Semitic magic : its origins and development

GHOSTS. 6
no peace if its corporeal shape is unburied, or if its
descendants cease to feed it by paying it its due rites,
libations, or sacrifices, or for a hundred other causes
which are frequently set forth at length in the cuneiform
incantations. Among the Assyrians the word used for
this ghost was edimmu,^ and ILke other nations they
believed that the soul could return to earth, and to these
ghosts they ascribed many of their bodily ills. In ordinary
circumstances, when a person died and was duly buried
his soul entered the underworld, " the House of Darkness,
the seat of the god Irkalla, the house from which none
that enter come forth again," ^ where it was compelled
to feed on dust and mud. Of Sheol among the Hebrews,
according to the most primitive beliefs, we have very
little direct knowledge. In historic times its principal
characteristic is darkness,^ the word for ^ dust ' being
used as a synonym.^ It was under the earth,^ and was
described as a place from which one did not return,^
and, as in the Assyrian picture in the Descent of Ishtar,
it is portrayed as a city with gates."^ The dead would
1 The two texts published by L. W. King (O.T. iii, 2-4, and v, 4-7)
and translated by Hunger {Becherwahrsagitng hei den Bahyloniern^
1903) show, as Hunger points out (p. 32), that we must read edimmu,
and not ehimmu. The variants e-di-im-mi and e-te-im-mi-im leave no
manner of doubt that ehimmu is wrong. I had hitherto thought that
it meant the ' thing snatched away ' {Devils, i, xxii), as it has always
been referred to the root ekemu, 'to rob,' although with what is
probably an impossible translation (having regard to the form), 'the
seizer.
'
2 See Jeremias, Vorstellungen vom Leheii nach dem Tode, 59 fF. In
W.A.I., iv, 27, 1-3, it is Tammuz, the husband of Ishtar, who ia
described as Ruler of Hades.
^ Job X, 21. * Job xvii, 16.
° Job vii, 10. ' Isa. xxxviii, 10, etc.
'" Job xi, 8.