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Studies of religion and history of Greece have traditionally gone their own, largely independent ways. Studies of Greek social and moral values are a more recent genre, but now that they exist they too follow a third path of their own that only occasionally intersects with the other two. Specialists in Greek religion may be inclined to seek an explanation in the inadequacies of traditional approaches to Greek history. Superficial similarities between the Greeks and ourselves have created the illusion, they might urge, that their political behaviour like ours can be analysed in secular and rational terms; the omnipresent myths, rituals, and expressions of respect for the gods are ignored, whereas in reality they are the underpinning, the emotional and cognitive foundation, of the whole of communal life. Respect for the gods, respect for the fatherland, respect for ancestral tombs, respect for parents: the deep conservatism inherent in Greek religion could not be more clearly revealed.

Since early historic times, Gujarat had been a consistently urbanized and prosperous region. From a tribute-exacting economy, the Gujarat sultanate made a transition to a structured semi-bureaucratic system with relatively fixed and predictable returns accruing from trade and land revenue, becoming the first state in the region to do so. The legacies of the Gujarat sultanate are still evident in Gujarat. A look at religion in Gujarat will show that there are many religious options, even today. Aside from the grand temples and great mosque-tomb complexes of the medieval period, there are scores, if not hundreds, of local goddesses, saints, heroes, pīrs, and satis commemorated everywhere in small wayside shrines, in markets, shops, fairs, and homes. The stories of these shrines and their adherents record struggles and accommodations, patronage and politics that reflect the past and present Gujarat.

This chapter examines the chronological range of Greco-Roman history and the nature of the main narrative sources. The discussion begins about 1200 BCE, with the end of the Bronze Age palace culture, conventionally called Mycenaean. The destruction of the palace centres – at Knossos, Mycenae, Pylos, and Thebes – was responsible for preserving the ‘Linear B’ tablets, which form the earliest evidence for the Greek language. By the sixth century, Greek city-states were established widely round the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. This is the time of what is sometimes called ‘the Greek miracle’, the origin of philosophy and science as well as historiography. The chapter draws attention to three archaeological discoveries and the way their evidential value has been assessed: a gold mask, discovered in 1876 in the first of the ‘shaft graves’ at Mycenae, the so-called tomb of Agamemnon; an artefact discovered in 1977 by the Dutch archaeological team excavating the temple of Matuta at the Latin town of Satricum; and a gold bulb, or locket, discovered in 1794.

The ostraca were found scattered throughout the hermitage, but most of the material came from the dump. The ostraca presented here come from excavations in Western Thebes. They were mainly inscribed on potsherds; there are also a certain number of texts written on limestone flakes. The number of ostraca found as of 2007 has been estimated to be 210 pieces; however, this number is still not established conclusively, as some separated fragments may eventually be placed together. The tomb itself does not have a TT number typical for the Theban region. They are diverse in content, some of them were written for the sake of practice writing. Few bear biblical texts, such as psalm (the ostracon K.O. 158 contains the two last verses of Psalm 145 and Psalm 146).

The year 536 bce had been a rather hectic business year for Iturech, or at least one that was very well documented in P. Louvre E 7834, 7836, 7838, and 7843. Choachytes needed to collect as many mummies as possible.Many mummies meant much work, and much work meant high income. In 536 Iturech had an interest in at least five tombs in the Theban necropolis on the west bank of the Nile.

The legacy of each man is the subject of this chapter. Though it presents grave problems to the historian, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead — there were reportedly witnesses to the risen Jesus — empowers the Twelve and sets in train the Jesus movement that soon begins to worship him as the Son of God. What followed Muhammad’s perfectly natural death was more political: a struggle over the succession to the leadership of the community, overshadowed perhaps by the expanding military conquest of Arabia and then the Middle East. Muhammad meanwhile grows in stature after his death: he becomes the ideal Muslim, the paragon and model of all the virtues he preached in the Quran.

As this book has indicated there are many Cairos, and many other Cairos in metropolitan Cairo itself. The book has strived to deconstruct the two most popular myths about Cairo; as a tomb city, a dead or hyper-passive entity more like an open-air museum of monuments occupied by a population of quiescent serfs; and the city as a bomb, an entity of grave contradictions that harbors the explosive “Arab street” that will detonate at any moment. The book has rightfully offered various and contradictory answers to this question. However, its main contribution lies not in falsifying that proposition but in questioning the meaning of “cosmopolitan” in the global south. While some may argue that there is a world of difference between the “true” cosmopolitanism of a First World city like London and the “apparent” cosmopolitanism of Cairo, the book has attempted to reverse this assertion.

This chapter gives a striking account of the town of Reshee'd and its gardens. It also gives an overview of the mosque and tomb of Ab'oo Mundoo'r. The tombs of sheykhs are objects that frequently meet the eye of the traveller in Egypt. They are mostly in the immediate vicinity of villages; but some are at a distance from any habitation. There are also many buildings of the same kind which are mere cenotaphs, dedicated, each, to a particular saint. The hill behind the mosque of Ab'oo Mundoo'r is covered with drifted sand, intermixed with bricks, and broken pottery. It evidently marks an ancient site; supposed to be that of Bolbitine which gave its name to the branch of the Nile that flows before it. This chapter describes this site of Bolbitine and the Bolbitic branch of the Nile.

This chapter examines how war shaped the identity of the nobility. The idea that military service was a duty for noblemen, but one fittingly rewarded with honour and more tangible benefits, was widespread in England and the Netherlands alike. Nobles read, commissioned, and wrote military treatises and memoirs and were exhorted in family histories to imitate the martial deeds of their ancestors. Poems, songs and chronicles, portraits, prints and history paintings, martial buildings, and gifts of swords and decorated plate proclaimed the military reputations of contemporary commanders. Elaborate chivalric funerals and tombs commemorated great generals, and some enacted memorable deathbed scenes, bidding their captains farewell and pledging their loyalty to their prince.

The ancient Egyptians were the first culture that we know of systematically to correlate an afterlife with good and evil actions in this world. Far from being obsessed with death, the Egyptians were above all lovers of life. Their ideas about post‐mortem survival affirmed the value of life in this world. Their joyous feeling for a bounteous land teeming with fertility carried over into a hope for resurrection—entailing mummification—that lacks the pessimism of many earlier cultures. The evolution of belief in Osiris as judge of the dead, from the early Pyramid texts to the Book of the Dead, both enforces fear of post‐mortem judgment and seems to open the possibility of resurrection to all, and not only to Pharaoh and his immediate circle.

This chapter examines Brigit’s cult after the 7^th century, as portrayed in 8^th- and 9^th-century biographies of the saint and other documents. Brigit’s church at Kildare became at once a historical monument to conversion, a power center on the changing political landscape of medieval Ireland, and a gendered symbol of religious practice. The limits and meanings of Brigit’s cult shifted constantly in relation to these material and political environments. Like Genovefa’s cult, Brigit’s lost importance in relation to the cults of male saints, particularly that of Patrick at Armagh.

This epilogue considers the twentieth century poem “An Arundel Tomb” by Philip Larkin. Larkin’s reflections on the medieval tomb for the Earl of Arundel and his wife capture many of the poignancies, and ironies, raised both by the spousal tombs discussed in this book’s Introduction, and by the scores of poems addressing the fate of love after death examined in subsequent chapters. “An Arundel Tomb” asks us to ponder above all the relationship between the artifact that survives and the love that is long past. How much of that love is actually preserved? Was the love experienced at the time in a manner at all consonant with its posthumous representation? These are among the questions posed by Larkin, questions that resonate powerfully with the history of mortal poetics this book articulates.

Slaves had readier access to freedom in Roman society than in other known slave societies. Those most favoured were urban, talented, pleasing slaves, especially those who formed close personal attachments with their owner. Child slaves, born in the household (vernae), could play a special familial role as surrogate sons and daughters. Those freed prematurely or informally (Junian Latins) had restrictions on their freedom and citizenship and could be circulated or transferred to other households. As heirs they continued their patrons' name and were responsible for their tombs, thus helping preserve their memory.

This chapter argues that the epitaph on Aeschylus cited by his ancient biographer and others — which commemorates him as one who fought bravely at Marathon without mentioning his poetry — while unlikely to be by Aeschylus himself was probably written soon after his death by a member of his family and inscribed on his tomb at Gela. Features of its language which have been claimed to be Hellenistic are in fact well attested in the classical period, and the unusual use of alsos in the sense ‘level expanse’ (instead of ‘sacred grove, glade, sacred enclosure’) is confined to Aeschylus and his contemporaries.

The earliest centre of Marian cult in Palestine appears to have been an early Nativity shrine known as the Kathisma church, which by the early fifth century had become a focus of Marian piety. Not long thereafter, the traditional site of Mary's tomb just outside the Jerusalem city walls emerged as a second important centre of Mary's veneration. In the early sixth century, a third Marian shrine was added to the Holy City, the Nea church, completed during the emperor Justinian's reign. The earliest feast of Mary in Palestine was 15 August, initially a celebration of Mary's role in the Nativity that eventually developed into a commemoration of her Dormition and/or Assumption. By the seventh century, this festival had expanded to encompass several days in mid‐August, in a stational liturgy that linked together all three of Jerusalem's Marian shrines.

This chapter analyses the impact on the commemoration of the dead of the mid-Tudor decades, and the contrasting religious policies of Edward VI and Mary Tudor. It describes the 1547 dissolution of the chantries as well as the officially-inspired iconoclasm against tombs and monuments, and assesses popular responses to these developments. It investigates the ways in which the dead were commemorated in the 1549 and 1552 Books of Common Prayer. It then assesses the restoration of traditional doctrine and practice after the accession of Mary. While conceding that Marian theologians were cautious about purgatory, and that some significant shifts in attitudes had taken place at the popular level, the chapter employs testamentary and other sources to dispute that the issues were completely marginalised, or that notions of purgatory and intercessory prayer were a permanent casualty of reform by this stage.