Page:The Babylonian conception of heaven and hell - Jeremias (1902).djvu/26

 offering them rested in the first place on the surviving son. In a deed fixing a boundary any man who should remove the boundary stone is cursed as follows: " May Ninib, lord of landmarks, rob him of his son, the Water-pourer." The commemoration day of the dead is called "the day of the feast of the dead," "day of dejection," "day of lamentatation," "day of mourning." The nak me priests, or "water pourers," performed the libation rites at the graves. "At the mourning festival of libations to the manes of my royal ancestors," says Asurbanipal, "I put on the garments of mourning and bestowed a boon on gods and men, on the dead and on the living." To this is added a penitential prayer spoken by the king at the graves of his ancestors. In his annals, however, he tells us that to his slain enemies he denied the Dirge of the Water-pourer. Bloody sacrifices of vengeance were also made at the tomb. The same king relates how he ordered prisoners of war to be slaughtered near to a colossal bull, on the scene of the murder of his grandfather Sanherib, as a solemn festival in honour of the deceased monarch.

To be deprived of the prescribed rites of burial was regarded as a terrible thing. The curse on him who should destroy the sacred inscriptions of the Assyrian kings is: " In famine shall his life end, his corpse shall be cast out and receive no