# The Babylonian Conception of Heaven and Hell/Introduction

THE BABYLONIAN CONCEPTION OF HEAVEN AND HELL
Introduction.
No consecutive account of the Babylonian religion can as yet be given, nor will it for many years come within the range of possibilities to achieve it. Abundant fragments of Babylonian religious and mythological literature have indeed been brought to light by the excavations of the last few years, and by dint of strenuous efforts a large proportion has been classified and deciphered. But extending as they do over a period of more than three thousand years it is in comparatively few cases that these fragments can be set in chronological order. The preservation of most of the religious texts known to us is due to the collecting zeal of the Assyrian king Asurbanipal (668–626 B.C.) at whose command copies of the literary monuments of Babylonia were made on clay tablets by the royal scribes. Magnificent ​material for the investigation of Babylonian thought will be available if, in a happy future, the interrupted excavations in the library of Nineveh should ever be completed, but as yet only a small portion of the contents has been recovered and in a greatly damaged condition. Even then our knowledge of the Babylonian religion would still be lacking in essential data, namely the traditionary lore of the temples: this it is which would throw light on the histories of the different cults.
In the following pages we have attempted to set forth the Babylonian conceptions of a future life, but it must be borne in mind that fragmentary material only is available for the purpose. When once the temple of Nergal at Kutha shall have been excavated much more will certainly be known regarding Babylonian eschatology than is the case at present. Nevertheless it is precisely this particular department of the religion that lends itself most easily to any attempt at systematic representation by us. The sacerdotal religion of Babylonia took little heed of the next world, presenting in this respect a marked contrast to Egyptian thought. The gods of Babylonian worship were, on the whole, gods of practical life, even Nergal of Kutha being in the first place a lord of the living. It was thus left to the imagination of the people to brood over ​thoughts of life after death, and apparently the mythological fragments that have been preserved restore these somewhat persistent popular conceptions in their main outlines.
The reader will be struck by the surprising correspondence between the Babylonian ideas concerning death and Hades and Jewish notions of the same. The connection of Israel with Babylonia was indeed of the closest, and the Tell el Amarna tablets have proved that Babylonian thought had spread over the land of Canaan before it was conquered by the Hebrews. At the time these were written there stood in Jerusalem a temple of the Babylonian Storm-god, Ninib. In more than one traditional version of the Hebrew stories of patriarchs Babylonia is cited as the original home of the people of the Bible, and during both Monarchy and Exile Babylonian culture played among the Israelites a part similar to that played by French culture in Germany in the eighteenth century. It would seem as though the gloomy conception of life in the underworld was the common heritage of Babylonians and Israelites from primitive Semitic times.