Banquets were given for the dead as well as the living. Excavations near the ancient Phrygian city of Gordion in Anatolia—at an enormous, fifty-three-meter-high, three-hundred-meter-diameter burial tumulus, dating to the eighth century B.C.E.—uncovered a wooden burial chamber that was initially said to be the grave of king Mita (the rich and famous king Midas of Greek legend), although that attribution is now considered doubtful. The deceased, a man aged sixty to sixty-five, was laid out on a thick pile of dyed textiles in a massive four-poster bed surrounded by beautiful pieces of furniture, as well as cauldrons, ladles, jugs, bowls, and bronze and pottery vessels, some of which contained residues of food. Chemical analysis revealed that the menu for the funerary feast, which may have accommodated as many as one hundred guests, included...