Reference Book

*Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light...**This article is about The Dark Pictures Anthology's third installment,* ***House of Ashes***
***.***

## Reference Book

* Front
* Page 1 and 2
* Page 3 and 4

### Found by

Jason (Theatrical Cut)
Nick (Curator's Cut)

## Secrets Guide

**Reference Book** is the forty-second secret of *House of Ashes*. It can be found by Jason or Nick in the temple. This secret appears in After the Fall.

## Overview

A book on Sumerian mythology. Some parts are underlined with notes written by an unknown person.

## In-Game Description

Notes in the margins of this book suggest that the temple was built over a gate to the underworld.

## Transcript

(on front)

*Gods of Sumer*

*By Franklin Levitt*

*Published by Napier & Brothers*

(page 1 and 2)

*Lamashtu was a terrifying she-demon, a murderer of infants who feasted on the blood and flesh of men. She is most commonly portrayed as a hairy, lion-headed monster with bird's feet, often shown kneeling on a donkey, a serpent held in each hand and a dog and a pig suckling at her breasts. Lamashtu had seven names and was referred to in incantations as the "Seven Witches". She was responsible for many evil deeds: a briner of nightmares, a poisoner of rivers, and a herald of famine and disease.*

*Fig 4*

*Belt buckle found in the tomb of an Akkadian priest.*

*Fig 4 (a)*

*Belt buckle detail*

*Lamashtu was the daughter of the Akkadian sky god Anu, father of gods and demons, and the god of earthly kings. Anu was most often depicted in a horned headdress, while his Sumerian counterpart, An, was depicted as a great bull. In Mesopotamian religion, bulls were frequently seen as signs of strength, a belief passed on to later Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures. For Greek philosophers, the bull's horns symbolised the "horns of a dilemma": an impossible choice with no right answer. The gods of Sumer certainly presented no right answer for the Sumerians: they were at once kindly and cruel, grant and petty, fallible and supreme.*

(page 3 and 4)

*THE SUMERIAN UNDERWORLD*

*Pity the pauper who was buried with little; their afterlife would be shabby and poor. Those who died unburied would have no life after death at all but would simply cease to exist. So, the doorway to underworld* [sic] *was the grave, and the Mesopotamian peoples, from Sumerians through to the Akkadians, would be buried under their homes, or nearby. The well-to-do would even build chapels or shrines to serve as burial plots.*

*Once buried, the Sumerian soul would travel a road to the Zagros mountains* [sic] *(Zagros Mountains!) in the east where Utu, the sun god, rose each morning. Here was the entrance to the underworld, where Utu rested at night. A staircase led down from the entrance to a series of seven gates. (The catacombs?) The newly dead souls would meet the god Neti, the gatekeeper, who at each gate would unbolt it and relieve the soul of some of its burden of offerings arrived naked and powerless in the underworld. (Temple built over gates to the underworld?)*

*At the threshold, the spirit appeared before Ereshkigal, the goddess who ruled the underworld, who pronounced them dead. The scribe Gashtinanna would record their names. There were no rewards or punishments here, rather the dead lived according to the offerings they gave the gods. There was comfort for the wealthy and a hard existence for the poor.*

*Fig A*

*Example of typical Votive statue. They often depict worshippers, not gods, and come in a variety of shapes.*

## Location

It can be found on a table in the end of a corridor to the left of the hallway after Nick repairs the generator.

## Trivia

* The "mountains" in "Zagros Mountains" is improperly capitalized on page 4.