Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/166

 146 HISTORY OK ART IN PIKKNH IA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. themselves at a very late date, the notion vas therefore general that death did not put an end to existence, and that a dead man continued to interest himself in the affairs of the world. They ascribed to him even higher powers than these ; they believed he could see into the future, ami that he could explain the most difficult secrets. Of this we have evidence in the often-repeated proscription of necromancy in the Mosaic law ; the insistence with which they are forbidden proves the high favour of such divinations among the Hebrews. 1 But in all this we are not left to mere conjecture ; the account of the visit of Saul to the witch of Endor is direct proof of what we have said. The king wished to learn what would be the issue of the battle of Mount Gilboa, and as the best way to the desired result he made the witch raise the shade of Samuel, who, after complaining of being brought up again to earth, told the king that he and his sons should be with him on the morrow. 2 The words of this account seem to hint that the writer of these passages believed the dead to be assembled in a single place, the s/ieo/of the Hebrews. This idea explains the phrase which occurs so often in the Bible "He was gathered to his own people," or " to his fathers." Looking at it merely as an allusion to the grave o j O its meaning is obscure, but it must rather be considered as referring to a posthumous life passed in a subterranean abode like that of the Greek Hades ; and here we may quote those words in Job's complaint of life in which he describes the dwelling of the dead. 3 " For now should I have lain still, and been quiet, I should have slept, then had I been at rest, with kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves ; or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver; Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been ; as infants which never saw the light. There the wicked cease from troubling ; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together ; 1 Among those people that were " an abomination unto the Lord " figure "a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer'' (Deuteronomy xviii. n ; see also Leviticus xix. 31, and xx. 6, 27). In a chapter of Samuel, to be quoted presently, we are told that Saul had put away diviners and necromancers out of the land (this is the translation given by M. Reuss dcrins tt necromanciers~ of the Hebrew text, i Samuel xxviii. 3). - i Si mn el xxviii.
 * ! foB iii. 13-19.