Adapa
Human mortality was explained and justified in the story of Adapa, a sage (ap-kallu) living in Eridu before the time of the Flood. Eridu's god Ea (Enki) entrusted Adapa with divine knowledge and wisdom in order to oversee the smooth running of the city and especially Ea's temple. One day a sudden gust from the South Wind capsized Adapa's boat, and in anger he cursed it. After seven days without its wind the disastrous effects were being felt even in Heaven. Anu, strongly displeased, sent for Adapa, who was advised by Ea not to eat the food and drink offered him in Heaven, which would be the bread and water of death.
The intercession of the heavenly doorkeepers, whom Adapa had flattered, placated Anu when he questioned Adapa. Although disquieted by the amount of knowledge that Ea had given humanity, An offered Adapa the bread and water of Heaven, which would confer immortality. Obeying Ea's instructions, however, Adapa refused, to Anu's considerable amusement.
Adapa was sent back to Earth, unharmed but deprived of the chance of immortal life. Ea's intentions are ambiguous: Did he deliberately mislead Adapa in telling him to refuse food and drink, or was the "smart" god outsmarted by Anu?
Rites for the Dead
Written sources show that, ideally, a Mesopotamian should spend his or her last hours on a special funerary bed, surrounded by family and friends. After breath had left the body, rituals were spoken to enable the soul also to leave, seating itself on a chair beside the bed. The body was prepared for burial: washed, anointed, and dressed in a red robe. During the wake (taklimtu) the deceased was laid out surrounded by the objects that were to accompany him or her to the grave. These included personal possessions, food, drink, and sandals for the journey to the netherworld, and gifts for the deities who ruled there to ensure the deceased's welcome. Incense was burned and torches carried around the bed.
The funeral entailed considerable expense. Burial officials received the funerary bed and chair, along with the clothes in which the person had died and a quantity of grain, bread, and beer. Even in ED times, this was seen as an opportunity for extortion, for Uru-inim-gina of Lagash included a reduction in funerary payments to such officials among his reforms.
The dead were always buried, since the body was needed to enable the deceased to enjoy offerings of food and drink; the grave acted as the "house" of the dead where communication between them and the living could take place. Carrying off the bones of a deceased enemy prevented his family from making the necessary periodic offerings to his spirit: This extreme measure was adopted, for example, by Ashurbanipal against the rulers of Susa. However, if the body was not properly buried the ghost could roam free, tormenting the living: Victors in battle would raise a mound over the enemy dead to prevent this happening.
The deceased could be placed either in a family vault or in a cemetery, depending on various factors such as status and local customs. One well-established practice, attested throughout Mesopotamian history and perhaps confined to kings, was burial in tombs in the "abode of Enki," particular locations in the marshes of the south. Some houses had a vaulted burial chamber; other families simply dug a pit beneath the house in which to place the body. Similarly, cemeteries contained both simple burials in pits and more substantial shaft graves or brick tombs, often vaulted, in which the dead were placed. The lavishly furnished graves in the Royal Cemetery at Ur consisted of a shaft leading down into a substantial pit containing a vaulted brick and stone chamber in which the principal burial was laid.
The body might be simply wrapped in a cloth or a reed mat, but more affluent families would place the body in a reed or wooden coffin or stone or terracotta sarcophagus. Children were often placed within a pottery vessel, and adults could be buried within two, laid on their sides, or one particularly large pot. Some burials throughout Mesopotamian history had the body laid between two layers of potsherds. Graves generally contained single burials; in some early graves the presence of another body suggests that a slave had been included among the grave goods: One appeared in an ED list of grave goods from Lagash. The spectacular burials in the Royal Cemetery at Ur contained up to seventy-four bodies accompanying the main burial, although whether these were human sacrifices is debated (see chapter 11).
With the body were placed the offerings displayed during the wake. Curiously in ED times, after a decent interval of perhaps fifty years, the grave was frequently reopened and valuable offerings removed and presumably put back into circulation. Poor people generally had only a few pots and personal ornaments as well as food and drink; at the opposite extreme, royal burials were lavishly furnished. The most striking examples are the rich burials in the Royal Cemetery at Ur. Dating to the Early Dynastic period, and most to period Illa, these burial pits contained exquisite gold jewelry, lyres decorated with gold and lapis lazuli, gaming boards, gilded furniture, silver vessels, richly decorated sculptures, and in one grave a beautiful helmet of gold. Few royal graves have been discovered; one exception is a series of vaulted chambers beneath the women's quarters in the North-West Palace at Kalhu where several queens and other members of the Assyrian royal household were buried, including Yaba, wife of Tiglath-Pileser III, and Atalia, wife of Sargon II, along with many fine vessels of alabaster, gold, and silver, jewelry of gold and precious stones, a gold mirror with an ivory handle, and other treasures.
A period of mourning was important among the funerary rites. Public mourning ceremonies for the death of a king went on for seven days. In a private burial, the mourners included not only family and friends, dressed in sackcloth or torn garments, unwashed and unkempt, anointed with ash, but also professional mourners, who might include prostitutes. Women might tear their hair and scratch their faces, and the men bewail loudly, and both would fast. There was wailing and drums might be beaten. Lamentations in which the deceased was praised and his or her passing bitterly regretted were sung or spoken, sometimes accompanied by music. Failure to mourn properly indicated profound and culpable disrespect: Appropriate mourning for an adoptive parent was specified as a duty; and when Inanna visited the netherworld and was given up for dead, her husband Dumuzi's shocking disregard of proper mourning earned his own banishment to the netherworld.
After Death
Death at seventy or more was accepted and even welcomed, but the prospect of death was not appealing. The spirit (etemmu) left the body and walked west across demon-infested steppe; those buried with a chariot could ride instead. Reaching the infernal river Khubur, the spirit was ferried across and entered the underworld, which lay beneath the Abzu and the Ocean. Here the deceased was welcomed by Ereshkigal, Nergal, and their court of Anunnaki, and Geshtinanna checked off his or her name against a master list of humanity. The dead endured a gray and empty existence, their happiness directly related to the quantity and quality of the offerings of food and drink made by their children and grandchildren. Later generations forgot them, and they became part of the general undifferentiated mass of the dead, although there is some suggestion that they were then recycled as spirits for new babies. The grim and dreary realm was somewhat enlivened by the nightly visit of Shamash, who came here when the sun left the sky to judge cases involving the living and the dead. Local underworld problems went before a court presided over by Gilgamesh.
Strong walls surrounded the underworld, and the dead could not generally escape. Some ghosts, however, returned to haunt the living: These unquiet spirits were usually dangerous and often malevolent. These ghosts (etemmu) included people whose bodies had not been buried; those who had died by violence (although not those who had fallen heroically in battle); and individuals who had died young or tragically. Stillborn children, however, played happily in the underworld "at a table of gold and silver, laden with honey and ghee" (Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature "Gilgamesh and the Netherworld"). Ghosts could trouble the living by entering their bodies via their ears, or by appearing in their dreams. They generally acted on their own initiative but could also be called up and used by an evil sorcerer. The living made offerings to ward off ghosts: second-rate food and drink, less appealing than that which they offered to their own personal dead. They could also protect themselves with amulets and potions. The ghost of someone unburied might be laid by interring a figurine as a substitute.
The dead were allowed to return for the annual ceremonies (kisega / kispum), where offerings were made by their relatives—this was particularly the responsibility of the eldest son who therefore inherited the family home (beneath which the family dead might lie) and often an extra share of his parents' estate. If there were no sons, a daughter could perform the rites instead, as was also the duty of a person adopted by a childless individual. Offerings were made at the end of every month and during three-day festivals at the end of the months of Du'uzu (June / July) (the feast of Dumuzi) and Abu (July / August). The visiting dead could "smell incense," and food such as bread, honey, grain, and sometimes meat was placed by the grave for them, while water, beer, wine, and other liquids were poured onto the grave or down a pipe into it. Jewelry and clothing might also be placed on a statue of the deceased. The dead were invoked by name, to prevent unconnected ghosts receiving the benefit of the offerings. These occasions were the chance for the living to communicate with the dead, asking favors or advice of them or begging them to desist from ill-intentioned haunting. The actual conversation was carried on through an intermediary, the ghost raiser, who smeared a special ointment on his forehead to enable him to see and hear the ghosts. At the end of the visit, the spirits of the dead set sail in boats to return to the underworld.
Inanna’s Journey to Hell
Several Mesopotamian poems give detailed descriptions of the underworld. One, which exists in two rather different versions, Sumerian and Akkadian, recounts Inanna's visit to the underworld, it seems with the intention of wresting its control from her sister Ereshkigal. She arrayed herself in all her glory but before leaving told her trusty attendant Ninshubur what to do if she did not return. Then she walked down to the gates of the underworld where she demanded entry from the doorkeeper, Neti, mendaciously claiming she had come to share Ereshkigal's mourning for her deceased husband, Gugalanna. Neti reported to Ereshkigal, who reluctantly instructed him to admit Inanna, following the usual procedures. Neti led Inanna through the seven gates in the seven walls of the underworld, and at each he stripped her of an item of her attire: her crown, her staff, her jewelry, and finally her garment, so that she came before Ereshkigal naked and bereft of power. Ereshkigal completed the process by transforming her into a rotting side of meat or an empty water flask.
When after three days she had not returned, Ninshubur donned mourning rags, scratched her eyes and mouth, wailed, and beat a drum; she went to Enlil and then Nanna, seeking their help in rescuing Inanna. Both declined, saying Inanna had brought the situation on herself. Ninshubur then tried Enki who was more sympathetic and resourceful. From the dirt under his nails, in the Sumerian version, he created two mourners whom he sent to the underworld. On his instructions they sympathized with Ereshkigal's sufferings and were rewarded with Inanna's corpse, which they reanimated using the grass and water of life. In the Akkadian version, Enki created a glorious youth, Asushunamir, who beguiled Ereshkigal and obtained the water skin, which Ereshkigal was forced to restore to its true form as Inanna, cursing him for his duplicity.
Although restored to life, Inanna could not be released unless a substitute took her place in the netherworld. Accompanied by demons impatient to carry off the substitute, she returned to Earth. First she met the faithful Ninshubur, then the gods Shara and Lulal (Latarak), all sincerely mourning her, and protected them from the demons. But finally she came upon her husband,
Dumuzi, who had taken the opportunity of her absence to dress in finery and sit on her throne. With no compunction she delivered him to the demons, and he was hauled off to the underworld. But his sister Geshtinanna took his place for half of the year, allowing him to return every year to the land of the living.
Gilgamesh and the Netherworld
In one tale Gilgamesh, legendary king of Uruk, lost a favorite plaything into a hole whence it rolled down to the underworld. Gilgamesh's fearless friend Enkidu went to recover it but foolishly ignored advice on appropriate behavior, wearing good clothes rather than mourning rags and generally drawing attention to himself; in consequence he was detained there. Gilgamesh petitioned the gods to intercede on Enkidu's behalf, but (as usual) only Enki was helpful, persuading Utu (Shamash) to bring Enkidu back with him after his nightly sojourn in the netherworld.
Enkidu was much shaken by the awful sights of the underworld and recounted them to Gilgamesh with mounting horror. First he spoke of men who had had sons, their fate becoming increasingly comfortable as the number of sons rose, from the man with one son, lamenting bitterly, to the man with seven, enjoying a position of comfort and responsibility among the lesser gods of the underworld. But then he described those less fortunate: the man with no sons, eating "a bread-loaf like a kiln-fired brick"(George 1999: 188), the woman who had never borne children, cast aside "like a defective pot" (George 1999: 188), the miserable shades of those who suffered disfiguring afflictions or mutilating injuries in life and were still suffering, the man whose parents had cursed him and who wandered as an unquiet ghost, and, ultimate horror, the man who had burned to death, who wasn't there at all but had turned to smoke.
Seeking Immortality
Gilgamesh later offended Inanna by insultingly rejecting her sexual advances, and he and Enkidu compounded his crime by destroying the Bull of Heaven, which Inanna had loosed to punish him. This sacrilege caused the gods to decree the death of Enkidu, who fell sick and after twelve days miserably died in his bed.
Gilgamesh plunged into unrestrained grief and lamentation, praising Enkidu and calling upon Uruk's citizens to share his mourning. He organized magnificent grave goods: huge quantities of gold, gems, and ivory from his treasury; a sacrifice of many animals; and gifts for each of the gods and staff of the netherworld, right down to the cleaners. But he refused to accept the fact of death and give up his friend's body for burial until on the seventh night a maggot fell from Enkidu's nose.
Now for the first time Gilgamesh, fearless hero of many dangerous adventures, became afraid of death. Half crazed, he left Uruk and wandered through strange lands, searching for the immortal hero of the Flood, Ut-napishtim, who knew the secret of eternal life. Finally he reached the land beyond the Waters of Death where Ut-napishtim dwelt with his wife. In a bracing speech, Ut-napishtim told him that death is unavoidable and its timing unpredictable, and upbraided him with wasting his allotted span in this futile and degrading quest instead of shouldering his responsibilities as king.
You exhaust yourself with ceaseless toil, you fill your sinews with sorrow, bringing forward the end of your days.
(The Epic of Gilgamesh X 298-300, trans. George 1999: 86)
As a preliminary to seeking immortality, he challenged Gilgamesh to go without sleep for seven nights. Gilgamesh was boastful and confident, but instantly fell asleep. Ut-napishtim's wife baked a loaf and placed it beside him each day, and on the seventh Ut-napishtim touched Gilgamesh, who woke, protesting that he hadn't slept more than a moment. Ut-napishtim pointed out the loaves, in various stages of decay, and Gilgamesh had to admit that he had failed to conquer even sleep, let alone death. In despair he made ready to leave. As a parting gift, however, Ut-napishtim instructed him how to obtain from the ocean floor the Plant of Life, which would restore his youthful vigor.
Feeling more optimistic Gilgamesh began his return journey. When he stopped to bathe, however, the Plant of Life was stolen by a snake, which instantly sloughed its skin, demonstrating the plant's efficacy. Knowing he could never find the plant again, Gilgamesh returned to Uruk with a heavy heart. Here, however, he was uplifted by the sight of the city wall he had built: This was his immortality.
Thus the great epic exemplifies the Mesopotamian philosophy of life: Enjoy the pleasures of the world, for they are transient and their duration unknowable, and seek immortality in well-performed duties and lasting achievements.
World History
