esistance, and nothing can escape from
her: the gods themselves can pass into her empire only on the condition
of submitting to death like mortals, and of humbly avowing themselves
her slaves.

[Illustration: 220.jpg THE GODDESS ALLAT PASSES THROUGH THE NETHER
REGIONS IN HER BARK.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze plaque of which an
engraving was published by Clermont-Ganneau. The original,
which belonged to M. Peretie, is now in the collection of M.
de Clercq

[Illustration: 221.jpg NERGAL, THE GOD OF HADES; BACK VIEW.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. This is the back of the bronze plate
represented on the preceding page; the animal-head of the
god appears in relief at the top of the illustration.

The warders at the gates despoiled the new-comers of everything which
they had brought with them, and conducted them in a naked condition
before Allat, who pronounced sentence upon them, and assigned to each
his place in the nether world. The good or evil committed on earth by
such souls was of little moment in determining the sentence: to secure
the favour of the judge, it was of far greater importance to have
exhibited devotion to the gods and to Allat herself, to have lavished
sacrifices and offerings upon them and to have enriched their temples.
The souls which could not justify themselves were subjected to horrible
punishment: leprosy consumed them to the end of time, and the most
painful maladies attacked them, to torture them ceaselessly without any
hope of release. Those who were fortunate enough to be spared from
her rage, dragged out a miserable and joyless existence. They were
continually suffering from the pangs of thirst and hunger, and found
nothing to satisfy their appetites but clay and dust. They shivered with
cold, and they obtained no other garment to protect them than mantles of
feathers--the great silent wings of the night-birds, invested with which
they fluttered about and filled the air with their screams. This gloomy
and cruel conception of ordinary life in this strange kingdom was still
worse than the idea formed of the existence in the tomb to which it
succeeded. In the cemetery the soul was, at least, alone with the dead
body; in the house of Allat, on the contrary, it was lost as it were
among spirits as much afflicted as itself, and among the genii born of
darkness. None of these genii had a simple form, or approached the
human figure in shape; each individ