One of the enduring questions facing people is the question of what happens after life. While there are no written records from Neolithic times, burial evidence suggests a fear the dead might return or perhaps a belief in an afterlife (Aldhouse-Green and Aldhouse-Green 63). In the first major work of literature known, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh struggles with the inevitability of death and his desire for immortality (Leeming, "Gilgamesh" 150). In Mesopotamian culture, the afterlife was a place of dirt and squalor with little to eat or drink, where the dead were eaten by vermin. As dark as this view of the afterlife is, it was not a place of punishment for bad behavior in life. All suffered alike in death, their suffering alleviated only by those with enough sons to perform the necessary funeral rites that could mitigate their condition. Death was the inevitable conclusion to life. Babylonians often buried their dead within their own homes with few accoutrements. Immortality was achieved, not through a continued life after death but through the continuation of the family line and through literary fame (Leick 154-5).

The Egyptians were "obsessed with the preservation of their identity and memory." Egyptians preserved the bodies of the dead and provided them the accoutrements of life to take with them into the afterlife (Perry 180). Funeral processions included pallbearers, dancing, and food offerings (Perry 182-3). Ritual spells were recited so that the dead could be united with Osiris, the god of death and resurrection (Perry 237). Egyptians believed that the dead would be judged by Horus, who would weigh the person's heart (conscience) against a feather (law). Those who had lived well would enter the kingdom of Osiris. For those who had not lived well, their heart would be eaten by the jackal, and they would see no resurrection (Rosenberg 14).

In the Greek writings of Homer, the underworld is dark and grim, a place where the dead walk as gray shadows of their former selves. The realm of Hades was "utterly devoid of joy, purpose, or hope." When Odysseus meets Achilles in the underworld, Achilles claims to prefer slavery in life to reigning as king in Hades. The dead suffer loss of memory and are seen as "witless, gibbering specters" who only regain some semblance of their memory and will through blood sacrifice (Harris and Platzner 284). As with the Babylonians, it was important in Greek society to perform the proper funeral arrangements to help ease the torment of the dead (Harris and Platzner 285). In Sophocles' play Antigone, Antigone risks her life to perform the rites for her brother who died in battle against the state. Later Greeks, including Pythagoras, suggested the dead would be reborn in another earthly body (Harris and Platzner 298) while Plato suggested the soul was eternal and lived a life of bliss or torment in the afterlife before being again reborn on earth (Harris and Platzner 300).

The Old Testament sheol, like Hades, is a grim place where the dead exist as mindless shadows. "For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun. . . . [T]here is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest (KJV, Ecclesiastes 9.5-6,10). In the New Testament, Christ tells a story suggesting that the poor receive better treatment while the rich suffer in burning agony (KJV, Luke 16.19-31). Christ tells his disciples that he is going to prepare a place for them in the Father's house (KJV, John 14.2) and he speaks of a great judgement (KJV, Matthew 25) for those who will enter the kingdom of heaven (There is a dispute, however, among scholars whether this refers to the afterlife or a reign of Christ on earth). Later Paul speaks of " the glory which shall be revealed in" Christians, presumably in the afterlife (KJV, Romans 8.18). And Revelations pictures heaven as a place of comfort and splendor.

Many Asian cultures view the afterlife in more philosophical terms than physical, where the dead are reincarnated time after time as different lifeforms depending on how well they lived in their previous incarnation or become part of the wellspring of life. Some Asian cultures did have a "geographical" world of the dead. In a Japanese myth, Izanagi visits his wife Izanami in "a place of darkness and impurity inhabited by furies" (Leeming, "Afterlife" 9), where Izanami, like the Greek Eurydice and the Babylonian Ereshkigal, suffers decay.

In Norse mythology, the greatest warriors are taken up by the Valkyrie to the Hall of the Slain, Valhalla, to await the great battle of Ragnarok. There they fight each other every day and feast with the gods every night as they await the final conflict (Leeming, "Valhalla" 391). The Norse outlook on life is bleak. Death is inevitable, but unlike the Babylonians or others who saw death as grim, the Norse fight death, believing that the struggle against impossible odds entitles them to a place in Valhalla (Hamilton 440).

Views of the afterlife varied from culture to culture among the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Some believed the dead went to "a remote land beyond the horizon, or into the sky." Some believed in a paradisical world of flowers and peace. Others like Inanni, Orpheus, or Izanagi, desired to journey to the underworld to retrieve their dead loved one (Jones and Molyneaux 632).

Questions about life after death continue today. Television psychics offer the hopeful a chance to speak to lost loved ones. Funeral services around the world express the continued desire for the safe passage of the dead to a life better than the world in which we live.