Page:The Babylonian conception of heaven and hell - Jeremias (1902).djvu/27

 burial." Elsewhere we are told that burial rites were refused to a rebel who had committed suicide. When conquered foes were to be treated with special ignominy the tombs of their ancestors were destroyed that the repose of the dead within them might be disturbed, and the prophecy of Jeremiah (viii. i, cf. Baruch ii. 24) that the bones of the Jewish kings, priests, prophets, and citizens will be taken from their graves and scattered beneath the sun is in strict accordance with the cruel war customs of Babylonians and Assyrians. Asurbanipal tells how after the overthrow of Elam he destroyed the sanctuaries of the land, and then uncovered and ravaged the mausoleums of the kings; "their bones I carried with me to Assyria, unrest laid I on their shades, and cut them off from the funerary rites of libation." King Sanherib was not satisfied with carrying off by ship the property and subjects of Merodachbaladan, he must needs also bring out from their mausoleum the bones of that unhappy king's predecessors. Again we are told how conquered kings, confined in the notorious Cage which stood to the east of Nineveh, were compelled for the special delectation of the populace to break in pieces the bones of their ancestors. No wonder many kings chose the sites of their tombs in the inaccessible swamps of the Euphrates, better to protect their sepulchres