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They were either buried or cremated.

Their mythology has them taken by the god of death Thanatos, and consigned their shade to the Underworld, ruled by the god Hades, which they accessed by being rowed across the River Styx by the ferryman Chiron. The Underworld was a morbid place, with the shades moping around aimlessly doing nothing (similar to the Jewish Sheol - a piece of blotting paper - resurrection was a concept brought back from the captivity in Babylon, and still in dispute between the Sadducees and Pharisees in the time of Paul).

As people feared such extinction, various alternatives were proposed to have an afterlife. From this mystery cults arose - in the cults, initiates engaged personally with the god of the cult through rituals, and the god gave them the keys to an afterlife, variously in the skies (now morphed into the word heaven - 'Our Father who is in the Sky/Heaven ...') or the Elysian Fields part of the Underworld, or the Isles of the Blest in the Atlantic.

So during their life those who could afford the time and money to go to the cult centres (Dordona, Samothrace, Tarsus, Eleusis etc) and pay the fees would get an option for an afterlife. As their popularity increased, some cults expanded and were willing to go to the customer and reduce the price, so the mystery cults of Mithras, Christianity, Serapis, Isis etc spread rapidly to meet the market demand, establishing cult centres through the Greek cities around the Mediterranean and eventually further afield in non-Greek peoples.

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12y ago

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