What to Expect When You're Dead

An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife

By: Robert Garland

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Hardcover | 1 July 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover
330 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
21.6 x 14.0 x 216

Hardcover

RRP $49.99

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An entertaining and enlightening book about how ancient peoples dealt with death-and what we might learn from them

A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead explores the fascinating death-related beliefs and practices of a wide range of ancient cultures and traditions-Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Hindu, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Early Christian, and Islamic. By drawing on the latest scholarship on ancient archaeology, art, literature, and funerary inscriptions, Robert Garland invites readers to put themselves in the sandals of ancient peoples and to imagine their mental state moment by moment as they sought-in ways that turn out to be remarkably similar to ours-to assist the dead on their journey to the next world and to understand life's greatest mystery.

What to Expect When You're Dead chronicles the ways ancient peoples answered questions such as: How to achieve a good death and afterlife? What's the best way to dispose of a body? Do the dead face a postmortem judgement-and where do they end up? Do the dead have bodies in the afterlife-and can they eat, drink, and have sex? And what can the living do to stay on good terms with the nonliving?

Filled with intriguing stories and frequent humor, What to Expect When You're Dead will be a morbidly delicious treat for every reader alive.

About the Author

Robert Garland is the Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster Professor Emeritus of the Classics at Colgate University. He is the author of many books, including The Greek Way of Death, Wandering Greeks (Princeton), and Athens Burning. He has also recorded six courses for the Great Courses , most recently God against the Gods.

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