Page:The Babylonian conception of heaven and hell - Jeremias (1902).djvu/17

 satisfied with abundance of life!" The formal curses at the end of the royal inscriptions show, on the other hand, that destruction of posterity and sudden death were regarded as punishments for offences against gods and men. He who should destroy the inscriptions of Tiglath Pilesar is threatened as follows: "May the god Ramman command that he live not a day longer. Let his name and seed be exterminated out of the land." "So long as heaven and earth endure be his seed destroyed," runs another terrible curse: "his name blotted out, his posterity overthrown, may his life end in hunger and misery, may his corpse be cast out, no burial shall it receive."

None, however, could ultimately escape the fate of death. Sudden and unexpected dawns the day "that sets not free." "Life is cut off like a reed." "He who at evening is living, in the morning he is dead." Many a man dies on a day that was not "the day of his fate." The lot, the fate of man being determined by the gods in the chamber of destiny, hence the day of death was known as the "day of fate"; of one who died it was said "the day of his fate tore him away," but of a suicide: "Terror overpowered him, and he went to death by his own will, not by that of the gods." No herb grown might be the antidote of death; no spell could avail against it. "So long as we build houses," says the