SYRO-HITTITE CYLINDERS: THE LOWER WORLD. 283 
for the future life as we know was familiar to the Egyptians. The meaning of the 
design, then, is that the owner worships the god with offerings in this world and 
is assured of all needed blessings beyond the grave. We may have the same thought 
expressed in 859, where the worshiper, an owner, is protected behind by a winged 
figure with a bird’s head and is separated by the winged disk from a human-headed 
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857 858 
and an animal-headed figure, who bring him animals for food, probably in the 
other world. The Egyptian influence is strong in this cylinder from the Hauran. 
Attention should be called to fig. 860, also from the Hauran. The upper register 
shows two lions seated and facing each other, with one paw raised over a human 
head; also an eagle, a fish, and a small animal. The lower register has three 
beardless figures supporting on their shoulders a long pole from which three ibexes 
hang suspended by their feet tied together. We can not be sure, that this repre- 
sents provision for the dead in the lower world, but it much resembles fig. 858. 
The value of these cylinders is —_—y - 
that they prove to us the rele SEA met S(Ce' f (Gee Me 
beyond the valley of the Nile of a U1 Ag NY oS : 
faith in the future life, in a judg- 
ment of the dead according to their 
deeds while in the body, and in the . TT nn 
abundant provision for the happy dead in the other world. We seem to have an 
indication that the god of Hades had three assessors who assisted him or attended 
to the spirit that was judged, and it is not at all unlikely that the Greeks drew from 
the Ionian coast their mythology which added three assessors or judges, Minos, 
/Eacus, and Rhadamanthus, to the aid of Pluto, the ruler and judge of the lower 
world, and thus got it at second hahd from the Egyptians. And again we are sur- 
prised that the Hebrews avoided the doctrine of the future life. It would seem to 
be because it was so controlling in the Egyptian religion; and in order to resist and 
escape the polytheism connected with it the Hebrews rejected the doctrine of the 
future life entirely, so that it is not clearly referred to in the Old Testament until 
the doctrine was cleansed of its polytheism by the Persians and had been adopted 
by the Jews at the time the book of Daniel was written. 



