wl through the streets or enter
houses searching for scraps of food and pure water. The duty of giving
offerings to the dead was imposed apparently on near relatives. As in
India, it would appear that the eldest son performed the funeral
ceremony: a dreadful fate therefore awaited the spirit of the dead
Babylonian man or woman without offspring. In Sanskrit literature
there is a reference to a priest who was not allowed to enter
Paradise, although he had performed rigid penances, because he had no
children.[96]

There were hags and giants of mountain and desert, of river and ocean.
Demons might possess the pig, the goat, the horse, the lion, or the
ibis, the raven, or the hawk. The seven spirits of tempest, fire, and
destruction rose from the depths of ocean, and there were hosts of
demons which could not be overcome or baffled by man without the
assistance of the gods to whom they were hostile. Many were sexless;
having no offspring, they were devoid of mercy and compassion. They
penetrated everywhere:

The high enclosures, the broad enclosures, like a flood
they pass through,
From house to house they dash along.
No door can shut them out;
No bolt can turn them back.
Through the door, like a snake, they glide,
Through the hinge, like the wind, they storm,
Tearing the wife from the embrace of the man,
Driving the freedman from his family home.[97]

These furies did not confine their unwelcomed attentions to mankind
alone:

They hunt the doves from their cotes,
And drive the birds from their nests,
And chase the marten from its hole....
Through the gloomy street by night they roam,
Smiting sheepfold and cattle pen,
Shutting up the land as with door and bolt.

_R.C. Thompson's Translation._

The Babylonian poet, like Burns, was filled with pity for the animals
which suffered in the storm:

List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle,
I thought me o' the ourie cattle,
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle
O' winter war....
Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing!
That in the merry months o' spring
Delighted me to hear thee sing,
What comes o' thee?
Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing,
And close thy e'e?

According to Babylonian belief, "the great storms directed from
heaven" were caused by demons. Mankind heard them "loudly roaring
above, gibbering below".[98] The south wind was raised