The spirit’s need of water has been an ancient tradition of Semitic grave-tendance. It is expressed on one of the cylinders of Gudea;[212.3] and in the Curse of Hammurabi, which is a postscript to his code of laws, he swears that if a man breaks them “his spirit in the world below shall lack water.”[212.4] Clay-cylinders in the museums of Paris and Berlin, that doubtless come from Mesopotamian graves, contain inscriptions expressing a blessing on the man who respects the dead, “may his departed spirit in the world below drink clear water.”[212.5] The old idea survives in the belief of modern Islam that the soul of the dead yearns for nothing so much as that the rains or dews of heaven should fall refreshingly on the grave.
These simple differences in the oblations incline us to suppose that the primitive grave-ritual of Greece was developed independently of Babylon.
Again, in Greece this tendance of the spirits, in the case of the great ones of the community—the king, the hero, or the priest—was undoubtedly linked at an early period with apotheosis of the dead; and actual hero-cults and actual cults of ancestors became, as we have seen, a salient phenomenon of Greek religion.
But if this phenomenon is to be noted at all in the Babylonian, it certainly was not salient. We know that under certain circumstances the king might be worshipped in his lifetime and after, but we do not yet know that the departed head or ancestor of the family received actual cult; where this is asserted by modern scholars,[213.1] it may be that they have not paid sufficient attention to the important difference that has been defined between the tendance and the worship of the dead.[213.2] This at all events, on the evidence already placed before us, may be said: in respect of the frequency and force of hero-worship, Mesopotamia stands at the opposite pole to Greece, and in testing the question of primitive religious influences of East on West this fact must be weighed in the scale.
Evidence has been adduced pointing to an early Greek belief that the spirit of the departed ancestor might reincarnate itself in a descendant: a belief fairly common among savage peoples. I have not been able to find any indication of it in Babylonian records, nor am I aware of any trace of it among other Semitic peoples except, possibly, a late Phoenician inscription from the tomb of Eshmunazar, King of Sidon about B.C. 300: in the curse which he invokes against the violator of his tomb he prays that such a man’s posterity may be rooted out: “May they have no root in the world below, nor fruit above, nor any bloom in the life under the sun.”[214.1] These strange words contain the idea of a family-tree; the fruit and the bloom are the living members who are in the light of the sun: the root are the ancestral spirits. If the figure is to be interpreted literally, we must regard these latter as the source of the life that is on the earth, and the curse would mean “may the departed ancestors no longer have the power to reappear in the living.” But we cannot feel sure how much sense we can press into the words.
So far, it appears that there was little or no communion according to Babylonian belief between the dead and the living, except at the family sacramental meal held after the funeral. Only the vexed and neglected soul of the unburied or the unhallowed dead returned to disturb the living. And perhaps at times the Babylonians, as the Israelites, resorted to “necromancy,” the evocation of the dead by spells, so as to question them concerning the future. One evidence of this is the passage in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where the hero is able to evoke the spectre of his friend Eabani and question it. This was probably suggested by an actual practice, which is attested by such priestly titles as “he who leads up the dead,” “he who questions the dead.”[214.2] In ancient Greece we have the further evidence, which is lacking in the Babylonian record, of actual νεκυομαντεῖα or shrines where the dead were consulted, and some of these may have descended from the pre-Homeric period; for the evocation of ghosts seems to have been specially practised in Arcadia, where so much primitive lore survived.
As regards the higher eschatology, it would seem that the Babylonian of the earlier period had not advanced even as far as the Homeric, possibly the pre-Homeric, Greek. For even in Homer’s picture of Hades and the after-life[215.1] there already is found this important trait—certain notorious sinners are punished, certain privileged persons like Menelaos may be wafted to blessedness; while in Hesiod the idea is outspoken that many of the righteous and distinguished men of the past enjoy a blessed lot hereafter.[215.2] Moreover, this important dogma of posthumous punishments and rewards is not confined to the world of mythic fancy in the Homeric epic, to personages such as Tantalos, Tityos, Menelaos: the average man in the Homeric period might not hope for happiness after death; but if Homer is his spokesman he could fear special punishment, and the threat of it was already a moral force.
There are two striking passages in the Iliad, of which the importance for our present question is often ignored: in iii. 278 there is reference to the two divinities whom, with Aristarchus, we must interpret as Hades and Persephone, who punish oath-breakers after death: in xix. 259 the same function of executing judgment in the nether world upon the souls of the perjured is ascribed to the Erinyes: the context in both passages suggests that the poet is giving voice to a common popular belief.
And in regard to posthumous happiness, early Greece may have believed more than Homer reports. For who can determine how early this eschatologic hope came into the Eleusinian mysteries?
The “threats of hell and hopes of Paradise” were never wholly moralised even by later Greek thought; but here are the germs discernible in the earliest stage of the religion from which a higher moral teaching and a new moral force might emanate. But those who have tried to discover similar ideas in the records of Babylonian eschatology have hitherto entirely failed. Certain phrases and certain mythic data may be, and have been, pressed to support the theory that Babylonian religion and ethics were not without some belief in judgment and resurrection;[216.1] but it is overpressure, and the phrases may easily be misunderstood. No clear evidence points to Babylonian belief in posthumous judgment; the title “god of judgment” attached to Nergal might have merely a political significance. Again, “awakener of the dead” is a fairly frequent epithet of many divinities; but no context where it occurs suggests for it an eschatologic intention.[216.2] In the story of Adapa, much of which is recovered from the Tel-El-Amarna tablets, we find reference to the “Food of Life” and the “Water of Life,”[216.3] that the God of Heaven might have given to Adapa and thereby made him immortal; and in the story of Ishtar’s descent, it is said that Allatu kept the waters of life in hell wherewith Ishtar was restored. But nowhere as yet has any hint been found that these waters of life were available for any mortal man, and even Adapa, the son of a god, missed getting them. In the mythology of Babylon only one mortal, Utnapishtim, the Babylonian Noah, passes without death to some happy land and becomes immortal; after the deluge Bel spake thus: “Hitherto hath Utnapishtim been of mankind, but now let Utnapishtim be like unto the gods, even us, and let Utnapishtim dwell afar off at the mouth of the river.”[217.1] Again, as the kings might be considered divine in life, there was no difficulty in supposing that they joined the company of the gods after death, as was supposed in Egypt. The prayers offered to deities of the lower world by the Assyrian king on behalf of his father, in the tablet quoted above, may be thus explained; the nether powers are entreated to offer no obstacles to his apotheosis. Other Semitic nations may have had the same belief concerning the future blessedness of the king; at least an inscription of King Panammu of North Syria, vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III., points to this, for his successor is urged to pray that “the soul of Panammu shall eat and drink with the good Adad.”[217.2]