Steven Cave categorized death in four ways.
First there was elixir, the belief that someone could take a consumable item and it would either prevent death or at least keep them alive for a longer period of time.
The second way we view the afterlife is resurrection. This is the belief that once we die there is the possibility for us to be brought back to life by some force and continue living in that manner.
The third is soul. After people die they believe that a part of them will live forever while their bodies decay. They live on through their soul for eternity.
The fourth way that he categorizes death and the afterlife is legacy. People want to make sure they are remembered after they have passed. Even if there isn’t a heaven, their presence will always be known and felt. I relate this to something like any sports hall of fame.
The Egyptians prepared their deceased for a better life in the afterlife by surrounding them with their prized possessions and giving their kings golden masks. In Greek mythology there was a pleasant afterlife. Nothing exceptionally crazy but you know it could be worse for some people. Christianity has heaven or hell and they seem to be two extremes. One is incredible and anything you have ever wanted while the other is more of an eternal punishment where even the coffee is cold. (Anyone read the Far Side Gallery?)
When I was a kid I saw the movie phenomena and this was my first experience of realizing what death really was. I think I was comforted by the fact that once someone dies they aren’t just gone forever but that they are living maybe a better life somewhere else. The Egyptians coped with death by believing their relatives would be even better off in death than they were in life and possibly even deities.
For the most part Christianity helps relieve fear of death because when someone dies you always hear “they are in a better place now.” Not to be a negative nancy but it seems they also forget about the other half of the spectrum. Do they really know how their relatives act? I think they just choose to ignore this other possibility to help them move on and not be as sad about the passage of a loved one.
Hum 115: World Mythology 
Hmm. I guess I would answer your last paragraph by claiming that death rituals have become more about the living than about the dead. We’ve read about rituals based in Egyptian and Greek myth which needed to be performed if the deceased was going to have a successful transition to the afterlife. But now I wonder if those rituals are more about easing our anxiety. No funeral director (I hope) is going to argue for embalming your aunt Ethyl in order to prevent her soul from languishing forever by the river Styx, but they will play on the fear that the living have about what happens to the bodies of their loved ones. So maybe we’ve kept the rituals – because these symbolic actions are helpful when logos fails us – but they are more about the living now instead of the dead.
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