This book is probably the best and most extensive museum tour money can buy. The author takes the reader on a tour not just through the British Museum, but criss-cross through world history, introducing colourfully different places, people and beliefs on the way.
Each chapter focuses on one specific aspect of religion (e.g. festivals, nature, or death) and draws connections between various belief systems across the world (or shows the vast differences between them). Every chapter is plentifully illustrated, one gets to see each museum artefact that gets introduced as well as other photographs of landscapes, excavation sites as well as paintings and portraits that provide further context. The author additionally consults countless experts, a lot of them exhibition curators of the British Museum or historians, the most notable in my opinion being Mary Beard.
What I cherish most about “Living with the Gods” is the genuinely curious and celebratory approach to all the cultures, societies and beliefs that are gathered in it. Each of them is unique in their own way, yet part of a greater whole. Each has its own strengths and flaws and their place in the world.
But more than just introducing religions and its gods to us, the author presents the many different ways humans have found over the years to come together as a community, under shared belief and shared stories. Without sugar-coating or idealising anything, the book aspires to show how religion and the art of story-telling is among humanity’s most wonderful inventions, an essential part of what made us who we are today.
