* The German expedition of 1886-87 found four of these reservoirs in a single chamber, and nine distributed in the chambers of a house entirely devoted to the burial of the dead.
** Various explanations have been offered to account for this absence of tombs, Without mentioning the desperate attempt to get rid of the difficulty by the assumption that the dead bodies were cast into the river, Loftus thinks that the Chaldæans and Assyrians were accustomed to send them to some sanctuary in Southern Chaldæa, especially to Uru and Uruk, whose vast cemeteries, he contends, would have absorbed during the centuries the greater part of the Euphratean population; his opinion has been adopted by some historians, and, as far only as the later period is concerned, by Hommel.
The dead man, or rather that part of him which survived--his "ekimmu"--dwelt in the tomb, and it was for his comfort that there were provided, at the time of sepulture or cremation, the provisions and clothing, the ornaments and weapons, of which he was considered to stand in need. Furnished with these necessities by his children and heirs, he preserved for the donors the same affection which he had felt for them in his lifetime, and gave evidence of it in every way he could, watching over their welfare, and protecting them from malign influences. If they abandoned or forgot him, he avenged himself for their neglect by returning to torment them in their homes, by letting sickness attack them, and by ruining them with his imprecations: he became thus no less hurtful than the "luminous ghost" of the Egyptians, and if he were accidentally deprived of sepulture, he would not be merely a plague to his relations, but a danger to the entire city. The dead, who were unable to earn an honest living, showed little pity to those who were in the same position as themselves: when a new-comer arrived among them without prayers, libations, or offerings, they declined to receive him, and would not give him so much as a piece of bread out of their meagre store. The spirit of the unburied dead man, having neither place of repose nor means of subsistence, wandered through the town and country, occupied with no other thought than that of attacking and robbing the living. He it was who, gliding into the house during the night, revealed himself to its inhabitants with such a frightful visage as to drive them distracted with terror. Always on the watch, no sooner does he surprise one of his victims than he falls upon him, "his head against his victim's head, his hand against his hand, his foot against his foot." He who has been thus attacked, whether man or beast, would undoubtedly perish if magic were not able to furnish its all-powerful defence against this deadly embrace.* This human survival, who is so forcibly represented both in his good and evil aspects, was nevertheless nothing more than a sort of vague and fluid existence--a double, in fact, analogous in appearance to that of the Egyptians.