Gods in the Desert: Religions of the Ancient Near East by Holland Glenn S

Author:Holland, Glenn S. [Holland, Glenn S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780742599796
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2009-07-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Mesopotamia: The World of the Dead

The Realm of the Dead in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Ancient Mesopotamian beliefs about the afterlife and the situation of the dead were very different from the optimistic ideas about the kingdom of Osiris or other forms of blessedness in Egyptian religious culture. But Mesopotamian beliefs were in this respect entirely consistent with the prevailing visions of the afterlife in ancient Mediterranean religious cultures in general. Although there seems to have been little doubt in those religious cultures that the dead continued to exist, and that their continued existence resembled life on earth in some sense, the world of the dead was decidedly not like the world of the living, and the dead there did not enjoy the blessings bestowed on the living on earth.

The prevailing beliefs about the fate of the dead in ancient Mediterranean religious cultures reflect the common practice of burying or entombing dead bodies. The realm of the dead, for example, was located beneath the earth's surface. The dead were for the most part buried in the earth or entombed either below its surface or in caves or cave-like structures, so it followed that the eternal dwelling place of the dead must be in the regions beneath the surface of the earth, in the Underworld. Most often the Underworld was believed to lie deep in the earth, under the foundations of the mountains but above the waters of the abyss, at the farthest possible remove from the gods in heaven. Because it was beneath the surface of the earth, the Underworld was associated first with darkness, but also with dust, dryness, and thirst. The dead were deprived of the light of the sun and moon and were cut off from contact with the great gods who lived in heaven. In this dark realm the dead continued to exist, but there they could exist only in a shadowy, semiconscious state devoid of the vitality of life in its earthly form.

Despite the fact that the dead were cut off from the source of life—the sun and the gods in heaven—there are no indications of any belief in the ancient Mediterranean world that the dead simply ceased to exist. The evidence from the prehistoric and later ancient burials—burials that include the tools and goods of everyday life—instead unanimously support the contrary belief that the dead continued to "live" in some sense. This evidence and the evidence provided by later literary works dealing with the fate of the dead argue persuasively that there was a near-universal expectation that life on earth was followed by another, comparable life elsewhere.

From the evidence it seems clear that the concept of nonexistence was simply unimaginable to the people of the ancient Mediterranean world. What was alive would continue to live, even if what they experienced was life only in a degraded and limited sense. The concept that something that once existed no longer did could apparently only be understood by people in the ancient Near East in terms of utter physical destruction, as when a person is devoured by fire or an animal.

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