Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [61]
Another way to think of the ritual was as a celebration of family integrity. Only intact families could organize themselves enough to carry out the ritual. In the kispu ritual, a communal meal was partaken with the dead, which valorized the community of those who ate in honor of a common ancestor.45 This ritual was highly developed in Canaan, where it was called a marziḥ, apparently including sexual entertainments, and would prove a great moral test for the Israelites.
Enlil and Ninlil, Gilgamesh’s Court, Evil Spirits
THE MYTH OF Enlil and Ninlil contains even more details of the underworld. The god Enlil was banished to the underworld as punishment for his rape of goddess Ninlil. But Ninlil evincing great loyalty to her abuser attempts to follow Enlil to the underworld. This action disrupts the order of the universe, since Ninlil’s offspring is Nanna-Sin, the moon god, and therefore belongs in the heavens. Enlil, furthermore, does not want his offspring to live in the underworld. He devises a stratagem to create hostages to redeem Ninlil and their first offspring. As Ninlil leaves the city of Nippur and travels to the underworld, Enlil disguises himself on three separate occasions-as the gatekeeper to Nippur, the gatekeeper of the underworld, and the ferryman to the land of the dead. In each of these disguises, he impregnates Ninlil and fathers a child. Subsequently the three new offspring become important characters in Mesopotamian mythology. As a prison city, the afterlife will not free anyone without first taking a hostage, as we have already discovered from the story of the descent of Inanna. We suspect that Inanna was looking for a new hostage in her husband when she propositioned Gilgamesh. Even the gods had to pay a price for entering the underworld.
The deceased was called mitu-literally, simply a dead person or a ghost, in context. (The Hebrew equivalent is mēt). In the document known as “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld,” we learn the value of progeny:
(Gilgamesh): “Have you seen him whose ghost has no one to care for him?”
(Enkidu): “I have seen him. He eats what is scraped out of cooking pots (and) crusts of bread which are thrown into the street.”
“He who had one son-have you seen?”
“I have seen. He weeps bitterly at the nail which was driven into his wall.”
“He who had two sons-have you seen him?”
“I have seen. He sits on two bricks and eats bread.”
• • •
He who had seven sons-have you seen?
I have seen. As a companion of the gods he sits on a chair and listens to music.”46
This society was saying that the more sons one had, the better, so it was in the afterlife that the father would be rewarded, just as one supposes that the family with many sons had a retirement fund waiting to be used when the pater and mater familias became too old to work the land. It also suggests that the social utility of rituals of filial piety are attendant upon the cult of the dead. We already know from the lament of Gilgamesh that statues of the deceased were often made in commemoration of the dead, the most elaborate were started even before death, to represent the patron’s presence at rites of this type for which he was responsible. In the case of deceased royalty, offerings were made approximately every two weeks, at new and full moon. The offerings, which were foodstuffs, depended on the social class of the observers and might only be laid out, or they might actually be poured down a pipe laid in the earth. These feeding pipes also became very popular in Greco-Roman tombs. At Ebla, a royal cemetery was found that connected to a sanctuary to Rashaf, a god of the underworld, suggesting an organized funeral cult.
Untended graves, unburied corpses, or violent or unjust deaths all led to trouble from ghosts among the living. This created not only a mitu, a dead