Page:The Babylonian conception of heaven and hell - Jeremias (1902).djvu/31

 to the west that the warder of the Underworld may there retain him. Not only was the west the region of sunset and therefore of darkness; to the Babylonian it denoted the desert also, and for him the desert, as the sea, was alike a place of horror. The desert being, indeed, the battlefield and playground of demons, it is consistent with this view that the goddess Belit-Seri, "the lady of the desert," is brought into connection with the Underworld. The expression "far place," which occurs twice on one of the so-called Hades reliefs and is also used in exorcisms ("Let the sickness of the head fly away like a bird to the far place and the sick man be committed to the gracious hands of his god "), may be understood as a euphemism for the desert in the west as well as for hell.

The account of the journey of Gilgamesh to the "Island of the Blessed" speaks of the threatening "floods of death" in the south-east, in the Erythraean Sea. Again, in a formula for exorcism, the heart of the magician is to be over- come by "waters of death." These waters of death must have some connection with the "river of death " repeatedly mentioned in descriptions of the Underworld, and which is occasionally designated by the name Khubur. When a priestly magician says that he "has held back the boat and cut off the quay and thus prevented the