History Matters - The First Ghosts

The First Ghosts by Irving Finkel

Are there ghosts among us?

If you lived in Sumeria three thousand years ago, you would have had no doubt about the reality of ghosts. They were as common as cats, according to Dr Irving Finkel, Senior Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages, and cultures in the Middle East Department of the British Museum. Finkel has spent a lifetime reading the cuneiform tablets left in the ruins of Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria. The tablets show that these people had a deep relationship with ghosts. Ancestral ghosts might show up if the descendants failed to provide the offerings that made existing in the Netherworld livable. There was also a long litany of ghosts who were malevolent for a variety of reasons, and who might crawl into one’s ear and bring fever and medical problems.

If you found yourself in this situation, you would want to visit an exorcist for the appropriate spell or ritual. The new-fangled practice of writing allowed the retention of these detailed rituals, and the fact that they were in cuneiform on clay tablets preserved them so that Dr. Finkel could read them thousands of years later.

Dr. Finkel shares these spells with the reader in detail. If you wanted, you might be able to set yourself up as a Sumerian exorcist, if there was a market for that sort of thing.

Finkel’s book is enjoyably written. We might expect a book of this sort to be as dry as the dust of lost Akkad, but Finkel keeps his narration lively by injecting humorous and personal anecdotes into his narrative. We learn, for example, that Dr. Finkel has an open mind about whether ghosts exist. He shares that he has spent dark nights in certain areas of the British Museum, where there have been rumors of ghostly activity, looking to see if he could catch the specters. He hasn’t been successful, but hope springs eternal. He also notes that ghost stories are universal and suggests that either there is a vast conspiracy or there are ghosts (maybe.)[1]

Finkel provides a view into the deep history of beliefs about life after death. We don’t know anything for sure prior to Sumer – which is why Sumer’s ghosts are the “first ghosts” – but we do find burial practices prior to Sumer. Initially, these might have been a matter of “waste disposal,” according to Finkel, but over time, burial practices became associated with grave goods, which imply a belief in the afterlife. Did these people have an experience with ghosts? It seems likely since this cultural trope is unlikely to have started with Sumer.

Finkel also explains the tripartite division of those who enter the Netherworld. Some are good and just and have a blessed afterlife. Most are mediocre and are kept placated by the offering of descendants. But there are those who are evil, and they are the ones most likely to cause problems in the present world.[2]

Finkel shares stories of mortals who went to the Netherworld. The trip to the Netherworld was supposed to be a one-way trip, but some mortals returned with their visions. Finkel shares an early story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and how Gilgamesh tricked Enkidu to travel to the underworld to find out how his mortal parents were doing in the Netherworld. Through this story, the reader learns a lot about the gods and folklore of the Ancient Near East.

In sharing information about the ghost culture of the Ancient Near East, Finkel fleshes out a dead culture. As I was reading the book, I wondered what it would be like to live with parents buried beneath the floorboard and the knowledge that I might see their spirits at any time, and that seeing their spirits would be totally normal. That past is a different country, and this is one way of appreciating the difference.

I’ve noted the similarity of the Ancient Near East ghost-culture and Catholic beliefs about the dead. The similarity might not be apparent to Protestants, who have their roots in the early Enlightenment. The distance between that culture and their culture may mean that Protestants import a foreign reading into the Bible. The world of the Bible was the world of the Ancient Near East. Finkel explains this with respect to the practice of necromancy.

In the Ancient Near East, there were male and female necromancers, who were called “ba’al ob” or “ghost master” in Hebrew. Female ghost masters called up spirits of the dead from the Earth. They were frequently associated with cultic locations. This ties in with the famous story of Saul and the “Witch of Endor.”

The “witch” is called ba’al ob, or ghost master, in the Hebrew text. Endor is the word for “Well of Generation,” which implies a source of spirits, or, perhaps, the place where spirits wait before they were required to give life to a new baby, a belief shared by pre-Hebrew Canaanites. God has denied Saul any divine insight through dreams, through the use of the urim and thumin, or through court prophets. The famous prophet Samuel has just died. Since Saul’s throne is at risk, Samuel decides to go to non-divine sources for information, namely a “ghost master” at a cultic place associated with ghosts.

The actions of the “witch of Endor” in calling forth Samuel are those found on the cuneiform tablets. A ghost rises from the ground. It is Samuel. The “witch” recognizes it as Samuel. It is not a demon. The soul of Samuel grumbles about being disturbed and accurately prophesies Saul’s ruin.

The story is a classic example of Ancient Near East necromancy involving the spirit of a dead human. Finkel explains:

Many later writers, Jewish and Christian alike, wrestling with ghosts and underworlds, have found royal necromancy at Endor quite indigestible. According to the summary of Saul’s career in the biblical 1 Chronicles 10:13, he died for being unfaithful to the LORD and, moreover, enquiring of a ghost. But in the later Deutero-canonical book of Sirach, the whole episode is thoroughly bowdlerised: Even after he [Samuel] had fallen asleep, he prophesied and made known to the king his death, and lifted up his voice from the ground in prophecy, to blot out the wickedness of the people. Sirach 46:20 (NSRV version)

Finkel, Irving. The First Ghosts: A rich history of ancient ghosts and ghost stories from the British Museum curator (p. 260). Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.

St. Robert Bellarmine finds the example of Saul and the Witch of Endor to be supportive of the doctrine of Purgatory.

Finkel further points out that the easy-going relationship with the idea that ghosts walk among us is also found in the New Testament:

By the time the New Testament was being written in Greek, the parallel exclusion of ghosts from sacred narrative is almost complete. When Jesus walked on the water, however, we are presented with the clearest evidence (respectfully emphasised below) that, nevertheless, everyday belief in ghosts was instinctive, uninhibited, and uncontrollable:

Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray. When evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. Gospel of Mark 6:45–50

A similar description appears in the Gospel of Matthew. Here, too, there is a good deal of worry by scholars and theologians about what the text, and Greek fantasma, really mean here, but it seems to me that the disciples who were present on that occasion just thought they had seen a ghost.

Finkel, Irving. The First Ghosts: A rich history of ancient ghosts and ghost stories from the British Museum curator (pp. 262-263). Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.

This is almost a “dog that didn’t bark” observation: Why would the disciples have immediately and so readily mistaken Jesus walking on water for a ghost if they were not already familiar with ghosts? It is an offhand observation that opens up an entire culture.

This is a rewarding book. I like anthropology and folklore. I like the idea of placing myself in a different world. I also finished St. Robert Bellarmine’s “On Purgatory” recently. So, I was primed. Finkel writes a good story and is entertaining. I am not sure who might benefit from this book, but if any of that sounds like your wheelhouse, give it a read.

Footnotes:

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[1] St. Robert Bellarmine used a similar argument – actually, the same argument – as an argument from reason for the existence of purgatory. Bellarmine noted that ghost stories are universal, which implies that there is a middle place between Heaven and Hell, a place where no leaves, either by choice or by mandate. Bellermine associated this place with Purgatory.

[2] The correlation to Catholic belief stood out for me. St. Robert Bellarmine taught that there were the evil, who went to Hell, the good, who went to Heaven, and those not good or bad enough for either, who went to Purgatory. Purgatory is a place of expiation of sins prior to Heaven. Bellarmine believed that souls could leave Purgatory with God’s permission and for God’s purposes, often to carry messages back to the living about being mindful of their religious practices or to request that prayers be made for them. So, for Bellarmine, it is the middle portion that was problematic; for the Sumerians, it was the evil.