Lecture II. Primitive Animism. 261
as the ranks of the vampire might be recruited from the dead, [284]
so too might the class of demons whom the Babylonians termed
utukki.
It was the same with another species of demon, theekimmu,
which hovered around the tomb and attacked the loins of those
who fell in its way. But theekimmuwas a being whose origin
was known. It was the spirit of an unburied corpse over whose
unsanctified remains the funeral rites had never been performed.
The mystic ceremonies and magical words which consigned
the dead to their last resting-place had been neglected, and the
hapless spirit was left unprovided with the talismans that would
enable him to cross the river of death, or join his comrades in
the passive tranquillity of the lower world. Restlessly, therefore,
it wandered about the desert places of the earth, finding at times
a shelter in the bodies of the living, whom it plagued with sore
diseases, and seeking to satiate its hunger under the cover of
night with the refuse it could pick up“in the street.”The food
and drink which pious hands laid in the tomb were denied to the
tombless ghost, and it had to search for them where it could. The
Epic of Gilgames concludes with a description of it, which paints
in vivid colours the old Babylonian belief—
“He whose body lies forsaken in the field,
As thou and I alike have seen,
Hisekimmurests not in the earth.
He whoseekimmuhas none to care for him,
As thou and I alike have seen,
The garbage of the pot, the refuse of food,
Which is thrown into the street, must he eat.”It is no wonder that a Babylonian king prays that the body of
his enemy may be“cast aside, and no grave allowed to him,”^227
or that Assur-bani-pal should have torn the bodies of the Elamite