Page:The Babylonian conception of heaven and hell - Jeremias (1902).djvu/41

 other hand, the ceremony for the raising of spirits seems to be described in the concluding lines of "Istar's Journey in Hades," though the exact meaning remains indeed somewhat doubtful. It is there stated in conclusion that at the feast of Tammuz the dead shall arise and breathe the fragrance of sacrifice. It may be concluded from this that the feast of Tammuz was celebrated by solemn invocations of the dead.

At the close of the Gilgamesh epic there is an instance of how such invocation was actually practised. On returning from his ancestor, Gilgamesh with his companion held solemn lamentation over his friend Eabani, who "verily has sunk down to the shades." "Every twenty miles they intoned the dirge (?), every thirty miles they held a festival in honour of the dead." With his dirge he went from one temple to another complaining that no evil malady had consumed his friend, that he had not fallen in the field of battle among men, but that the world of the dead had snatched him away. At last he turned to the god of the Underworld himself, to the "hero and lord" Nergal. Ea said to him, "'Knock at the chamber of the tomb (?) [open the earth that the spirit of Eabani may come forth from the Underworld].' [When] the hero Nergal heard this he knocked at the chamber of the tomb (?), opened the Underworld, and straightway let the spirit of