Page:The Babylonian conception of heaven and hell - Jeremias (1902).djvu/61

Since to the Babylonians death and sojourn in Hades loomed as a dark fate indeed, there must soon have arisen in the soul of the people the thought that there might be distinctions in the fate of the dead, and retribution in the next world. It must also have appeared impossible that the ethical system of things taken for granted in Babylonian hymns and prayers should be entirely done away with beyond the tomb. Some traces of a doctrine of retribution are, as a matter of fact, to be found in the Babylonian representations of Hades. What is the goddess scribe of the Underworld writing as she stands bending before the goddess of Hades (p. 23)? What is the significance of the arrangements by which the strength of an unwelcome intruder was to be broken (p. 21)? Why were the Anunaki set upon a golden throne when decision was to be made as to whether Istar should go free? Does it not seem as though they exercised judicial functions after the manner of the forty-two judges at the Judgment of Osiris? In an exorcism on one of the Hades reliefs, mention is made of the "Judgment of the life of the great gods." The fact that individual favourites of the gods were removed to a happy life on some Island of the Blessed or elsewhere in the vicinity of the gods is no proof of a belief in the separation of good and evil after death, but it does testify that the Babylonians in