Lecture II. Primitive Animism. 265
texts probably forgot that the god had once been a chieflilor
ghost and nothing more.
This altered conception of the god of Nippur was necessarily
accompanied by an altered conception of the ghost-world over
which he had ruled. It was handed over to other gods in the State
religion, or else passed into the possession of the wizard and
necromancer. Nergal of Cutha became the lord of Hades, which
he shared with the goddess Eris-kigal or Allat. Legend told how
at the command of the gods of light, Nergal had forced his way
into the dark recesses of the underworld, and there compelled
the goddess to become his bride. From henceforward Hades was
a realm under the control of the gods of heaven, and part of that
orderly universe which they governed and directed.
The conquest of Hades by the gods of light implied the
conquest by them of death. The dead was no longer a mere
ghost, beyond the reach of the lords of heaven, and able to play
havoc in their own sphere when darkness had swallowed up the
light. The lords of heaven now claimed the power of“raising the
dead to life.”It is an epithet that is applied more especially to
Merodach, the minister and interpreter of his father Ea, through
whose magic words and wise teaching he heals the diseases of
mankind, and even brings them again from the world of the dead. [289]
It is evident that we here have a new conception before us of
the imperishable part of man. The gods are with man beyond the
grave as they are on this side of it. There is no inexorable destiny
forbidding them to bring him back to life. In other words, there
is a life in the next world as well as in this. It may be a very
inferior and shadowy kind of life, but it is a life nevertheless, and
not the existence of a bloodless ghost which would perish if it
could not satisfy its cravings with food and drink. The religious
consciousness has passed beyond the stage when the future world
is peopled with the doubles and counterparts of existing things,
and it has attained to the conception of a spiritual life which man
can share with the immortal gods. Animism has made way for