American Academy of Religion

Death: Myth and RitualAuthor(s): Adele M. FiskeReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Sep., 1969), pp. 249-265Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1461655 .Accessed: 16/11/2011 05:12

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Death: Myth and Ritual

ADELE M. FISKE

In myths of the ancient Near East death is conceived not as annihilation but as a continued existence. This existence is minimal, static, a fixed mirror-image of life, existence underground, dark and silent, lost and "wandering," hungry and

thirsty. Sometimes there is a second death, or a possible paradise.1 Distinction must be made between survival in the world of the living by memory or by posterity, and survival on a plane of existence beyond mortal life and what Gaster calls "punctuality." This distinc- tion implies a further one between "life," - presence on earth with bodily func- tions - and mere "existence,"2 like rock or stone.s

Beliefs about the unknown fate of the dead illustrate the function of myth, translating the real and punctual -into terms of the ideal and durative, projecting ritual procedure to the plane of the ideal situation.4 Rituals of kenosis rather than

those of plerosis relate to death, especially the mortification and purgation elements in the seasonal pattern.5 The concept that to a primitive community life is not a consistent progress from birth to death, but "a series of leases annually or

periodically renewed" is illuminating.6 Rites of kenosis (emptying) "portray and

symbolize the eclipse of life and vitality at the end of each lease," which is usually related to the seasonal variation in the

Syro-Palestinian year, a dry and wet season.' Moreover, what declines and is revivified is the total corporate unit, the

topocosm,s but it does not exclude, how- ever, the positive aspect, the plerosis rites. As Eliade points out, all rituals have a common element, an initiatory essence, death followed by "resurrec- tion."' Initiation is death and rebirth, to end and to be perfected, a paradox expressed in an ancient confusion between the words teleisthai and teleutan.Y' The

1 Cf. E. Bendann, Death Customs, an Analytic Study of Burial Rites, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930, pp. 57-61, 282.

SThis outlook seems to rest on a clear distinction between existence and life. I am in- debted to Professor T. H. Gaster for this observation.

. Cf. death imagery in Greek poetry. See Robert F. Goheen, The Imagery of Sophocles' "Antigone," a Study of Poetic Language and Structure, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951, pp. 37-41, 109; Antigone (823-33) likens herself to Niobe (Iliad XXIV. 602-617). Also see Richmond Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962, p. 175.

4 Theodore H. Gaster, Thespis, Ritual, Myth and Drama in the Ancient Near East, 2nd rev. ed., New York: Doubleday & Company, 1961, p. 24.

6 Ibid., pp. 23, 26. 6 Ibid., p. 23. SIbid., p. 132, n. 28. 8 Ibid., p. 24.

' Mircea Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy, trans. by W. R. Trask, Bollingen Series LXXVI, New York: Pantheon Books, 1964, p. 64.

10 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 57. 249

250 ADELE M. FISKE

traditional scheme of the initiation cere- mony- whether into a tribe, a secret society, or as a shaman- is suffering, death, and resurrection, in an ecstatic experience of dismemberment, ascent to the sky, descent to the underworld." The concept of life after death would seem to be a projection to another existence of these initiatory experiences.

When there is a death, the whole group concerned is in a "religious state," made "sacred" by contagion with the dead. Hence abstentions are required: It is for- bidden to speak his name, to go to the place he died, to speak to strangers. Men must keep silence, save for groans, cut their hair and their beard, smear clay on face or body, beat, burn and lacerate themselves. All these actions are at- tributed to the dead in myths of the next life.12 The funeral ritual itself, a technique, as James says, "to deal with the mys- terious and disturbing phenomenon of death,""3 often includes the following: the eyes and mouth of the dead are closed --i. e., he is in darkness and silent - his body is washed and anointed, but he is not "purified." Pure water is kept outside the door for purification of those defiled by the dead. The water is not for the dead themselves. The proces- sion that carried the body to the grave in Greece was often silent, a custom enforced by law.14 Laws also forbade any violent expression of grief, tearing cheeks, beating breasts and head, even "singing poems."'5 But these are vestiges of the

rites of initiatory "death" still found in

primitive peoples. Eliade enumerates some in a list similar to Durkheim's: (1) seclu- sion in the bush or forest in a larval existence that assimilates the candidates to the dead whose limitations they must observe, not using their fingers, for

example; (2) to be daubed with ashes, "covered with dirt" and dust or hidden under masks; (3) a symbolic burial; (4) a symbolic descent to the underworld; (5) a hypnotic sleep from narcotics; (6) ordeals of torture and amputations.1" The severity of primitive mourning with its cruel abstinences and self-torture leads Durkheim to ask why the dead man, presumably a loved member of family or tribe, imposes such torments. He

interprets it as a collective reaction

against a common danger and psycho- logical shock." If, as Gaster suggests, the rites concern the whole topocosm, the ritual, even though not in this case seasonal, may still express the state of

suspended animation of the whole society and environment. Moreover the participa- tion of the living in the world of the dead makes the latter knowable; death itself is now interpreted as a rite of passage to a new mode of existence, both for the

group and for the individual who has

died.1s As the initiation ceremony is often one of rebirth, or rather as rebirth is its final stage, this concept also is transferred to the dead who, like the "one about to die," is a neophyte, "newly planted," reborn to new life.19 Rites of mourning

1x Eliade, op. cit., pp. 33-34. 12 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, New York: Collier,

1961, pp. 435 ff. 13 E. O. James, Myth and Ritual in the Ancient Near East, New York: Praeger, 1958, p. 31. 14 Erwin Rbhde, Psyche, The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks,

London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, reprint, 1950, p. 163. 15 Ibid., p. 164, cf. Plutarch, Solon, 21. 16 Eliade, op. cit., p. 64. 17 Durkheim, op. cit., pp. 444-446. 18 Eliade, op. cit., p. 510. 19 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 43.

DEATH: MYTH AND RITUAL 251

seem to determine certain characteristics attributed to the soul and perhaps are not unrelated to the idea that it survives the

body. To explain the rites, to account for

mourning, the dead came to be thought of as having a prolonged existence beyond the tomb; this also may have inspired the desire to survive in memory.20

This paper will first briefly consider the

general character of existence after death as expressed in myths of the ancient Near East; then it will consider certain specific aspects of this existence in relation to ritual.

Any positive existence after death is in a vicarious life, the memory of family or state; for the conscious individual who dies, there is nothing. An apparent excep- tion is the search for personal salvation in the after-life that led to attachment to an "eternal life-giving entity." Ancient

Egypt is the earliest example, with its

technique based on the principle of ritual assimilation.21 Immortality is secured by "assimilation" to the immortal ones, the

gods. The dead are juxtaposed with the

creator-god, Atum, in the Book of the Dead, thus achieving some form of a renewed creation of life.22 The dead man

says: "I am he among the gods who

cannot be repulsed." He is Atum in his sun disc, he is Re, rising on the eastern horizon. "I am yesterday, while I know tomorrow." "Yesterday" is Osiris, the

yesterday of death is the god of the dead; "tomorrow" is rebirth with the ever-

rising son, the accession of Horus to the rule of Osiris his father."23

No assimilation to the gods is found, however, in the cults of Tammuz, Adonis, or Attis, although they seem superficially to be like that of Osiris.24 Survival, save in Egypt and sometimes also there, is

only in terms of memory achieved, either

by leaving a "name," a monument, or children. In the Akkadian version of

Gilgamesh, the hero, facing death, says: "Should I fall, I shall have made me a name.... A (name) that endures I will make for me!"25 A more sophisticated memorial is recommended to the Egyp- tian: "Make monuments... for the god. That is what makes to live the name of him who does it.... Make thy monu- ments to endure according as thou are able. A single day gives for eternity, and an hour effects accomplishment for the future."26 The praises offered to the honored dead and the gods of the nec-

ropolis "become a remembrance for the

20 Durkheim, op. cit., p. 448. 21 S. G. F. Brandon, ed., The Saviour God, Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation,

Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963, p. 18. 22 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. James B. Pritchard,

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 3, 1500-1000 B. C. version. (Abbreviated in further notes as ANET.)

23 Ibid., p. 4; also n. 8, 9, 10. Therefore like Atum the dead man's life will endure "millions of millions (of years). When all else is destroyed and returns to chaos, Osiris in the land of the dead, and those identified with him, escape destruction." The Pyramid texts, applied first to the pharaoh only, then to queens and by the Eleventh-Twelfth Dynasties (21st century B. C. and after) to "worthy nonroyal persons," also identify the dead man with Osiris and Horus: "O Atum, the one here is that son of thine," Osiris, whom thou hast caused to survive and live on. He lives - (so also) this King Unis lives. He does not die - (so also) this King Unis does not die, He does not perish - (so also) this King Unis does not perish." Ibid., p. 9, 32.

24 S. G. F. Brandon, "The Ritual Techniques of Salvation in the Ancient Near East," in The Saviour God, op. cit., pp. 28-29.

25 ANET, p. 79. 26 Ibid., p. 416.

252 ADELE M. FISKE

future, for all who come to pass by."'27 "Enrich thy house of the West; embellish thy place of the necropolis." This same text adds later: "a good character is a remembrance."28 - an ethical variation on the old theme. The dead man, speaking as Osiris, says: "My heir is healthy, my tomb endures; they are my adherents (still) on earth."2' In the Middle Kingdom dialogue between a man and his soul, the man promises that, if his soul will allow him to commit suicide, he will give a shelter over its corpse, with friends, rela- tives and an heir to make the offerings and stand by the grave. The soul, in answer, warns against abnormal death, telling a parable of a fisherman whose children are lost on the lake and devoured by crocodiles. The fisherman's daughter is unmarried; he does not weep for her, although "there is no coming forth from the West for her," but for her unborn children "broken in the egg, who saw the face of the crocodile-god before they had (even) lived!"30 There is a worse fate than lack of proper burial, i. e., a total non-existence based on the distinction between perpetuation of identity and the physical continuation of life. There is no life at all for the children, but the "soul" can be remembered.

The more survivors to mourn one the better, according to the shade of Enkidu in the story of Inanna and Gilgamesh. The fate of the man with one or two sons

is missing from the tablet, but the man with three sons "drinks much water," the heart of the man with four rejoices; the man with five, "Like a good scribe, his arm has been open, he brings justice to the palace"; the man with six rejoices in heart "like him who guides the plow"; the man with seven is "as one close to the gods." There is obviously a hierarchy here of increasing blessedness in quantita- tive survival. The man whose body lies unburied finds no rest in the nether world, but what is it precisely that finds no rest? Achilles cries: "then something of us does survive even in the Halls of Hades" after the vision of his dead friend (Iliad 23.103-104). Is it only his own memory and sense of obligation to perform the funeral rites? The origin of the concept of the "soul" first as life-force, then as dual, life-soul and image-soul, or in even more complex forms, will not be dis- cussed here.31

There is no return from death. The

Mesopotamian gods who are said to bring the dead back from the underworld in fact merely preserve the life of those on the point of death.32 "Salvation" means the cure of sickness in this life.33 The

eschatology of early Greece as well as of

Babylonia was foreign to any ideas of resurrection of the individual; "the in- dividual was only a link in the chain of the generations."34 The return of the dead at seasonal festivals was in terms of

27 Ibid., p. 33, cf. n. 1. 28 Ibid., pp. 417-418. 29 Ibid., p. 9. 3o Ibid., p. 406. 31 For the misery of the unburied, see Samuel Noah Kramer, Sumerian Mythology,

a Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millenium B. C., New York- Evanston: Harper & Row, 1961, pp. 36-37. The theme is familiar in Greek literature (Patroclus, Antigone's brother, etc.); see Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City, Part I. For the concept of soul, see Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, New York: Abrams, n.d., pp. 10-13. Not only inadequate burial but also suicide or virginity keeps souls dangerously attached to their bodies (p. 12). See below, p. 19, "duration" and "second death."

32 Theodore H. Gaster, "Resurrection," The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, New York-Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962, IV, 40.

33 Brandon, p. 29; ANET, p. 369. 84 Martin P. Nilsson, Greek Folk Religion, New York-Evanston: Harper & Row,

1961, p. 60.

DEATH: MYTH AND RITUAL 253

the community. 3 When "life" emerges from the underworld, it is in a cosmic sense, as the rising of the sun or the Nile

brought forth from the underworld for the maintenance of the people; the sacred river enters into the Underworld and comes forth above, "loving to come forth as a mystery."36 "I am while I am," one text says ambiguously.37 The Egyptian secular songs repeat the ancient lament:

What are their places now?

As though they had never been! There is no one who comes back from

(over) there, That he may tell their needs, That he may still our hearts,

Until we (too) may travel to the places where they have gone.38

The gods are, in fact, deaf to man's

cry: "The Weary (of Heart) [i. e., Osiris] hears not their mourning, and

wailing saves not the heart of a man from the underworld." Therefore make holiday now, you will never come back.39 The Goddess Inanna is asked why she has come to "the land of no return," following the road "whose traveller returns not."40 The Akkadian version amplifies the briefer Sumerian statement:

To the Land of no Return, the realms of [Ereshigal],

15 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 44. 18 ANET, pp. 370-371; cf. p. 370, n. 12. The goddess Inanna believes Father Enki

will "surely bring me to life," when she goes down to the land of death (ANET, p. 54). When she does ascend from the nether world, her corpse having been restored to life, "verily the dead hasten ahead of her." But these are not ancestral spirits, they are ghosts, evil spirits (Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 59), "small demons like the spear shafts and large demons.., .walked at her side." (ANET, p. 56). They, like Ereshigal and Nergal, rulers of the underworld, are bearers of death, deities of pestilence and ascend only to carry off the gods to destruction (ANET, p. 57; Walter Adison Jayne, The Healing Gods of Ancient Civilizations, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925, p. 104).

38 ANET, p. 416: "The Instruction for the King Meri-ka-re." In Egypt the gods are immortal; Re, "unique in nature," passes eternity above (ANET, p. 367). But in many literary texts is expressed the hope of securing an "eternal happiness" for the individual who has died, the ordinary individual, not the king alone as in earlier times (ANET, p. 34). After the death of the body, the dead man would come into unrestricted possession of his essential self, in a state of beatitude (Gaster, "Resurrection," Interpreter's Dictionary, IV, 39-43).

Like other ancient peoples, the Hebrews believed that the dead continued to exist but in a minimal form of existence without memory or experience of God's presence (Gaster, "Dead, the Abode of the," Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, I, 787-788). They "were defunct, not deceased" (Ibid.). The Akkadian, Sumerian, Hittite, and Babylonian texts have a more clearly defined attitude toward life after death: There is none. The underworld "existence" is not worthy to be called "life." "Who, my friend, is superior to death? Only the Gods (live) forever under the sun. As for mankind, numbered are their days; whatever they achieve is but the wind!" (ANET, p. 79: Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh). The Sumerian version of Gilgamesh also gives no hope of desirable immortality. Enlil, father of the gods, has not destined the hero for eternal life but for kingship and heroism (ANET, p. 50).

38 ANET, p. 467.

39 Ibid., p. 467. "Weary" (wrd'ib) is a common term for the dead; cf. Greek ol KaiAbvTEs in Homer.

4o Ibid., p. 54.

254 ADELE M. FISKE

To the dark house, the abode of Irkal [la],

To the house which none leave who have entered it,

To the road from which there is no

way back.41

Enkidu uses the same words of the house and the road of death.42 The gods kept life for themselves; "death for mankind they set aside."'4 In the Ugaritic tale of

Aqhat, the goddess Anath tempts the

youth with immortality if he will give her his bow:

Ask for life, O Aqhat the youth. Ask for life and I'll give it to thee. Ask for deathlessness, and I'll bestow

it on thee. I'll make thee count years with Baal With the sons of El shalt thou count

months.44

Aqhat answers scornfully: "Further life - how can mortal attain it?"' 4Life, says a Hittite prayer, is bound up in death and death in life. "Man cannot live forever; the days of his life are numbered."

Regretfully it adds that grievous sickness would not be so hard to bear "were man to live forever." Sickness is the foretaste of death."4 Man's destiny is to bear the

burden of creation,47 to be brought to an end by death and trouble.48 The fate of mankind is to become like Enkidu, to lie down and rise no more, to turn to clay, to be devoured by worms.49 Utnapishtim "who joined the assembly of the gods in search of life," could give no help to

Gilgamesh when he came to ask "about life and death."50 There is not one who fails to reach the plane of death."1

What then is the relation of the living to the dead as expressed in ritual? This consideration will be limited to some

aspects of fasting, solitude, transformation (or inversion) and apotropaism.

FASTING

Death itself is insatiable hunger; the dead hunger and thirst. Sheol is an "in- satiable demon with wide-open throat, gaping jaws."52 It is interesting that the same terms describe death and the seven

fertility gods. The gods are "a lip to earth, a lip to heaven, so that there enter their mouth the fowl of heaven and fish of the sea."53 Of death it is said: "Its one

lip (is stretched) upward to the sky,/ Its other (downward) to the nether

world./ Baal will descend into its maw

41 Ibid., p. 107. 42 Ibid., p. 87. In the myth of "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Nether World," when

Enkidu, as Gilgamesh's servant, goes down to the underworld to bring back his master's pukku and mikku (drum and drumstick), he is seized not by demons or by Nergal but by the nether world itself. This myth or one like it is depicted on seals reproduced by Kramer. In one the goddess Inanna stands on a mountain near a tree, the huluppu tree perhaps; the sun-god rises out of the lower regions; Gilgamesh holds a bow. In another there are two mountains (the Sumerian word for mountain means nether world), one containing a burning god, the other god holding a bull-man by the tail. In a third, a deity emerges from the underworld and a god or Gilgamesh is chopping down a bent tree whose arch makes a mountain-shaped form enclosing a goddess and the emerging god (Kramer, pp. 34-35).

43A NET, p. 90, Akkadian. 44 Ibid., p. 151. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., p. 400.

4 Ibid., pp. 99-100. 48 Ibid., p. 385, Lament to Ishtar. 49 Ibid., pp. 91, 88. o0 Ibid., pp. 95-96. 51 Egyptian, Singer with Harp, ANET, p. 34. 52 Prov. 1:12; Isa. 5:14; Hab. 2:5. Cf. Gaster, "The Dead," Interpreter's Dictionary. 53 Cyrus H. Gordon, "Canaanite Mythology" in Mythologies of the Ancient World,

ed. Kramer, New York: Doubleday, 1961, p. 189.

DEATH: MYTH AND RITUAL 255

go down into its mouth, (like food)."''4 The soul is hungry; 65 its shadowy exist- ence depends on the offerings made it of food and drink.568 The demons that fol- lowed Inanna were beings that do not know food or water, that do not eat

sprinkled flour or drink libated water.57 But the human dead must eat dust and

clay.58 The soul that has no one to offer it libations, "no one to tend it," must eat "lees of pots, crumbs of bread, offal of the street."59 The famine that came when Telipinu hid himself not only made hills, trees, pastures barren and springs dry, but created famine for men and gods, a famine like death itself so that even a

great banquet could not satisfy their

hunger and thirst.e0 Thirst accompanies hunger.8' "I was parched and my throat was dusty. I said: 'This is the taste of death.' " Death is described as a "field of thirst" by Babylonians; Egyptian dead

pray for water; the Orphic tablets direct the soul to cool springs.62

Related to hunger and thirst is the

image of dust, dirt. "Dust is their fare and clay their food."83 Death himself, Mot, devoured mud in the underworld.64 This diet or lack of life-giving food

explains their constant thirst and lan-

guor.65 The dwellings of death are desert land.88 Ar4 Mawdt is the Arabic term for discarded waterless land; as in Latin, sterile soil is said to have died.6' The dead themselves are earth: "My friend

whom I loved has turned to clay," said

Gilgamesh.88 The vision of death is so dreadful that Enkidu does not wish to describe it; his "body is devoured by vermin and filled with dust."89 All has turned to ashes,70 as at Ishtar's descent, dust spread over "door and bolt," i. e., over the dwellings of men who no longer go in or out.7' Death's filth is deep and

everlasting; 12 it reeks with the stench of

bird-droppings, decayed fish, stagnant pools, reedy marshland, crocodiles.73 Enki sends the food and water of life to re- vive Inanna's corpse by Kurgarru and Kalaturru, two sexless creatures that he forms from dirt. Enkidu is told not to wear clean clothes in his descent, not to anoint himself with oil, not to wear

sandals.74 The gods whom Inanna visits with her grim escort of demons all sit in the dust, dressed in dirt, humbling them- selves to avoid being carried away to the

underworld."7 These concepts reflect a ritual pre-

enactment of death, to avert the reality. The concept of descent to the underworld, either to bring back the soul of a sick man or to escort the soul of the dead to the realm of death is found in shamanist

ritual.7' Fasting, connected with marriage and initiation as well as with mourning, expresses an "occlusion of personality," an evacuation of the former self; it is the

hunger and thirst attributed mythically to the dead." It further represented for the

64 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 206. 66 ANET, p. 405. 56 Isaac Mendelssohn, Religions of the Ancient Near East, New York: Bobbs-Merrill

Liberal Arts, 1955, p. xviii. 6' ANET, p. 405. 58 Ibid., p. 87. 11 Ibid., p. 99. 60 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 303. 61 Isa. 5:13. 62 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., pp. 204, 185. 63 ANET, p. 106. 64 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., pp. 213-214. 65 Ibid., pp. 203-204. 66 Ibid., p. 131, n. 17. 67 Ibid., p. 132. Cf. below, note 155.

6s ANET, p. 91. 69 Ibid., pp. 98-99. 70 Ibid., p. 82. 71 ANET, p. 107. 72 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 204. 73 ANET, p. 406. r4 Kramer, p. 35. 16 Ibid., pp. 95-96. 76 Eliade, op. cit., p. 203. " Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., pp. 29-30.

256 ADELE M. FISKE

topocosm the intercalary periods that are, as the dead are conceived to be, outside time, vacant days of suspended anima-

tion.7s Such were the Thesmophoria of late October, the nine-day fast held in

Cyprus, the fast of Demeter Chloe at Athens, the April fast for Ceres in Rome, etc.'9 The Hebrew term for fasting bears out this sense of constraint, restraint of

personality. The Jewish fast from the seventeenth of Tammuz, to the ninth of Ab in midsummer is borrowed from the

Babylonian cult of Tammuz, according to Gaster. Teshrit was the "lenten

period" of the Babylonian New Year.so The dead were thought to be weary, languid, weak, for this is what the fasting initiate experiences. Before becoming a shaman, a candidate must be ill for a

long time, tortured by the shaman an- cestral souls, until he becomes and re- mains inanimate, his face and hands blue, his heart scarcely beating.8' Sometimes the fast from food is so severe that he falls unconscious and awakens to find his

body sore all over.82 These long fainting spells and lethargic sleeps obviously are

symbolic death.83 The earliest burials of

prehistoric man show bodies in the posi- tion of rest, like the Neanderthal youth whose head rests on a pillow of flint

flakes.84 Osiris, with whom the Egyptian dead was identified, is told: "Wake up, Osiris, stand up thou Weary One!"--

a ritual phrase.85 This unconscious state is prolonged for a ritual period of seven

days and nights, or three days and nights.86 There is another myth-approach to

death in which the hungry dead (in Buddhist belief there is a special hell for

"hungry ghosts," preta) are fed and there- fore "live." Life in the next world is thus idealized chiefly by the Egyptians, in

symbolic terms taken from ordinary existence, especially food and drink. The dead sail on the canals, plow, thresh and

reap in rich fields surrounded by water-

ways.'7 There is the pool of the kha-birds, there are the fields of giant barley, there are the south winds.88 There are trees, two sycamores of turquoise (green), groves of jewel-fruited trees, bearing cornelian and lapis.89 Water and grain are sources of life, symbols of life; wind is the breath of life, perhaps, as the Indian cosmic pr.a and apina; birds are the bird-souls of the dead.90 Trees are the symbols of paradise where the tree of life grows with its fruits, here de- scribed as jeweled, elsewhere golden, as in the garden of the Hesperides. The tree is also the support of the cosmos, the post on which Shu, the air god, lifted the heaven separating it from earth, as in the Vedic myth where Brahma is the wood and the tree, and heaven is sup- ported on posts, skambha.91

However, the plant that rewards

18 Ibid., pp. 26, 28-29. 79 Ibid., p. 27. 80 Ibid., pp. 30, 27-28. 81 Eliade, op. cit., pp. 43-44. 82 Ibid., p. 84. 88 Ibid., p. 53. 84 James, op. cit., p. 32. 86 Brandon, op. cit., p. 22, Pyr. 2092a-2093b. See above, note 39. 86 Eliade, op. cit., p. 44. 87 James, op. cit., p. 218. 88 ANET, p. 33. 89 Ibid., pp. 33, 89, Gilgamesh. A common feature in Paradise, also in Buddhist heavens. 90 See Gaster-Frazer, New Golden Bough, p. 151 and additional notes; G. Weichert,

Seelenrugel (1902); H. Grapow, Die bildlichen Ausdriicke des Aegyptischen (1924), 93 f. So also in Christian hagiography, e. g. Gregory of Tours, Dial. IV, 10; St. Benedict's sister Scholastica; Polycarp, etc. Medieval Celtic Romances often portray souls as singing birds on the trees of Paradise. Thornton Wilder refers to this in a passage of The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

91 A. A. MacDonell, Vedic Mythology, Strassburg: Tribner, 1897, p. 11.

DEATH: MYTH AND RITUAL 257

Gilgamesh's search for life, "a plant apart, whereby a man may regain his life's breath," only restores vigor and youth to the living, not life to the dead.92 Plants as life here and now are suggested by the story of Enki, who, having filled ditches with water from his phallus, and presenting gifts of cucumbers, apples and grapes, pours semen into the womb of Utta, the fair lady, who brings forth eight sacred plants, the "tree" plant, the "honey" plant, the roadweed plant, the thorn, the caper, the cassia and two plants whose names are lost. Because Enki devours them, he is cursed; the "eye of life" will not look upon him; the eight deities that are eventually born for his healing may be related to these eight plants.93

Nilsson remarks that the conviction of a happier lot in the underworld held by the Eleusinian initiates sprang from an ancient and worldwide idea that the other life is a repetition of this life, a mirror image.94 Death becomes even more de- sirable than life. What is done on earth is "a kind of dream" that passes in a

flash, but he who reaches the West is welcomed as "safe and sound.""95 The dead man becomes "a living god," with

power to judge and punish sin; he stands in the bark of the sun; he is a man of

wisdom."9 In two Egyptian texts death is desired. The "Eloquent Peasant" longs for the coming of death as a thirsty man craves water, as a nursing child desires

milk."97 The suicide sees death as release: It is recovery from illness, going out into the open after confinement, sitting under an awning on a breezy day, the end of rain and clearing of the sky, returning home after an absence; it is the fragrance of myrrh and of lotus blossoms.9" The

dialogue on human misery remarks with some acerbity, "if you look, people are

uniformly dull." Mankind lacks true

understandings and to plan evil is un- avoidable for men.99 There is no one to

speak to; all are hostile. Life is so limited, "a circumscribed period: (even) the trees must fall."100 Songs "in the ancient tombs" magnify life on earth and belittle the necropolis, but this is wrong! "Why is it that such is done to the land of

92 ANET, p. 96. 98 Kramer, op. cit., pp. 58-59. One is Ninkasi, goddess of strong drink and therefore

perhaps a vegetation deity; another is Ningishzida, an underworld god (ANET, pp. 39-41; cf. p. 40, n. 54). Food and water are the source of life and energy. So in the next life, to be "an effective spirit in the beautiful West" i. e. to be able to go up and down in the necropolis, even to be in the retinue of Osiris, is the result of "being satisfied with the food of Wen-nofer (Osiris)." The dead can then come forth from the tomb by day, assume any form he wishes, play draughts, sit in the arbor, come forth as a "living soul" (ANET, p. 3). In the story of Adapa, a mortal is offered the bread of life, the water of life that is the food of the gods and that would make him too a god. Fooled by Ea, Adapa refuses the bread and water: "Thou shalt not have (eternal) life! Ah, per(ver)se mankind!" cries Anu triumphantly. Ishtar is sprinkled with the water of life from the "lifewater bag" kept in the underworld, and thus restored to life (ANET, p. 108; Kramer, p. 87). In the Sumerian version Enki sends the food of life and the water of life to be sprinkled sixty times on Inanna's corpse (Kramer, p. 87).

4 Nilsson, p. 59. Paradise has not only the sweet water, the cropbearing fields, as above, but it is also, in Gilgamesh, a pure, clean bright land, "Dilmun," where there is no sickness, old age nor death; no ravens, ittidu-birds, lions, wolves or wild dogs (ANET, pp. 37-38; cf. n. 8).

96 ANET, p. 34. 96 Ibid., p. 407. 91 Ibid., p. 410. 98 Ibid., p. 407. 99 Ibid., pp. 439-440. 100 Ibid., pp. 405-406.

258 ADELE M. FISKE

eternity, the right and true, without errors? Quarrelling is its abomination and there is no one who arrays himself

against his fellows." This happy dream of the after-life, however, remains rooted in this life and its best moments.0"'

Ritual often involved banquets, com- munion feasts that united the whole

community, living and dead, mortals and

gods. They would nourish their common life on a common food. From this may have derived the idea of the food of

immortality. The dead partake of food which gives the "gods" their immortality. The gods, it is to be noted, always have

special food for this purpose - nectar and ambrosia, the food of life in the Adapa myth, the trees in Eden. The return of the dead in Babylon was always connected with funerary offerings.102 So too the Persians on the feast of Tirajan, the Mandaeans in the New Year month of Tishri, the Greeks on the Anthesteria, the Romans on the Parentalia and the Lemuria. In Babylon the dead "ascended" to eat of the sacrifice.103 When, as on the Anthesteria, the dead were thought to swarm up into the world of the living, the days were unclean and temples were closed.'04 For while the recent dead were more feared and the long-dead were more revered, the presence of both was al- ways considered to upset the balance of society.'05 A distinction must be made

between food for the former and feasts at which the latter return. The ancestral dead merely symbolize the continuous communion of the topocosm: "Our founders are with us in spirit."'06 Thus the ritual united the actual present com-

munity with the "ideal and durative" one.

SOLITUDE AND WANDERING

The abode of the dead is hidden; the dead are described as "those secret of

place."'0' They themselves are veiled of face.'08 The location, when conceived of as a common dwelling of the dead, is sometimes below, sometimes in the north, sometimes in the east or west, but always remote, "yonder." Inanna sets her mind to descend to the "great below," a space beneath the surface of the earth.109 The "universe" in Sumerian terms is an-ki, "heaven-earth," the above and the below. Kur or ki-gal is the nether-world, the

empty space between the earth's crust and the primeval sea, to which the sky- goddess Ereshkigal had been carried off to be its queen. The "river of the under- world" is "man-devouring."110 The hero also lay in his grave at the place where he was venerated, sometimes acting as malev- olent, more often as a helpful spirit."' The early Greeks accepted this simul- taneous abode of the dead in tombs (the body) and in a common underworld (the

101 Ibid., p. 33. Panofsky distinguishes "prospective" from "restrospective" ideas of the next life. The former are earlier, magical and for the dead; the latter develop later and are to comfort the survivors (p. 16). Cf. Gardiner, Attitude of the Ancient Egyptians to Death and the Dead, Cambridge, 1935, p. 32.

102 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., pp. 46, 64. 103 Ibid., p. 44. 104 R6hde, p. 168. See also Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion,

New York: Meridian, 1960, pp. 32-51. 105 Eliade, p. 207. 106 Comment of Dr. Gaster. 107 ANET, p. 32; cf. n. 2. Cf. Gaster, "Dead, Abode of the," The Interpreter's Dic-

tionary of the Bible, op. cit., I, 787-788. 108 Ibid., p. 105. 109 Ibid., p. 53. 110 Kramer, pp. 41, 76, 38, 46. 111 Nilsson, pp. 8-9; 18-19.

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"shade"). Egyptian texts speak of "the horizon dwellers," a term later changed from akhtiu to akhu, "effective person- alities," i. e., the blessed dead who dwell far away.112

In the papyrus of Ani, a dead man asks Atum about the land of burial: "O Atum, what is it? I am departing to the desert, the silent land!" Atum's reply describes the land of the dead: it has no water, no air, "deep, deep, dark, dark, bound- less, boundless," there is no sexual

pleasure, no bread and beer; instead there is "a blessed state," and "peace of heart."113 We have here many of the elements of death: departure, hunger and thirst, dryness, darkness, silence and alienation.

Death is darkness. As Sheol in Job (10:20-21), so the Greek idea of the other world was of a dark and gloomy

Hades."4 The foreshadowing of death comes to Gilgamesh when he sleeps in a land that is dark with shadows of dusk.'15 In Enkidu's dream he sees the House of Darkness where there is no light, the "house where dwellers are bereft of

light.., .and see no light, residing in

darkness."'11 In the Hittite epic, "King- ship in Heaven," Alalus is dethroned by Anus: "down he went to the dark

earth.""' The sun-god goes down each

night to the underworld,118 yet the dead do not see his face.119 When Baal dies, he too is placed "in the holes of the numinous dead, even in the earth."120 The dead, like the night, are veiled and cannot see.121

Death is silence. At night, the image of death, the people are quiet, the night is veiled, the holy places are quiet and dark.122 When the sun sets, "the land is in darkness, in the manner of death."

12 ANET, p. 33. These giant horizon dwellers, nine cubits (over fifteen feet) in height, reap in the barley fields of Re, "by the side of the Eastern Souls." The sun is gloriously reborn every morning; so too a mortal who has left this world is reborn for eternal happiness in the other world. The entrance into paradise is signified by the eastern horizon: "going in and out of the Eastern doors of Heaven among the followers of Re. I know the Eastern Souls." Re issues from the central door in the east. So in the Pyramid Texts. Under the influence of Osirian doctrine this shifted in the 6th Dynasty to the West. See J. Vandier, La Riligion 1gyptienne (1949), p. 95. This is explained in the Book of the Dead as the august door, the Field of Reeds which brings forth food for the gods who surround the shrine of the sun-god. The door is also the "door of the liftings of (the air-god) Shu," i. e., the lifting of heaven from earth, thus creating space; it is the door of the Under- world, the door from which the creator Atum goes forth in the East. It is east, and has a north and a south: in the south is the pool of the khu-bird, in the north the waters of the ro-fowl; its wind is southerly, its current north (ANET, p. 33; cf. n. 2). Amon, the All- Lord, who is both present and absent in heaven and the underworld, presides over the East (ANET, p. 368). In the western darkness, the western doors of heaven, there is danger from a dragon who turns its eye on Re; the god must be saved by Seth so that he may cross the underworld and be reborn in the morning. Man too must be saved from the deadly eye of a serpent. A magic charm protects the dead buried in the ground, by enabling it to "know the Western Souls." Acquaintance "would facilitate the reception of the dead in the next world" (ANET, pp. 12, 10, n. 2). To reach the west is to attain "the place of settling down, the guide of the heart; the West is home" (ANET, p. 405). The isles of the blest at "the ends of the world" are usually located in the west (Rihde, pp. 55-79).

11 ANET, p. 9. 114 Nilsson, op. cit., p. 115. 11s ANET, p. 48. 16 Ibid., p. 87. 17 Ibid., p. 120. 118 Ibid., p. 400.

119 Ibid., p. 9. 120 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 215. 121 ANET, p. 105; Mendelssohn, op. cit., p. 215. 122 ANET, p. 391.

260 ADELE M. FISKE

Men sleep with heads wrapped up, "nor sees one eye the other." Darkness is a shroud, the earth is in the stillness of death, for the sun, the creator, is resting. "When thou has risen they live, when thou settest, they die."123 When Inanna descends into the underworld, as the seven ordinances are taken from her she is told to be silent, not to question the rites of the nether world.124 Enkidu going to retrieve the drum of Gilgamesh is warned not to cry "or a 'cry' will seize you."125 The dead are dumb,126 "their words were silenced, they themselves stood still."127 They are the "silent men," death is the "silent land."128 This silence can be dreadful as when "stillness is poured out" at the descent of Ishtar or as in the Akkadian vision of the Under- world: "the nether world was filled with terror; before the prince lay utter

stillness.'"129 Silence is linked with quiet and rest.

This can have positive connotations. Death is "the day of mooring."'13 The Egyptian tomb in the desert valley is the place where he has his rest.131 Quietude is the happy lot of the dead, a fulfillment. They are stilled from tumult, released from the cares of this world.132 Yet the idea of rest also implies weakness.133 The dead are pale, powerless shadows, with- out vigor.'34 Death weakens vital ener-

gies.135 They are weary of strength,136 without sense or feeling, phantoms of mortals whose weary days are done.137 Telipinu buries himself; fatigue overcame him.13s Enkidu, facing Humbaba and death, found that his hand had become limp and weak; he and Gilgamesh were like weaklings.139 "O thou Weary One, O weary Sleeper... Weary is the Great One," says a Coffin Text.14" So too the humble dead are weary ones, the soul is inert.141 Gilgamesh's death is described as ascending the mountain and lying on the bed of Fate, the multi-colored couch. He, the great leader, now lies and rises not.142 Aqhat's powerlessness in death is explained: his blood has poured out like sap, his breath escaped like wind, his soul like vapor or smoke from his nos- trils.143 Hittite goddesses of the under- world, Istustaya and Papaya, are seen in the green forest "sitting and bowing down."'14 The "cry of the nether world," to avoid which Enkidu must observe ritual silence, is "for her who is lying, for her who is lying,/ The mother of the god Ninazu who is lying..."145

Death is also homeless wandering. The dead are "moored," and yet they are "the wandering dead, the fleeting ghosts." Burial means "taking a man out of his house, (so that) he is left on the hill- side."'46 A man, who is experiencing in

123 Ibid., p. 370. 124 Ibid., p. 55. 125 Kramer, p. 35. 126 Nilsson, p. 115. 127 Ibid., p. 82. 128 Ibid., pp. 366, 375. See p. 366 n. 15 and 375 n. 5: "silent men" might mean the

submissive or humble. 129 Ibid., pp. 107, 110. Cf. Ps. 94.17; 115.17. 130 ANET, p. 22; see n. 44. 131 Ibid., p. 420. 132 Ibid., pp. 33, 7 n. 1. 1as Nilsson, op. cit., p. 115. 134 Ps. 88:4, 5. 1as Cf. Durkheim, op. cit., p. 78. 13as Job 3:17. 137 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 205. 138 Ibid., p. 303. 139 ANET, p. 82. 140 Brandon, op. cit., p. 26. 141 ANET, p. 405. 142 Ibid., p. 51. 143 Ibid., pp. 152-153. 144 Hans G. Guterbock, "Hittite Mythology," Mythologies of the Ancient World,

op. cit., p. 149. 145 Kramer, op. cit., p. 35. 146 ANET, pp. 389, 405.

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life the anguish of death, has lost all his strength and prays: "let me wander about, . . let me camp in the fields, hunt along the highways."147 These aspects of death that express the cutting off, the gulf that yawns between the living and the dead, are also found in ritual.

The descent to the underworld usually involves passing through seven successive levels, such as met by Inanna or Ishtar at the gates of the nether world or Gilgamesh in his wanderings: the moun- tains guarded by scorpion-men whose glance is death; the twelve-league pass or tunnel of dense darkness through the mountains; the garden of jewels; the ale-wife, Siduri "who dwells by the deep sea"; Urshanabi the boatman who brought him over the Waters of Death; Utna- pishtim the Faraway; and finally the depths of the sea where he found and plucked the plant of youth. His failure seems to have been in falling asleep, a death-symbol, at a crucial moment, when Utnapishtim had said to him, "Up, lie not down to sleep for six days and seven nights." But sleep fanned him like a mist and he slept till the seventh day. He recognized this sleep as death, "The Bereaver," that had laid hold of his members. The second fatal error was, not sleep, but a bath in a well whose water was cool. While he bathes, a serpent carried off the plant, "whereby a man may regain his life's breath."148 Wandering even without such stages is a ritual act. The death of Baal was mourned by Latpan, the god of mercy, sitting on

the earth with dust and ashes on his head, by El in the mourning garb, lacerating himself and wandering, and by Anath, wandering.149 Mot, the god of death himself, whose name means death, the god of all that lacks life and vitality, is described as wandering over the country- side, and leaving desolation behind him.150 These journeys reflect the wanderings of shamans over field and wood during initiation.151

Initiations are usually held in dark caves or underground, or in solitary places, as the dead dwell in their tombs or in some common chthonic realm.152 The candidates keep silence, as do mourn- ers and as the dead are supposed to do. The Egyptian ritual of "opening the mouth" was, it would seem, the applica- tion to the deceased of the rite that marks the end of initiation. They can again see and breathe and act, in the way peculiar to them.153 Mot, god of death, dwells in silent lands, the sun-scorched desert or dark regions of the underworld.154 Mawat, an Arabic cognate of Mot, means dead soil that remains arid, sterile.155 A mor- tuary liturgy tells Osiris to awake and stand up and "shake the dust from thee."156

TRANSFORMATION

Death is transformation. Gilgamesh knows that Enkidu is really dead only when he sees a worm fall out of his nose.157 The transformation is often into a bird form. Enkidu dreamed that a foe,

147 Ibid., pp. 438-440. 148 Ibid., pp. 94-96. Is it too far-fetched to see here a symbol like baptism, immersion,

that signifies entering death, the tomb? 149 Gordon, op. cit., p. 211. 150 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 125. 'u Eliade, op. cit., p. 423. 152 Ibid., p. 47. 153 Brandon, op. cit., p. 22. 154 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 125. 5s Ibid. 156 Brandon, op. cit., p. 22.

15' ANET, p. 91. For "transformation," see below, n. 189.

262 ADELE M. FISKE

with darkened face and eagle talons, over-

powered, submerged, transformed him.1s8 He beheld the house of the dead, who are clothed like birds, with wings for gar- ments.159 The Egyptian bi soul was

bird-shaped with human head. Kha-birds and ro fowl dwell in the land of the dead.160 In the Sumerian myth of Enlil and Ninlil, Enlil has three metamorphoses in which he begets three netherworld gods. As the

gate-keeper of the underworld he begets Meslamtaea or Nergal, king of the under- world. As the "man of the boat" he

begets a third deity whose name is lost.1"' These are anthropomorphic, not therio-

morphic, transformations. On cylinder seals Inanna is represented as winged; on the same seal a vulture-like bird may represent the South Wind that damaged her huluppu tree. Other seals show bird- men, one tied by the feet and flung over a

god's shoulder, another led to trial before

Enki. An underworld dragon is also

winged.162 Part of the transformation of death is

the loss of distinction and rank. This is not always the case; often the dead con- tinue in the state they had in life, as Achilles lords it over the shades. Yet because there is no permanence, the epic of Gilgamesh sees levelling as common to the sleeping and the dead: "how alike

they are!" Commoner and noble rest with- out distinction,163 inequality is "stilled."164 The rich men who built granite tombs and

pyramids have offering-stones as bare as the poor men, whose bodies are abandoned on the dike.s65

The other world is conceived by some

primitive peoples as an inverted image of this world. Everything there happens in reverse. A ritual expression of this may be the epagomenal period between the

expiration of the old lease on life and the

15s Ibid., p. 87. 159 Ibid. 160 James, op. cit., pp. 213-214; ANET, p. 33. See also Panofsky, p. 13. 161 Kramer, op. cit., p. 43. 162 Kramer, op. cit., plates VII and XIX, pp. 32, 60, 78. Cf. also the devouring of

Aqhat by vultures (griffins) and the recovery of his body from them (Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 364).

In initiations master and disciple are sometimes transformed into hens. Birds in fact are a common symbol of the shaman's or sorcerer's power of flight. To become a bird shows that one possesses power even while alive to journey to the sky and beyond it. To know the language of the birds is to have the gift of prophecy. Shamans often are said to fly like birds, to perch in trees. Again one recalls St. Joseph of Cupertino who had an embarrassing (for his brethren) penchant for suddenly flying up into trees, or to the roof of the church; similar tales are told of the Iranian saint Qutb ud-din Haydn (Eliade, pp. 57. 98, 126, 131, 157-158, 194, 206, 402).

163 ANET, p. 405. 164 Egyptian texts, ANET, p. 7. 165 The concept of transformation may involve judgment followed by punishment or

a dismemberment apart from any judgment. "A man remains over after death," says the Instruction for King Meri-ka-re. His deeds are placed beside him in heaps, as a legal exhibit. One who has done no wrong "shall exist yonder like a god" (ANET, p. 415). The idea of punishment in the next world that took such strong hold on popular imagina- tion in fifth and fourth century Greece (Nilsson, op. cit., pp. 118-119) and in Europe ever since is singularly lacking in the texts edited by Pritchard. A Hades for evil-doers is how- ever found, according to Wilson for the first time, in a twelfth century B. C. manuscript: Osiris says, "As to the land in which I am, it is filled with savage-faced messengers ... I can send them out and they will bring back the heart of anyone who does wrong, and (then) they will be here with me!" (ANET, p. 16). Mesopotamian belief shows traces

DEATH: MYTH AND RITUAL 263

inauguration of the new. This is often celebrated by a reversal of the customary order of society, a suspension of ordinary activities, sometimes a temporary rule of slaves over their masters.166 During the time of Baal's eclipse in death there was an interregnum of this nature. The tem-

porary king must be strong and powerful, however, and 'Ashtar was rejected be- cause he was too small to fit Baal's

throne.16' May this concept be behind the idea, mentioned above, that in the land of the dead there is no more class distinction, that "sceptre and crown must tumble down"? The only distinction in the Gilgamesh dream of death was in the number of sons surviving to feed the dead, not in rank or achievement, still less in virtue. Related to this may be the idea of forgetting. In the Odyssey the dead were mindless and with no memory, fluttering aimlessly, like birds or bats, until they drank the blood. The aim of ordeals and rituals in shamanism is to make the candidate forget his or her past life. On his return to the community, he is looked upon as a revenant. Mor-

phologically this resembles the rites for secret societies and other forms of initiation.168

All transitional stages carry taboos; so death has its taboos as a special rite of

passage. When the body of the dead is

washed, it is not to purify, but to re- animate. The water for purification, as we saw above, was kept outside the room to prevent evil spirits entering or getting out, as spirits cannot cross water. But the

bathing of corpses may be to "invigorate" them with primal essence, the idea under-

lying baptism. This bath is the bath of Re, the sun-god, daily reborn from the

life-giving water. The bath of Gilgamesh in the cool well is therefore ironic, for it caused him to lose the plant of life. The taboo connected with death links it with rites of purgation, expelling of evil and demons.1s9 Graves and tombs are "holy" and may not be entered, as we see in the final scene of "Oedipus at Colonus." It is often part of a ritual to expel ancestral

ghosts. On the last day of the Anthesteria a rite exorcised the Keres; on the Lemuria in Rome, the paterfamilias banished the ancestors: Manes exite paterni.17 0

Death conceived either in terms of

cyclic or linear time involves the problem of duration. What happens to the "soul" that survives?17' In the Egyptian texts there is a "spell for not dying a second

time."'72 The same idea is implied in the words: "Thou hast not departed dead, thou hast departed living." Later in this same document "to die" is distinguished

of a judgment theory, as in the constellation Libra, called the "scales of the dead" (Gaster, "Resurrection," Interpreter's Dictionary, IV, 41). An Akkadian vision of the Netherworld shows monstrous beings, the death god with a serpent-dragon head and human feet; the "Upholder of Evil" with a bird-head and wings. Whether the fact that other monsters also had replaced parts, so to speak, indicates dismemberment and substitution of superior members has not, to my knowledge, been considered. "Remove Hastily," the boatman of the underworld, has the head of a Zu-bird, the hands and feet of some other being; another has an ox's head and human hands and feet; the evil Utukku, a lion's head and the Zu-bird's hands and feet; "All That is Evil" has two heads, one the head of a lion (ANET, pp. 109-110).

166 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 61. 167 Ibid., pp. 216-219. 168 Eliade, op. cit., pp. 64-65; 362, n. 72. 169 Gaster, Thespis, op. cit., p. 61. 170o Ibid., p. 45. 171 Cf. Gaster, "Resurrection," Interpreter's Dictionary, op. cit., IV, 39. See above, n. 31. 172 ANET, p. 9.

264 ADELE M. FISKE

from "to perish."173 A charm to save a dead man from a serpent involves a ritual that makes the dead an akh, an "effective being." The phrase in this text, "living or dead soul" might have this same idea.174 When wild and savage animals were depicted on the walls of tombs they were drawn incomplete and lacking some essen- tial part, lest they be dangerous to the dead men.175 In the "Vision of the Nether World," the dreamer who is in the world of the dead, sees the king of death, Nergal, approach to kill him.176 Perhaps here the dreamer is not considered dead but merely trapped alive in the under- world.177 In the Egyptian text the ba and ka survive, the ka especially being either vital force, protecting and sustain- ing the "soul," or the second self.178 The "Dispute over a Suicide" indicates a distinction between a man and his "soul," the man opts for death but promises survival and well-being to his C"soul.",,79

The idea of a second death or of death in death would seem derived from the funerary second-burial rites, which often mark the change from the period of mourning and fear of the dead expressed in fasting, self-torture, silence, etc., to the transformation of the dead into a beneficent ancestral spirit. A funeral banquet with sacrifices and a purification of the house may be the custom,180 or cremation, or other ways of making the return of the dead impossible and yet appeasing the spirit. The aim is to banish the soul.'8' The assimilation of the dead, originally the king, with unchangeable cosmic beings, the circumpolar stars or the sun-god, or identification with a god such as Osiris may be another expression

of this "second death" by interpreting it as its conquest, an entrance into life and escape from ultimate death. In other words, where a concept of happy afterlife, Elysian fields, the isles of the west, etc. is found, it derives from the desire to drive the dead away, to appease them so that they will stay away, and later, it came to mean giving them happiness and peace, hoping for the same for oneself. As the end of the suffering and ritual death of the initiated brings him a new life in his tribe or community, with new power and dignity, so too men came to conceive of the final stage of that rite of passage that we call actual death.

A second death or a rebirth in the next life does not imply either resurrection of the body or reincarnation in the Hindu or Buddhist sense. The Vedic concept of survival is very like that of the early Egyptian and Babylonian, i. e., being supported in existence by sacrificial feed- ing by one's descendants. The complaint with which the Bhagavad Giti begins is just that - if the battle is fought and all are killed, the "Fathers" will receive no more offerings.182 Survival is only or chiefly in one's son. Rebirth in one's own son who thus becomes one's father is expressed in a transmission ritual.183 One's own sacrifices also built up a kind of reserve in the next life, food or energy, svadha, and by this one would get some kind of other body. When one's store failed or if one lacked any svadha, then one became, somewhat grimly, "food for the gods" and went back to the world cycle as rain etc., dying repeatedly, punarmrtya. In the Brahmania period, the sacrificer becomes more important than the gods and knowledge of the rites was

17" Ibid., p. 32. 174 Ibid., p. 12. 175 Jayne, op. cit., p. 18. 176 ANET, p. 110. 177 Cf. Gaster, "Resurrection," Interpreter's Dictionary, op. cit., IV, 40. 17s ANET, p. 431. 179 Ibid., p. 405. 180 Eliade, op. cit., pp. 208, 210. 181 Rohde, op. cit., pp. 19, 21. 182 Kaushi. Up. 2.15. 183 Bhagavad Gita 1.42.

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the chief source of continued existence in a body formed by sacrifices.18 If you go to yonder world not having escaped death, you are still fettered and must die again and again.185 This is almost the later Upanishadic doctrine in which those "who know" never return whereas those who merely sacrifice, give alms, practice aus- terity, do "return." The former go to the Sun and through the Sun to the Brahma loka; those who do not know go to the moon (soma) and become food for the gods, returning to the elements and being born again.'?8

CONCLUSION

As Inanna and Ishtar are told in their descent to death, the rites of the nether-

world are "extraordinarily perfected" and must not be questioned, even by the

goddess.187 To have contact with the dead signifies to be dead oneself,188 as they found to their cost. Ritual is the way to

cope with this, and from the ritual the

mythical representations of death's char- acteristics seem to derive. To sum up: because the basic seasonal and initiation rites are composed of phases of suffering, death and resurrection and rebirth, myth- ology, in transposing the rite from the "actual and punctual" level to the durative and transcendent, applied to the dead, collectively and individually, the same

experiences: ordeals of fasting, isolation, silence, wandering, transformation, and

eventually an emergence into a new existence of greater power and freedom.1s8

184 Satapatha Brahmana, 11.2.6.13; 2.3.3.5 ff.; 10.3.1.9, ff. etc. 185 SB 2.3.3.5 ff. 18s BU 6.2. 187 Kramer, op. cit., pp. 91-92. 188 Eliade, op. cit., p. 84. 189 Cf. Evans-Wentz introduction to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, New York: Oxford

University Press, 1960: "To those who had passed through the secret experience of pre- mortem death, right dying is initiation, conferring.., .the power to control consciously the process of death and regeneration" (p. xiv). Jung in his commentary on the text calls it "a way of initiation in reverse"; to understand the original initiation experience it is necessary to reverse the sequence of the Bardo Th6diol. Its real purpose however is to en- lighten the dead, whose supreme vision occurs right at the beginning; "what happens after- ward is an ever-deepening descent into illusion and obscuration, down to the ultimate degradation of new physical birth." (pp. xlix-li).

Jung calls the belief in the supratemporality of the soul the rational basis for the cult of the dead; its irrational basis is in "the psychological need of the living to do something for the departed." (p. 1). He also sees the aim of initiation to be a "reversal" or trans- formation of the living that is, for the dead, projected into a "Beyond" (p. xl). In this Buddhist text, of course, all the experiences are self-created, whether for good (Dharma- K3ya state of perfect enlightenment) or for evil (the karmic illusions of the Chinyid state).