The mode and the place of burial will often throw light on the feelings of the living in regard to the departed. The peoples of the Minoan-Mycenaean culture interred their dead, Homeric society cremated them, while the recent excavations have revealed that both systems were in vogue side by side throughout an indefinite period in Mesopotamia;[208.1] and such being the facts, we cannot safely deduce from them any marked difference in spiritual beliefs. More illuminating is the fact that the pre-Homeric society in Greek lands appears generally to have buried its dead in or near their habitations, as if they desired the companionship of the spirits, agreeing in this respect with the people of Gezer in Palestine.[209.1] In Mesopotamia, though in very ancient times the dead were sometimes buried in temples, the fashion generally prevailed of establishing a necropolis outside the city, as was the rule also in post-Homeric Greece. This difference alone suggests that the fear of the ghost was less powerful in pre-Homeric Greece than in Mesopotamia.

It is clear, however, that the Babylonian, like the Hellene, desired at times to enter into communion with the departed family-ghost; for in Mesopotamia, as in Hellas, we have clear trace of “parentalia,” communion-meals to which the ancestral spirits were invited to feast with the family. In the Babylonian phrase this was called “breaking bread with” the dead:[209.2] the parallel facts in Hellas are familiar to students.

Moreover, a certain general resemblance in the funeral ceremonies can be detected between the Eastern and Western peoples whom we are comparing. When we examine these, we discover that neither the Homeric nor the Babylonian epic-picture of the desolateness and futility of the life in Hades corresponded altogether with the popular faith as expressed in tomb-ritual. It is true to say of all races that burial customs and eschatological theory are never wholly harmonised by any coherent logic, and generally reveal discord between the dogma and the ritual. We can note this in ancient Hellas and among ourselves; and the discovery of Babylonian graves reveals it in Mesopotamia. The things found in these, toys for children, cosmetics for girls,[209.3] show that the ideas so powerfully expressed in “The Descent of Ishtar” about the barrenness and nakedness of the land of the dead were either not universally admitted or not acted upon.

Those who equip the dead with some of the things that were of use and delight to the living must believe that the departed soul preserves a certain energy and power of enjoyment, though a gloomy poet among them may enlarge impressively on the emptiness of death. The unknown Assyrian king who describes in an inscription the sumptuous burial that he gave his father may not have been of the same mind as the poet of the Ishtar-epic concerning the laws of the Queen of Hell:

“Within the grave

The secret place

In kingly oil

I gently laid him.

The grave-stone

Marketh his resting-place.

With mighty bronze

I sealed its [entrance],

I protected it with an incantation.

Vessels of gold and silver,

Such as my father loved,

All the furniture that befitteth the grave,

The due right of his sovereignty,

I displayed before the Sun-God,

And beside the father who begat me,

I set them in the grave.

Gifts unto the princes,

Unto the spirits of the earth

And unto the gods who inhabit the grave,

I then presented.”[210.1]

What is the meaning of the act of exposing the gold and silver vessels to the sun-god Shamash before placing them on the grave? Was it done to purify them by the aspect of the pure god and thus to fit them for the use of the glorified dead? The evidence of the deification of kings has been collected above. But the ceremony in question is unique, as far as I am aware.

No doubt in ordinary Semitic burials there was great variety in the grave-offerings: in the graves of Gezer in Palestine, weapons, jewels, ostrich-eggs, seals, scarabs, amulets, small figures in human or animal form have been found.[211.1]

In these practices the primitive Hellene and Semite were on the same level, nor is it likely that either was the pupil of the other. One important difference, important at least for our purpose, we can mark, which is connected with the difference between Hellenic and Oriental climate. The Hellenic ghost might take water among his offerings, and the neglected soul might be pitied for being ἄνυδρος[211.2]; he might also eat his porridge in the Anthesteria; but he preferred wine, and the offerings of blood—the αἱμακουρία—and especially the sacrifice of animals. And we may gather from the painting on the Phaistos sarcophagus that the blood-oblation to the dead was part of the pre-Hellenic ritual in Crete. The triple-libation, also, that Homer mentions, of wine, honey-mead, and water, and which the later Greeks retained, may be regarded as a Minoan tradition, for its great antiquity among the Aegean people is attested by the libation-table found by Sir Arthur Evans in the cave of Zeus on Mount Dickte. Here there is no trace of the teaching of the Babylonian priest: nor in the blood-offerings to the dead. For the Babylonian ghost, parched with thirst in the intolerable heat of Mesopotamia, craved not blood—which, as far as I know, is never mentioned in the description of his funeral-rites—but beer in the earliest period,[212.1] and in the later specially water. It is water that was supposed to make the deceased comparatively happy:

“On a couch he lieth

And drinketh pure water,

The man who was slain in battle.

His father and his mother [support] his head,

And his wife [kneeleth] at his side.”[212.2]

This is the lore that in the Epic of Gilgamesh is imparted to the hero by the ghost of his beloved Eabani, concerning the advantages of the man who gets due burial over him whose corpse is thrown out into the field, and whose soul wanders restlessly eating “the dregs of the vessel, the leavings of the feast, and that which is cast out upon the street.”