History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 25 - Ch. 2: The Temples and the Gods of Chaldaea, pt. 12

Cremation seems in many cases to have been preferred to burial in a tomb.

The funeral pile was constructed at some distance from the town, on a specially reserved area in the middle of the marshes.

The body, wrapped up in coarse matting, was placed upon a heap of reeds and rushes saturated with bitumen: a brick wall, coated with moist clay, was built around this to circumscribe the action of the flames, and, the customary prayers having been recited, the pile was set on fire, masses of fresh material, together with the funerary furniture and usual viaticum, being added to the pyre.

When the work of cremation was considered to be complete, the fire was extinguished, and an examination made of the residue.

It frequently happened that only the most accessible and most easily destroyed parts of the body had been attacked by the flames, and that there remained a black and disfigured mass which the fire had not consumed.

The previously prepared coating of mud was then made to furnish a clay covering for the body, so as to conceal the sickening spectacle from the view of the relatives and spectators.

Sometimes, however, the furnace accomplished its work satisfactorily, and there was nothing to be seen at the end but greasy ashes and scraps of calcined bones.

The remains were frequently left where they were, and the funeral pile became their tomb.

They were, however, often collected and disposed of in a manner which varied with their more or less complete combustion.

Bodies insufficiently burnt were interred in graves, or in public chapels; while the ashes of those fully cremated, together with the scraps of bones and the _debris_ of the offerings, were placed in long urns.

The heat had contorted the weapons and half melted the vessels of copper; and the deceased was thus obliged to be content with the fragments only of the things provided for him.

These were, however, sufficient for the purpose, and his possessions, once put to the test of the flames, now accompanied him whither he went: water alone was lacking, but provision was made for this by the construction on the spot of cisterns to collect it.

For this purpose several cylinders of pottery, some twenty inches broad, were inserted in the ground one above the other from a depth of from ten to twelve feet, and the last cylinder, reaching the level of the ground, was provided with a narrow neck, through which the rainwater or infiltrations from the river flowed into this novel cistern.

Many examples of these are found in one and the same chamber,* thus giving the soul an opportunity of finding water in one or other of them.

The tombs at Uruk, arranged closely together with coterminous walls, and gradually covered by the sand or by the accumulation and _debris_ of new tombs, came at length to form an actual mound.

In cities where space was less valuable, and where they were free to extend, the tombs quickly disappeared without leaving any vestiges above the surface, and it would now be necessary to turn up a great deal of rubbish before discovering their remains.

The Chaldaea of to-day presents the singular aspect of a country almost without cemeteries, and one would be inclined to think that its ancient inhabitants had taken pains to hide them.

** The sepulture of royal personages alone furnishes us with monuments of which we can determine the site.

At Babylon these were found in the ancient palaces in which the living were no longer inclined to dwell: that of Shargina, for instance, furnished a burying-place for kings more than two thousand years after the death of its founder.

The chronicles devoutly indicate the spot where each monarch, when his earthly reign was over, found a last resting-place;

and where, as the subject of a ceremonial worship similar to that of Egypt, his memory was preserved from the oblivion which had overtaken most of his illustrious subjects.

* The German expedition of 1886-87 found four of these reservoirs in a single chamber, and nine distributed in the chambers of a house entirely devoted to the burial of the dead.

** Various explanations have been offered to account for this absence of tombs, Without mentioning the desperate attempt to get rid of the difficulty by the assumption that the dead bodies were cast into the river, Loftus thinks that the Chaldaeans and Assyrians were accustomed to send them to some sanctuary in Southern Chaldaea, especially to Uru and Uruk, whose vast cemeteries, he contends, would have absorbed during the centuries the greater part of the Euphratean population; his opinion has been adopted by some historians, and, as far only as the later period is concerned, by Hommel.

The dead man, or rather that part of him which survived--his “ekimmu”--dwelt in the tomb, and it was for his comfort that there were provided, at the time of sepulture or cremation, the provisions and clothing, the ornaments and weapons, of which he was considered to stand in need.

Furnished with these necessities by his children and heirs, he preserved for the donors the same affection which he had felt for them in his lifetime, and gave evidence of it in every way he could, watching over their welfare, and protecting them from malign influences.

If they abandoned or forgot him, he avenged himself for their neglect by returning to torment them in their homes, by letting sickness attack them, and by ruining them with his imprecations: he became thus no less hurtful than the “luminous ghost” of the Egyptians, and if he were accidentally deprived of sepulture, he would not be merely a plague to his relations, but a danger to the entire city.

The dead, who were unable to earn an honest living, showed little pity to those who were in the same position as themselves: when a new-comer arrived among them without prayers, libations, or offerings, they declined to receive him, and would not give him so much as a piece of bread out of their meagre store.

The spirit of the unburied dead man, having neither place of repose nor means of subsistence, wandered through the town and country, occupied with no other thought than that of attacking and robbing the living.

He it was who, gliding into the house during the night, revealed himself to its inhabitants with such a frightful visage as to drive them distracted with terror.

Always on the watch, no sooner does he surprise one of his victims than he falls upon him, “his head against his victim’s head, his hand against his hand, his foot against his foot.

” He who has been thus attacked, whether man or beast, would undoubtedly perish if magic were not able to furnish its all-powerful defence against this deadly embrace.

* This human survival, who is so forcibly represented both in his good and evil aspects, was nevertheless nothing more than a sort of vague and fluid existence--a double, in fact, analogous in appearance to that of the Egyptians.

* The majority of the spells employed against sickness contain references to the spirits against which they contend--“the wicked ekimmu who oppresses men during the night,” or simply “the wicked ekimmu,” the ghost.

With the faculty of roaming at will through space, and of going forth from and returning to his abode, it was impossible to regard him as condemned always to dwell in the case of terra-cotta in which his body lay mouldering: he was transferred, therefore, or rather he transferred himself, into the dark land--the Aralu--situated very far away--according to some, beneath the surface of the earth; according to others, in the eastern or northern extremities of the universe.

A river which opens into this region and separates it from the sunlit earth, finds its source in the primordial waters into whose bosom this world of ours is plunged.

This dark country is surrounded by seven high walls, and is approached through seven gates, each of which is guarded by a pitiless warder.

Two deities rule within it--Nergal, “the lord of the great city,” and Beltis-Allat, “the lady of the great land,” whither everything which has breathed in this world descends after death.

A

legend relates that Allat, called in Sumerian Erishkigal, reigned alone in Hades, and was invited by the gods to a feast which they had prepared in heaven.

Owing to her hatred of the light, she sent a refusal by her messenger Narntar, who acquitted himself on this mission with such a bad grace, that Ann and Ea were incensed against his mistress, and commissioned Nergal to descend and chastise her; he went, and finding the gates of hell open, dragged the queen by her hair from the throne, and was about to decapitate her, but she mollified him by her prayers, and saved her life by becoming his wife.

The nature of Nergal fitted him well to play the part of a prince of the departed: for he was the destroying sun of summer, and the genius of pestilence and battle.

His functions, however, in heaven and earth took up so much of his time that he had little leisure to visit his nether kingdom, and he was consequently obliged to content himself with the _role_ of providing subjects for it by despatching thither the thousands of recruits which he gathered daily from the abodes of men or from the field of battle.

Allat was the actual sovereign of the country.

She was represented with the body of a woman, ill-formed and shaggy, the grinning muzzle of a lion, and the claws of a bird of prey.

She brandished in each hand a large serpent--a real animated javelin, whose poisonous bite inflicted a fatal wound upon the enemy.

Her children were two lions, which she is represented as suckling, and she passed through her empire, not seated in the saddle, but standing upright or kneeling on the back of a horse, which seems oppressed by her weight.

Sometimes she set out on an expedition upon the river which communicates with the countries of light, in order to meet the procession of newly arrived souls ceaselessly despatched to her: she embarked in this case upon an enchanted vessel, which made its way without sail or oars, its prow projecting like the beak of a bird, and its stern terminating in the head of an ox.

She overcomes all resistance, and nothing can escape from her: the gods themselves can pass into her empire only on the condition of submitting to death like mortals, and of humbly avowing themselves her slaves.

[Illustration: 220. jpg THE GODDESS ALLAT PASSES THROUGH THE NETHER REGIONS IN HER BARK.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze plaque of which an engraving was published by Clermont-Ganneau.

The original, which belonged to M. Peretie, is now in the collection of M. de Clercq [Illustration: 221. jpg NERGAL, THE GOD OF HADES; BACK VIEW.

]