(E) BABYLONIAN ESCHATOLOGY
Man’s ideas and thoughts are very largely determined by his environment, so too his beliefs regarding the next worldhave as their material basis and setting the world in which he now lives ; the unknown but vaguely guessed at, can only be defined, or rather depicted in terms of the known, the unseen in terms of the seen, heaven in the terms of earth, God in the terms of Man — in short, the doctrine of the Incarnation underlies all religion and all religious systems. As we have already seen, the early Babylonians in all probability came from the mountainous country of Elam, for they used the same picture-sign or ideogram for both “mountain” and “ country ” ; the earth was therefore conceived by them under the form of a mountain, and if this world be shaped like a mountain, the world beyond must also doubtless bear a similar shape, hence one of their names for the other world was E-kur, which signifies “mountain-house,” the same name being also applied to the present world. In the early days of Babylonian myth-ology, the gods themselves were believed to inhabit E-kur, the mountain-house of the world, and it is perhaps not unnatural to find the gods so intimately associated with mother-earth, when one recalls that the Babylonians believed the gods themselves to have been evolvedfrom the same watery chaos from which the earth as it were emerged—the gods and the earth were children of the same parent, and were brought into being in the same way.
But this mountain-theory with regard to the other world in no way excluded or apparently even collided with other views of quite a different character ; indeed the most popular conception of the next world, as the realm of the dead, was that of a hollow, or cave situated underneath the earth, which was believed to be shaped somewhat after the fashion of an in-
Verted saucer : this cave was called “ Aralu,” and was poetically described as “ irsitum la tarat ”—“ the land without return ”—a description which is strangely negative, and which illustrates how little the Babylonian concerned himself with the life after death compared with the Egyptian, who may with some truth be said to have devoted his attention more to the life beyond than to the life which now is. The locality of Aralu under the earth may also be inferred from the story of Ishtar’s descent into Hades ; this practically universal conception is so natural a one that it hardly calls for an explanation. The association of the realm of the dead with the grave beneath the earth where the remains of the dead were deposited—is almost inevitable, and the corresponding association of the abode of the gods, or heaven with the regions of light and brightness above this earth—the ever-visible sun and moon being gods themselves—is equally natural, but in passing, it must be remarked that in the system—for lack of a better word—which set the abode of the gods in the regions of the sky, the heaven which they inhabited was not accessible to mortal man, be he ever so good or virtuous ; it was apparently only in earlier times when the home of the gods was located in or on the earth that the souls of the departed are regarded as dwelling with or near them.
This is further corroborated by the application of the term E-kur—“mountain-house”—to the earth itself as well as to the abode of the gods and the realm of the dead, while at the same time it was used to designate the earthly abodes or temples of the gods ; the theory which located the home of the gods upon the E-KUR is probably the earlier, and it was only in later times, when Babylon had made herself more or less supreme in the Euphrates valley, and had thereby gained for her god Marduk a similar supremacy, that the circumstances seemed to demand, as it were, a more universal and less local home for the god whose sway thus extended all over the country; if Marduk confines himself to his temple-home in Babylon, how can he watch over the fortunes and receive the homage of his devotees all over the empire?
Moreover, as has been already stated, on grounds independent of this the temptation to assign a heavenly or sky-home to the gods has been yielded to almost universally; this view of course did not exclude the possibility of the god’s presence in the temples erected to his honour, it only excluded the idea of his exclusive presence in the temple.
But there were yet other names besides Aralu and E-kur, used to designate the abode of the dead, one of which was “ Shualu ” ; this term signifies “ enquiry ” and comes from the same root as that from which the proper name “ Saul ” (“ asked for ”) is derived, itself being the equivalent of the Hebrew “ Sheol ” which the Greeks rendered “ Hades,” and English translators unfortunately rendered “ hell ” ; the world of the dead is accordingly regarded as a place of enquiry, the enquiry being presumably of the nature of an oracle. The dead are thus supposed to be endowed with the power of answering questions addressed to them by people on earth ; and in this capacity they resemble the gods, the only difference being that the gods grant oracles through the hands of their priests, while the dead use necromancers as their mediums, as was the case when Samuel manifested himself to Saul through the agency of the necromancing witch of Endor. Thus in connection with the E-kur home of the gods and of the dead, it will be observed that the dead are not only regarded as with, or near the gods, but, like the gods they are also empowered to assist earthly mortals with their oracular utterances; this pre-supposes that the dead are endowed with a greater knowledge than the living, and accordingly however gloomy Aralu, Shualu or E-kur (as the home of the
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Dead) may be, the dead are at all events drawn nearer to the gods in this respect, and partake more freely of the Tree of Knowledge than the living.
Having arrived thus far, the deification of the dead is but a short step, which the Babylonian found no great difficulty in taking; as however the deification of the departed was the exception rather than the rule, the exceptional cases of such deification must have had a special raison d’etre of their own, and that raison d’etre was probably the power of gran ting oracles which the Babylonian attributed to those highly-favoured individuals, whose heroic achievements on earth had won for them the greatest honour accorded to mankind in antiquity. The kings indeed were often deified after death and even during their lifetime, but that was the natural corollary of the belief that the next world is similar in order and in its mode of government to this world, albeit it was much more gloomy and also of a comparatively negative character.
But though the dead are thus regarded as more akin to the gods than the living, and more the objects of their special care, yet their very affinity to the gods seems to place them more beyond the power and control of the latter, and the priests whose delegated divine authority is paramount over the living, have no right of influence whatever over the dead.
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 “ irsitum
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