very significant because there are lots and

lots of spells to the sun god to regulate the business and say i've done this i'm doing this get off my back sort of thing and sun god who was in charge of this would arbitrate and things would be put back on a good basis so in a way people knew that the remains of their grandfather because they knew that the flesh went and there'd be bones what foot or so, underneath the courtyard. But they also had to reckon with the bit that comes out, which is the person's nature. And that figure was supposed to go into the underworld, which was under the earth. And the description of Ishtar going down there gives us a bit of a window on it. And it's rather romantically described. it's rather theatrically and even cinematographically described but actually it was jolly gloomy because then there was no light and people shuffled about

in i mean i suppose if you imagine them clad in bathrobes or something it probably gives the idea and moving about in the dust and making a noise like this and not knowing what they were waiting for it's a rather grim prospect because the whole of Mesopotamian literature does not really seem to give you an idea of what they were waiting for. But there are different texts which talk about the underworld. And what is absolutely fascinating is there were different quarters.

So for example, people from a long time ago were over there. And there were places where there were like cutthroats and street robbers. They don't go there because it's dangerous. Go downtown, so to speak, where people you know are. There's a sort of feeling like that, that there were quarters and that people were there and they were waiting

and they were locked in by the gates, which Ishtar threatened to knock down. That sounds to me like, and I'm using a much later comparison, but it sounds to me like a kind of purgatory. And it's so interesting because I didn't know this. The underworld I had assumed was equivalent to a hell, but that's not what you're describing. The good thing about Mesopotamia is they didn't have a hell and they didn't have a limbo. Limbo and hell are one of the most wicked inventions of the human brain and cause more misery almost than anything else. So the mesopotamians had no

idea that your life's work was going to be judged from a moral standpoint they knew about morals but they didn't have this final reckoning thing and there was no waterloo station where you hung about deciding whether you went up or down while the clerks looked up what you'd done there was none of that my own idea which I wrote about in this book, which I stand by, is that the actual mechanism is something rather different, that the spirits of persons which were in the underworld were locked in by gates.

And as Anna said, if she knocks them down, they would come up and override the world. But I think it was like this. They had a very sophisticated theological conception that for a new baby to come into existence a person had to die there was a sort of balance and the human spirit was finite and therefore all these spirits were waiting down there in order for the whistle to blow and one of them to be let through. So the thing about the gates, you think, is to keep them in.

Yes. But it's not. It's to let them out one by one. Because if all of them came, there'd be chaos. So I think theologically that's the explanation. And there are a few esoteric texts by thinkers which give this impression that that's how it worked. And I believe it's plausible for this reason, which is very practical, that the Mesopotamian culture was always predicated on water to give life. That the Euphrates and Tigris rivers came down and they watered the Mesopotamian heartland and everybody lived and flourished as a result of it.

And if there was no water, they would be dead. And once in a while, when there's warfare, like with the Amorites, they tried to block off water to cause trouble, as people have been doing ever since in their silly monkeying way. And there's a part of hell where the Amorites are still there.

There's something about water in one of the texts about the Amorites, which was in 1800 BC or something, and they're still fomenting about it. hell where the amorites are still there there's something about water in one of the texts about the amorites which was in 1800 bc or something and they're still fermenting about it at the end of the first millennium so you know that's the sort of thing i believe that the knife edge about water is what gave the flood story is of great importance and also the reverse of it and that the conception that the human stuff might be finite in the same way makes a lot of sense to me. But I don't think people in the street thought about this. I mean, this is a kind of intellectual speculation,

rather poetic and rather a beautiful thing. Because, in fact, if you are in dire straits, dying of cancer in a hospital bed, and the lady comes up to you and says, well, you know, this is going to have to happen to you sooner or later but you do realize that when you've passed over there'll be a new sort of in belfast or australia um is that not something i mean would you not surrender your life for that reason it seems to me a very potent idea if i was in that line of work i would use this as a therapy such a beautiful thing.

So I think that's it. So if Anna knew Jolly well, if she broke down the gate, there'd be absolute chaos. I mean, all these spirits looking for, where do I go? And tormenting everybody. So it's not the usual interpretation of it. I don't think so. But I think it's right. What you're describing, historians use this term all the time, but the lived reality,

let's say, of people at this time in this place is that they're very much living with the dead. And I don't mean that in terms of ghosts that we talked about earlier.

I mean that in terms of remains. You talked about them being buried amongst the family house or in and around the same place. Right, but they didn't smell

or something like that. No, no, no. But it was the presence. They'd open the door and next time they'd put another one in. So sometimes they're found with many, and you have to move them up to make room. So I think it was to have them under their control so they knew where they were,

and they were still in the bosom of the family. Yeah, exactly. But I don't think that the presence of the dead hung over people in their daily lives. I don't think that's the case. As I say, it's only when something happens that you get more acutely responsive to the idea of it but i think on the whole it was a matter of fact and not everybody did that of course there are cemeteries outside of towns where people were buried not with tombstones like we do but they were buried there

and people would never go there after dark to a cemetery because they knew what they would see. So they thought ghosts hung around there. So it's quite likely that the underpinning of the whole idea is that ghosts actually cling to where they were when they were alive. And this is a very, very common idea. Even still. Even still.

Right. Shall we see how Ishtar is getting on with her descent? Let's go for part three. Go gatekeeper, open your gate for her. Treat her according to the age-old rules. The gatekeeper went and opened his gate for her. Come in, my lady, that Kuthah can rejoice over you, that the palace of the underworld can delight over you.

He led her through the first gate, loosened and took off the great tiara on her head. Why, gatekeeper, do you take off the tiara on my head? Come in, my lady. Thus are the rules of the mistress of the netherworld. Thus are the rules of the mistress of the netherworld. So we just heard in that extract, Irvin, that Ishtar has to have her tiara removed when she goes into the underworld.

Yeah, that's right. Is there a sense of flattening of hierarchies in the Mesopotamian afterlife? I'm not sure. I think there are seven gates and each time she has to take off one item of clothing, each gatekeeper says, oh, this is the rule. You have to take this off. You have to take this off. So by the time she gets down to confront her sister, she's naked and defenceless and they've taken all her clothes away. And this is a political move by Ereshka Gowd in order to have power over her sister, you might argue. But there's something else about it, because along comes the most beautiful woman ever seen in the world, and the gatekeeper is told to let her through.

So what does he do? I've got a great idea. I've got a really great idea. Oh, you've got to take off an item of clothing, he says, like that, making up the rule on the spot, and knowing that all his colleagues up the road will do the same thing, because human beings who have an official position behind a window for example in a railway office have power over people and as you know also that the male sex historically speaking has also tried to exert his power over young women especially beautiful young women and i think this person thought to himself we'll force her to take all her clothes off not because of a rescue gal but for their own

benefit so i find this infuriating and i always feel we should avenge her for this exploitation and in the end of course the story turns well. But I think it reflects something about power between the sexes. And does this story enter into visual culture? I'm thinking about this idea of exposing a beautiful goddess. We see it again and again in Rome and in Greece with Aphrodite, with Diana, with Venus, this being caught in a moment of undress. Although in that circumstance, it's usually an intimate moment that someone's spying on rather than someone forcing her to take her clothes off watching somebody in the shower no no no but there

are images of Inanna usually you know on a cylinder seal with a long clothing and stuff like that but there is a very famous clay model of what appears to be Inanna who is naked with owls and lions and I think it's part of the illustration of this story because goddesses are usually not naked. I think it's a very important reference is to do with that actual narrative because it's such an extraordinary thing. We're talking about something that is

some of the most ancient ideas and thinking that we can come across in written form and later then in visual form. I wonder what your interpretation, as someone who spends so much time with these artefacts, this writing, this thought, I wonder what you think we have forgotten about death and dying based on what you read, what you discover, what you uncover as you're going through some of these materials. Well, one of the things is that people in Mesopotamia weren't nervous of death or evidently referring to it, whereas people in Western culture are very reluctant to mention it at all. They don't know what to do when somebody dies. They don't know whether to go to the house. They don't know what to say. In England, traditionally speaking, it's been an awkward thing to,

Britain, an awkward thing to cope with for many people because it's all hushed up and everybody tries to go along with the deep-seated idea, of course, that they're never going to die at all and you hope one day you never find out. But I think in Mesopotamia, people died much younger than they do here. There was none of this geriatric existence or vegetable existence and all that stuff. They died in their 40s. I think 50 would be an old man, probably.

And of course, lots of children died in childbirth or shortly thereafter and all that high mortality thing. And then, of course, there were wars and diseases and all the other things so i think people were faced up more directly to existence being in to some extent frail unpredictable and not likely to end well whereas in our country we pretend it isn't going to happen unless you're a mortician in which case you hope for the best. Or Irish. As I'm listening to you there,

again, I've spoken about this a lot on this podcast. And we live with death in a far more immediate way in Ireland, I think. It's very interesting. It comes with a different sense of community, I think.

Obviously, that's a rural thing. That's not unique to Ireland. But there is this constant presence of death. And some of what you're describing here, I can relate to, even though it's 2024 or whatever it is now. Because of that presence in Ireland, it really, the idea of waking, the idea of being with the dead for a certain period of time. You know, one of the first things people still do to this day is open a window to allow the spirit to go,

but then they have to deal with the physicality of the body. We are far more prone to bringing the dead home into our living quarters for the wake, or to die if possible. It's not always possible. But it's really interesting to hear that this has existed in cultures

for millennia, essentially. I think actually that bit about a wake, it's not totally dissimilar because the body wasn't buried absolutely immediately. It was laid out on wherever it died, really, and was there for a while in order to make sure that the body was dead and that the spirit had gone. And propitiating things were recited and then the body was disposed of. But there were one or two interesting things. It suggests, for example, there was a fear among many people

of being buried alive because I think the ritual to make sure they were dead probably reflects at some time in antiquity. It happened accidentally that someone they thought was dead was not and they found out about it. This is a common, you know, in Victorian England, they had these amazing things that you attach to your big toe through a hole around a wheel and ding, ding, ding.

So if you woke up, someone would, a sexton would come and, oh, I'm so sorry. There are books with designs of these things. They're just absolutely wonderful. You should get someone who knows about those to talk about them. They're really wonderful. There is that kind of idea. and obviously when it's hot you can't really hang about too long and it is interesting that in islam and in judaism people bury their dead almost the next day

even now when england of course this isn't you know you can put them in a freezer and whatever you do with those lollipops but in, it's a tenet of both those religious practices to bury the person as soon as is physically possible. We do two to three days. There will be a burial within two to three days. And I often find the British way of doing things, the English way of doing things, that elongation where there is a morgue and there is, you know, all of that involved for such a long time,

I find it a very distancing thing when it comes to mourning because... I agree with you. I'm not sure how you're elongating a certain phase of mourning unnecessarily. I think getting the body dealt with is a very symbolic, psychologically beneficial thing as soon as possible. And then you can get on with the question of coming to terms with it in one way or another yeah it's fascinating thing this has been absolutely fascinating Irving and to have a sense of an ancient world that I really knew nothing about before we started this

conversation where can people find your book and your work well um all good booksellers was the expression um let's do let's do a little ad this is Irving's book The First Ghosts it's a proper story that takes you in not just the history but the history is obviously

impeccable as well so thank you so much Irving that this has been a real treat for us Maddy do you want to do you want to say goodbye to everybody yes thank you so much everyone

for listening to After Dark and for watching on our YouTube channel as well. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. We are now here on our own YouTube channel and you can leave us a review,

comment below, do all of that. It helps people find us and we always love to hear from you. Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap.

Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. Well, thank you for listening to this episode of After Dark. Please follow this show wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget, you can listen to all these podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.

And as a special gift, now don't say we never give you anything, you can also get your first three months for £1 a month when you use the code AFTERDARK at checkout.