Thanks to the Sublime One, I have now seen a representation of the man
who I assume may have been one of my ancestors.

http://tonesintotreasures.homestead.com/files/Methuselah.html

But where & when did he die?

Is there a tombstone? Or maybe a death mask?

And what was his deathbed scene like, and how many turned up?

Who was his doctor and had his family been concerned about his
health?

---

Clarification of Question by probonopublico-ga on 04 Oct 2003 05:46 PDT

My thanks to everyone but, now, I am going to close the question.

This is not to stop anyone posting an answer but because I have been
asked to lead an expedition to find his skeleton.

I found the posted link to be very helpful.  I have lived my long life
by sticking strictly to the four basic food groups and I consume them
in balance on a daily basis.

They are the Four Cs.

Caffein, Chocolate, Crunchy and Chewy

Live long - live well
digs

With all due respect, my learned friend digsalot: The true four basic
food groups one should consume on a daily basis are, actually, the
Four Bs:

Beer, Bratwurst, Brezel, Blueberry Cake.

I call it the "Central European Nutrition Philosophy". 

Scriptor

I believe his deathbed scene was a party worthy of the man: chocolate
and 8 bottles of champagne!  (Perhaps 7 of his closest friends turned
up.  Noah was elsewhere, gathering animals and ranting about the end
of the world.)

"Methuselah, Methusalem"
Food Reference Website
http://www.foodreference.com/html/fmethuselah.html

Bryan...

According to this webpage from Foundations for Freedom, Methuselah
died 1656 years after the beginning of the world, just before the
big flood:
http://www.foundationsforfreedom.net/References/OT/Pentateuch/Genesis/05Flood/Genesis05Chart.html

According to another page from the same site, his name was an omen
of the impending 'judgment by flood':
http://www.foundationsforfreedom.net/References/OT/Pentateuch/Genesis/05Flood/Genesis05Flood1.html

And, according to this page, Dr. McCoy of the starship Enterprise
was the last to see him alive:
http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/hoskins/85/ep-76.htm

Many thanks for the various insights ....

However, I am rather dubious about Justaskscott's claim that
Methuselah slurped champagne on his deathbed.

(Interestly, Justaskscott failed to give his 'Search Strategy' or even
the mandatory disclaimer.)

My own belief is that champagne was invented by Leslie Caron (Remember
Gigi?)or, at least, somebody a little bit French.

From the diary of his
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson-in-law
Shem (Noah's son), we know that Methuselah in the year 920 After
Creation was suffering from asthma and had poor dental hygiene,
probably from drinking too much tea and coffee and smoking too much.
We also know that he traveled with his own personal physician. We
can't conclude anything from that, however: he might have been an
hypochondriac.


Extract from Shem's diary of 920 A.C.

Methuselah was here again today. While he isn't the oldest person in
the world, he is the oldest distinguished person in it, and because of
that peculiar supremacy, he is regarded with awe by everybody; and
wherever he appears the riotings cease and silence falls upon the
multitude, and they uncover and salute him with slavish reverence as
he passes by, murmuring to each other, "Look at him--there he
goes--'most a thousand years old--used to know Adam, they say." He is
a vain old creature, and anybody can see how it gratifies him, though
he dodders along with his nose in the air and a simpering cakewalk
gait, pretending to be pondering some great matter profoundly, and
letting on that he doesn't know anything is happening.

I know from certain things I have noticed, that he is of a jealous
disposition; envious, too. Perhaps I ought not to say this, for I am
related to him by marriage, my wife is his
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter,
or something along there, and indeed I wouldn't say it in public, but
I think there can be no harm in my saying it in the privacy of my
diary, which is merely the same as saying it to myself. He is jealous
about this Ark, I am quite sure of it. Jealous because he wasn't asked
to build it instead of Father. The Ark is such a wonder to all the
nations around that it raised Father from obscurity to world-wide
fame, and Methuselah is jealous of that. At first, people used to say,
"Noah?--pray who is Noah?"--but now they come miles to get his
autograph. It makes Methuselah tired.

He doesn't doesn't have to sit up nights doing autographs, but we do.
All of us--the whole eight; for Father can't do them all, nor even a
tenth of them, his hand being old and stiff. Methuselah has a most
unpleasant disposition. I think he is never happy except when he is
making other people uncomfortable. He always speaks of my brothers and
me and our wives as "the children." He does it because he sees that it
hurts our feelings. One day Japheth timidly ventured to remind him
that we were men and women. You could have heard him scoff a mile! And
he closed his eyes in a kind of ecstasy of scorn, and he puckered his
withered lips, exposing his yellow fangs and the gaps between them and
hacked out a dry odious laugh with an asthmatic cough mixed with it
and said, "Men and women--the likes of you! Pray, how old are you
venerable relics?"

"Our wives are nearly eighty, and of us I am the youngest and I was a
hundred last spring."

"Eighty, dear me ! a hundred, dear me! And married! dear, dear, dear!
You cradle-rubbish! You rag dolls! Married! In my young days nobody
would ever have thought of such a thing as children getting married.
It's monstrous!"

Japheth started to remind him that more than one of the patriarchs had
married in early youth, but he wouldn't listen! This is just his way;
if you catch him out with an argument that he can't answer, he raises
his voice and shouts you down, and the only thing you can do is to
shut your mouth and drop the matter. It won't do to dispute with him;
it would be considered a scandal, and irreverent. At least it would
not do for us boys to talk back. Neither us nor anybody else.  Except
the surgeon. The surgeon isn't afraid of him, and hasn't any
reverence, anyway. The surgeon says a man is just a man, and his being
a thousand years old doesn't make him any more than a man.

(Translation by Mark Twain from the Adam Family papers, and published
in Letters from the Earth.)

hlabadie-ga

Disclaimer: Comments provided on Google Answers are general
information, and are not intended to substitute for informed
professional Biblical interpretation.  If you need expert Biblical
exigesis, you should consult your local cleric of choice.

Search strategy -

Searched Google for:

methuselah
methuselah champagne
"methuselah was very very old"
[Actually, I didn't try the last search, though perhaps I should ....]

Okay, so maybe it wasn't champagne.  But those Biblicals sure loved
their fermented grape.  And with 969 years to kill, a wine connoisseur
is bound to experiment with new grapes and winemaking techniques.  So,
it's quite plausible that Methuselah did invent champagne.  (My belief
is that the idea was swept away by the Flood -- he never got a chance
to tell Noah -- and was accidentally rediscovered by Leslie Caron or
Pepe Le Pew.)