Behind | The Hungry and Thirsty Dead

Jesus’ emphasis on providing eternal food and drink in John was extreme enough to turn away some of His audience. Even so, it may have resonated with listeners in the ancient world more than it does today. In many ancient cultures thirst and hunger in the afterlife were prominent religious concerns.

Dr. Theodor Gaster has noted the prevalence of these concerns in ancient religions and cultures, everywhere from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Greece and Rome. In some cases the dead were said to eat mud and dirt.

In the Mesopotamian myth of Ishtar’s Descent to Hades, special mention is made of the fact that those who dwell there have “dust as their sustenance, mud as their food.” So, too, in Egyptian thought, the denizens of the netherworld ate dirt and drank urine, and analogous ideas may be found in the Greek and Roman world as well as in Avestan literature.

Thirst especially seems to have been a driving concern.

The netherworld was known among the Babylonians as “the field of thirst”… while in Egyptian funerary texts, the soul of the dead is often represented as praying for water…Late Greek belief held that libations to the dead were really designed to slake their thirst; while (in Homer’s Odyssey) the dead devour the blood poured out for them. (The Roman writer) Seneca speaks of the grievous hunger which attends the dead.

Source: Theodor H. Gaster, Thespis: Ritual, Myth and Drama in the Ancient Near East, 1977, pp. 188, 203-205.