The Vampire His Kith & Kin by Augustus Montague Summers

Author:Augustus Montague Summers
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IV

THE VAMPIRE IN ASSYRIA, THE EAST, AND SOME ANCIENT COU

NTRIES

AMONG the elaborate and extensive demonology of Babylonia and Assyria the V

ampire had a very prominent place. From the very earliest times Eastern rac es have always held that belief in the existence of dark and malignant powe rs, evil spirits and ghosts which is, we cannot doubt it, naturally implant ed in the heart of man and which it remains for the ignorance and agnostici sm of a later day to deny. The first inhabitants of Babylonia, the Sumerian s, recognized three distinct classes of evil spirits, any one of whom was a lways ready to attack those who by any accident or negligence laid themselv es open to these invasions. In particular was a man who had wandered far fr om his fellows into some haunted spot liable to these onsets, and Dr. R. Ca mpbell Thompson tells us that this "is the interpretation of the word mutta liku, wanderer, which occurs so often in the magical text to indicate the p atient."[1] Of the Babylonian evil spirits the first were those ghosts who were unable to rest in their graves and so perpetually walked up and down t he face of the earth; the second class was composed of those horrible entit ies who were half human and half demon; whilst the third class were the dev ils, pure spirits of the same nature as the gods, fiends, who bestrode the whirlwind and the sand-storm, who afflicted mankind with plagues and pestil ence. There were many subdivisions, and in fact there are few evil hierarch ies so detailed and so fasciculated as the Assyrian cosmorama of the spiritual world.

The evil spirit who was known as Utukku was a phantom or ghost, generally b ut perhaps not invariably of a wicked and malevolent kind, since it was he whom the necromancers raised from the dead, and in an ancient Epic when the hero, Gilgamish, prays to the god, Nergal to restore his friend {p. 218} E

a-bani, the request is granted, for the ground gapes open and the Utukku of Ea-bani appears "like the wind,"[2] that is, says Dr. Campbell Thompson, "

probably a transparent spectre in the human shape of Ea-bani, who converses with Gilgamish." The Ekimmu or Departed Spirit, was the soul of the dead p erson which for some reason could find no rest, and wandered over the earth lying wait to seize upon man. Especially did it lark in deserted and ill-o mened places. Dr. Thompson tells us that it is difficult to say exactly in what respect the Ekimmu differed from the Utukku,[3] but it is extremely in teresting to inquire into the causes owing to which a person became a Ekimm u, and here we shall find many parallels with the old Greek beliefs concern ing those duties to the dead which are paramount and for which a man must r isk his life and more. It was ordinarily believed among the Assyrians that

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