nfluences. If
they abandoned or forgot him, he avenged himself for their neglect by
returning to torment them in their homes, by letting sickness attack
them, and by ruining them with his imprecations: he became thus no
less hurtful than the "luminous ghost" of the Egyptians, and if he were
accidentally deprived of sepulture, he would not be merely a plague
to his relations, but a danger to the entire city. The dead, who were
unable to earn an honest living, showed little pity to those who were
in the same position as themselves: when a new-comer arrived among them
without prayers, libations, or offerings, they declined to receive him,
and would not give him so much as a piece of bread out of their meagre
store. The spirit of the unburied dead man, having neither place of
repose nor means of subsistence, wandered through the town and country,
occupied with no other thought than that of attacking and robbing the
living. He it was who, gliding into the house during the night, revealed
himself to its inhabitants with such a frightful visage as to drive them
distracted with terror. Always on the watch, no sooner does he surprise
one of his victims than he falls upon him, "his head against his
victim's head, his hand against his hand, his foot against his foot."
He who has been thus attacked, whether man or beast, would undoubtedly
perish if magic were not able to furnish its all-powerful defence
against this deadly embrace.* This human survival, who is so forcibly
represented both in his good and evil aspects, was nevertheless nothing
more than a sort of vague and fluid existence--a double, in fact,
analogous in appearance to that of the Egyptians.

* The majority of the spells employed against sickness
contain references to the spirits against which they
contend--"the wicked ekimmu who oppresses men during the
night," or simply "the wicked ekimmu," the ghost.

With the faculty of roaming at will through space, and of going forth
from and returning to his abode, it was impossible to regard him as
condemned always to dwell in the case of terra-cotta in which his body
lay mouldering: he was transferred, therefore, or rather he
transferred himself, into the dark land--the Aralu--situated very far
away--according to some, beneath the surface of the earth; according to
others, in the eastern or northern extremities of the universe. A river
which opens into this region and separates it from the sunlit earth,