Holy Spirits: Ancestor Worship in the Ancient Near East and Beyond

Looking at ancestor veneration in both the ancient and the modern world – from Mesopotamia and Egypt, to the Classical World and the Americas – this course will focus on three different angles: individual, communal, and material. We will consider grief, mourning, loss, and death’s impact on families, kin, or elites. How did ancestors shape communities’ social memories, identities, and religious practices? Finally, we will explore spirits’ material traces, examining specific ancestral monuments and landscapes.