Another name for the under-world was “Ki-gallu” which signifies “great land,” “Ki” being the regular ideogram for “earth” generally, or “land” specifically, the two being to the early oriental mind practically synonymous; this term, like E-kur, thus associates the abode of the dead with the abode of the living, the abode of the living being on the earth, and the abode of the dead being under or within the earth. Other epithets applied to the under-world were—“the dark dwelling,” “the house of death,” “the grave,” “the great city,” “the deep land,” and the above-mentioned “irṣitum la tarat,” “the land whence there is no return,” the latter occurring in the well-known story of Ishtar’s descent into Hades, where the nether-world is further described as a house of darkness in which the dead, clothed in feathers like birds, depend upon dust and clay for their nourishment. This account of the world beyond the grave tallies well with the account given by Ea-bani, when called up from the realms of the dead to speak to his friend Gilgamesh; Ea-bani shrinks from paining his friend by describing the horrors of the under-world, but is at last prevailed upon to do so, and his description of Hades is that of “a place where the worm devours and all is cloaked in dust”—“Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” The idea of the dead being clothed with feathers like birds recalls the characteristically Mesopotamian monsters of composite form, half-bird and half-man, themselves apparently connected directly or indirectly with the nether-world.
It was believed however that the pitiable lot of the dead could be to some extent mitigated by acts of devotion and charity practised by those that remain; thus it was of primary importance to the deceased that he should receive a respectable and decent burial, and furthermore his needs did not stop there, for in E-kur—whether the term be applied to the earth as the home of mortals, or to the land of the dead, man requires both food and drink for his sustenance. The condition of the hapless man who receives no burial and is provided with none of the necessaries of life in the next world is described at the close of the Gilgamesh Epic, where we are informed that such an one is consumed by gnawing hunger and has perforce to satisfy his appetite with the offal on the streets; but not only was the unburied shade a curse to himself so to speak, he also became a curse to the living by assuming the form of an “ekimmu” or demon, possessed with malignant intentions towards mankind, and furthermore endowed with the regrettable power of carrying those intentions into good effect; it therefore behoved the living to attend to the requirements of the dead from the point of view of self-defence quite apart from any considerations of pious charity.
There was no distinction made between the faithful and unfaithful departed in the halls of Aralu, the only difference there was, lay between the lot of those who received the rites of burial and the means of sustenance at the hands of their surviving friends and relatives, and the lot of those to whom were denied the last rites and offices; it should however be observed that the future life of those who perished on the battle-field was believed to be fraught with greater happiness, or at least less unhappiness than that of the generality of mankind.
Thus to the Babylonian the sting of death was very far from being removed, and their funeral dirges consisted chiefly in lamentations on account of the pitiful plight of the departed one rather than for their own personal loss; for them there was no swallowing up of Death in Victory, the only possibility of future bliss lying in immunity from death, an immunity which had only been offered to one or two mortals, and of which only one had apparently succeeded in availing himself, that single exception being Ṣit-napishtim whose exaltation to the godhead apparently exonerated him from the necessity of dying. The prevailing note was thus one of pessimism, a pessimism from which “the dwellers in Mesopotamia” have never succeeded in entirely emancipating themselves, a pessimism which is moreover discernible in the sacred writings of the Hebrews long after their emigration from Babylonia to the land of Canaan. To Job the lot of a tree is preferable to that of humanity, for “it hath hope, if it be cut down, it will sprout again; but man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep”; so too the Psalmist begs that he may be allowed to recover his strength—“before I go hence and be no more,” the general inference being that to the Hebrew mind the life beyond the grave resembled bare existence rather than a life with positive activities and positive functions to perform.
The tendency to regard the unknown with suspicion and doubt is incidental to the laws of our nature, and history demonstrates that only a courageous buoyancy won through the ceaseless efforts of mankind to combat the Mother who bore them, can overcome this as all other tendencies inherent in human nature. To the peoples of antiquity the world beyond was unknown and dark, for primitive man perforce regards as dark a state of existence concerning which he is in the dark, just as he has invariably attributed the causes of physical phenomena outside his ken to the powers of darkness, but the very darkness of the other world so far from diminishing the reality of its existence in his primitive mind, seems to have contrariwise, intensified it; he regarded the unseen through the medium of a mental telescope—to him it loomed dark but big; seeing was by no means the necessary condition of his believing, he believed where he did not see, and his imagination proved quite adequate to the occasion. In the twentieth century on the other hand there is an inclination to regard the unknown as ipso facto non-existent, but it must be confessed that the tendency exhibited by early man to accredit the unknown with an even greater reality than the known, accords more closely with the archetypal idealism of Plato and others whose mental development is at least of no mean order, and whose theories have not as yet stood convicted at the bar of Logic.
A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Those readers who may desire to enlarge their information on any particular subject referred to in this volume cannot do better than consult the following works. For a history of the excavations, Hilprecht’s Explorations in Bible Lands (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh), is a most useful book. For further details regarding the excavations at Nippur Peters’ Nippur, or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates (Putman) should be consulted, and also Fisher’s Excavations at Nippur (Philadelphia). For a study of cuneiform writing and the inscriptions, Sayce’s Archæology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions (S.P.C.K.) should be read. It is the most recent work on the subject, is full of interest and original ideas. For the literature of the Babylonians and Assyrians, see Harper’s Literature of the Assyrians and Babylonians, (Aldine Library), which contains the translation of a thoroughly representative selection of the literary products of both countries.
An account of the excavations carried on during the last decade by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft at Babylon and Ashur will be found in the official reports of Koldewey and Andrae in the Mitteilungen of the Society (published by J. Hinrichs’sche, Buchhandlung Leipzig), while for a detailed account of the Anu-Adad temple at Ashur Andrae’s Der Anu-Adad Tempel (also published by Hinrichs) should be consulted. The works of De Sarzec and Heuzey (published by E. Leroux, Paris) should be studied by those who wish to gain a full and comprehensive account of the excavations at Tellô; of these the Découvertes en Chaldée is the most important. This magnificently illustrated work, which contains a complete statement of the early discoveries made on this site, and also a critical and well-balanced judgment of the deductions which we may make from those discoveries, is unquestionably one of the most important contributions to the study of Sumerian art. Of M. Heuzey’s smaller works, Une Villa Royale Chaldéenne (Leroux, Paris) is calculated to be of special interest to the student of Babylonian architecture, while his numerous articles in the Revue d’Assyriologie (Leroux, Paris) and papers in the Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres solve many of the problems which beset the study of oriental art. In regard to Cylinder-seals, the monumental work which has recently been published by W. Hayes Ward, The Cylinder-Seals of Western Asia (Carnegie Institute) is by far the most comprehensive on the subject, and is the culmination of a great many years’ research in the public and private collections of Europe and America.
For the study of Law, the reader should consult C. J. Johns’ Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters (Edinburgh), Assyrian Deeds and Documents (Cambridge), and An Assyrian Doomsday Book (Delitzsch and Haupt, Assyriologische Bibliothek, Band XVII, Leipzig), while the student of Babylonian and Assyrian Religion should refer to Morris Jastrow’s Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (Boston, U.S.A), which is the only exhaustive work on the subject. For a detailed and comprehensive treatment of the arts and crafts of the Babylonians and Assyrians in the light of the material available when the book was published, Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Chaldaea and Assyria (Chapman & Hall, London; A. C. Armstrong & Son, New York) should be read.