Death and the Afterlife in the Ancient World

Catalog description

This course will focus on the evolution of beliefs and rituals related to death in and around the Roman Empire, including Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will combine methodologies from Anthropology, Classics, Sociology, and Religious Studies. Topics to be covered include myths of the afterlife, books of the dead, magic and death rituals, divinization, and the impact of Christianization on Roman understandings of death. The course also features a section on mourning and bereavement, and a study of disease and epidemic and its impact on the human population.