BURIAL—THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD — 385 
shade, ran the common belief, could not reach Aralli, but 
wandered disconsolately about the earth. When driven by 
pangs of hunger it perforce ate the offal or leavings of the street. 
As the Egyptians, to ensure the continued existence of the 
dead and his ka, provided sepulchral offerings (the depictments 
of which included fish 4), so did the Babylonians, not only for 
a similar but also for the additional purpose of preserving them- 
selves from torments. 
To leave a body unburied was not unattended with danger 
to the living. The shade of the dead man might bewitch any 
person it met and cause him grievous sickness. The wandering 
shade of a man was called ekimmu, 1.e. spectre. Only sorcerers 
possessed the power of casting a spell whereby the ekimmu 
might be made to harassaman. On the other hand, the spectre 
sometimes settled on a man of its own accord, in the hope that 
its victim would be driven to give it burial to free himself from 
its clutches.? 
The Babylonian conception of the condition of the dead 
was an utterly joyless one. Aralli, or the House of the Dead, 
was dark and gloomy. Its dwellers never beheld the light of the 
sun, but sat in unchanging gloom. The Babylonians possessed 
no hope of a joyous life beyond the grave, nor did they imagine 
a paradise in which the deceased would live a life similar to 
that on earth. 
The nature of the under-world can be gathered from the 
description given to Gilgamesh by the spirit of Enkidu risen 
hardly warranted, at any rate by the O.T. passages which he adduces in support 
of this statement, in attributing to Israel the idea of the unburied dead being 
condemned to miserable wandering. For the Greek conception see intey alia 
the Antigone of Sophocles. 
1 See Egyptian Book of the Dead (London, 1910), ch. LIII., with reference 
to the deceased being obliged, from lack of proper food in the under-world, to 
eat filth—‘ Let me not be obliged to eat thereof in place of the sepulchral 
offerings.” To provide food for the dead, asphodel was planted near 
tombs (Odyssey, XI. 539 and 573) by the Greeks. From Hesiod (Op. 41) we 
learn that the roots of the asphodel were eaten as a common vegetable, as was 
the mallow. Merry states that in the Greek islands, where customs linger 
longer than on the mainland, this “ kind of squill is still planted on graves.’’ 
If the Homeric ‘ mead of asphodel’ turns out, as some editors maintain, to 
have had a strictly utilitarian significance, how many poets and poetasters 
have mistaken ‘ greens’ for ‘ greenery ! ’ 
* King, Babylonian Religion (op. cit.), p. 45, and Babylonian Magic and 
Sorcery (London, 1896), pp. 119 ff., where the incantation appropriate for 
exorcising demons is set out. 
