For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, ....They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust....
Ecclesiastes 9:5/Job 17:16
"....2,700 years ago in the ancient city of Sam’al, in what is now modern
Turkey, an elderly servant of the king sits in a corner of his house and
contemplates the nature of his soul.
He stares at
a basalt stele made for him, featuring his own graven portrait together
with an inscription in ancient Aramaic.
It instructs his family, when
he dies, to celebrate ‘a feast at this chamber: a bull for Hadad
harpatalli and a ram for Nik-arawas of the hunters and a ram for
Shamash, and a ram for Hadad of the vineyards, and a ram for Kubaba, and
a ram for my soul that is in this stele.’ Katumuwa believed that he had
built a durable stone receptacle for his soul after death." aeon