Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [60]
The anzu-bird was a horrifying griffon-like creature that inhabited the underworld and sometimes served as a kind of angel of death. Also present below ground was Geshtinanna, the fruit maiden we met before as the sister of Dummuzi/Tammuz; she was also known in Akkadian as Belet-Seri and Dimpikug, the wife of Ningishzida (also called Gishzida or Gizzida, often the chair-bearer of the netherworld). His job was, typically, to check the names of the new arrivals against the roster so that uninvited guests like Prince Kummu or the dreaming Enkidu could be recognized and turned away. But some have crashed the party, usually by means of prophetic dreams, to report the details of the final disposition of the dead.
This scenario was not the only possibility, however, as we have already seen that Gilgamesh himself is sometimes pictured as holding court down below. Scurlock suggests that Gilgamesh’s court may have been one of equity, where cases of civil damage were finally adjudicated in the afterlife.43 Additionally, the sun god Shamash was also pictured as a judge in the underworld, as his daily circuit brings him there on his return trip. Shamash seems to confine his interest in ghosts who were pestering the living but also oversaw funeral offerings, making sure everyone received his proper due. None of these courts had the systematic role in rewarding good and punishing evil that we envision heaven and hell to hold in our culture.
Kispu: The Mesopotamian Cult of the Dead
ERESHIKIGAL’S kingdom offered a parsimonious sufficiency, but the welfare of the departed depended on the generosity of the survivors. Perhaps the Mesopotamian afterlife is best thought of as a kind of imprisonment, where the relatives are responsible for the care of the prisoner, as in many underdeveloped countries even today. A badly treated prisoner could be expected to escape and cause great harm to the living as evil spirits or ghosts. The dead, with the right treatment, would eat regularly, if frugally, from the kispum (from the verb kasapu, to share) offering and even occasionally banquet when their descendants held commemorative meals in their honor at the appropriate times.
The kispu offerings in Mesopotamia were monthly offerings of water and bread, but at special calendrical events, they might be more elaborate. The departed’s first provisions-beer and honey as well as the bread and water-needed to be more ample to sustain the long journey to the West, where the sun set, and where the great gates to the underworld were located.44 The Adapa story supports the practice of ritual offerings, the same articles that Adapa needed to accept when he ascended to heaven, suggesting that the gods themselves sustain their immortality with these offerings.
The subsequent kispu offerings are models of interaction between the dead and the living, and also between the gods and the living to a certain extent. The dead were able to aid in bringing various benefits to society, like rain, protection against witchcraft, and increase to the herds. In return they needed to be fed, or they would be unable to perform their services and, indeed, themselves become malevolent. The paterfamilias was responsible for organizing the kispu events; the eldest son graduated to this responsibility on the death of his father. The eldest son’s greater inheritance helped him shoulder the financial burden imposed by these responsibilities.
One way to think of these rituals was as a payoff to keep the dead happy. It was important to keep the dead inside the city except on these specified “visiting days”; otherwise they could possibly cause great mischief. Dead kings and aristocrats could expect a lavish banquet, indeed, as the offerings and feasts for