Lecture II. Primitive Animism. 263
declared she saw Elohim rising up from the earth in the form of
an old man clothed in a mantle. Now Elohim or“gods”was the
general term under which the Canaanite included all the beings
of the spiritual world in whom he believed; and in calling the
spirit of Samuel“Elohim,”the witch was accordingly asserting
that the human ghost she had evoked had become thereby one
of them. As the ghost of Ea-bani when summoned from its
resting-place became anutukku, so the ghost of Samuel for the
same reason became one of the Elohim.
The ghost, like the body to which it had belonged, was
dependent for its existence upon food and drink. The legend of
the descent of Istar into Hades describes the ghosts of the dead
as flitting like winged bats through their gloomy prison-house,
drinking dust and eating clay. The bread and dates and water
offered at the tombs of the dead were a welcome substitute
for such nauseous food. Food, however, of some kind it was
necessary for the ghost to have, otherwise it would have suffered
from the pangs of hunger, or died the second death for want of
nourishment.
Like the Egyptian Ka, consequently, the Babylonian ghost was
conceived of as a semi-material counterpart of the body, needing,
like the body, drink and food; and if recalled to the upper world
in the form of anutukkuor anekimmu, resembling the body in
every detail, even to the clothes it wore. Moreover, as in Egypt,
the doctrine of the double must be extended to inanimate objects
as well as to living things. The offerings deposited with the dead
included not only poultry and fish, but also dates and grain, wine
and water. The objects, too, which the dead had loved in his life
were laid in his grave—toys for the child, mirrors and jewellery [287]
for the woman, the staff and the seal for the man. It must have
been the doubles of the food and drink upon which the ghost fed
in the world below, and the doubles of the other objects buried
with the corpse, which it enjoyed in its new mode of existence.
There must have been ghosts of things as well as ghosts of men.