they possessed
the present and the past. They had all time as all men have their day.
That day was here and it was brief. Death was a descent to Aralu, the
land whence none return, a region of the underworld, called also
Shualu, where the departed were nourished on dust. Dust they were and
to dust they returned.

Extinction was not a punishment or even a reward, it was a law.
Punishment was visited on the transgressor here, as here also the
piety of the righteous was rewarded. When death came, just and unjust
fared alike. The Aryan and Egyptian belief in immortality had no place
in this creed, and consequently it had none either in Israel, where
Sheol was a replica of Shualu. To the Semites of Babylonia and Kanaan,
the gods alone were immortal, and immortal beings would be gods. Man
could not become divine while his deities were still human.

Exceptionally, exceptional beings such as Gilgames and Adra-Khasis
might be translated to the land of the Silver Sky, as Elijah was
translated to heaven, but otherwise the only mortals that could reach
it were kings, for a king, in becoming sovereign, became, _ipso
facto_, celestial. As such, ages later, Alexander had himself
worshipped, and it was in imitation of his apotheosis that the
subsequent Caesars declared themselves gods. Yet precisely as the
latter were man-made deities, so the Babylonian Baalim were very
similar to human kings.

For their hunger was cream, oil, dates, the flesh of ewe lambs. For
their nostrils was the perfume of prayers and of psalms; for their
passions the virginity of girls. Originally the first born of men were
also given them, but while, with higher culture, that sacrifice was
abolished, the sacred harlotry, over which Ishtar presided, remained.
Judaism omitted to incorporate that, but in Kanaan, which Babylonia
profoundly influenced, it was general and, though reviled by Israel,
was tempting even, and perhaps particularly, to Solomon.[25]

[Footnote 25: 1 Kings xi. 5. "Solomon went after Ashtoreth."]

The latter's temple was similar to Bel's, from which the Hebraic
ritual, terms of the Law, the Torah itself, may have proceeded, as, it
may be, the Sabbath did also. On a tablet recovered from the library
of Assurbanipal it is written: "The seventh day is a fast day, a lucky
day, a sabbatuv"--literally, a day of rest for the heart.[26]

[Footnote 26: Cuneiform Insc. W. A. ii. 32.]

In Aralu that day never ceased; the dead there, buried, Herodo