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The First Ghosts
Most Ancient of Legacies
Irving Finkel
Hodder & Stoughton 2021
Hb, 368pp, £25, ISBN 9781529303261
Dr Irving Finkel, curator of the British Museum’s collection of c.130,000 Mesopotamian clay tablets, here deploys his expertise in transliterating and translating Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform inscriptions, demonstrating that a belief in the reality of ghosts is both ancient and – based on the extant scientific knowledge of the time – entirely rational.
Evidence of grave goods found in Upper Palæolithic burials (c.50,000
