* The majority of the spells employed against sickness contain references to the spirits against which they contend--"the wicked ekimmu who oppresses men during the night," or simply "the wicked ekimmu," the ghost.
With the faculty of roaming at will through space, and of going forth from and returning to his abode, it was impossible to regard him as condemned always to dwell in the case of terra-cotta in which his body lay mouldering: he was transferred, therefore, or rather he transferred himself, into the dark land--the Aralu--situated very far away--according to some, beneath the surface of the earth; according to others, in the eastern or northern extremities of the universe. A river which opens into this region and separates it from the sunlit earth, finds its source in the primordial waters into whose bosom this world of ours is plunged. This dark country is surrounded by seven high walls, and is approached through seven gates, each of which is guarded by a pitiless warder. Two deities rule within it--Nergal, "the lord of the great city," and Beltis-Allat, "the lady of the great land," whither everything which has breathed in this world descends after death. A legend relates that Allât, called in Sumerian Erishkigal, reigned alone in Hades, and was invited by the gods to a feast which they had prepared in heaven. Owing to her hatred of the light, she sent a refusal by her messenger Narntar, who acquitted himself on this mission with such a bad grace, that Ann and Ea were incensed against his mistress, and commissioned Nergal to descend and chastise her; he went, and finding the gates of hell open, dragged the queen by her hair from the throne, and was about to decapitate her, but she mollified him by her prayers, and saved her life by becoming his wife. The nature of Nergal fitted him well to play the part of a prince of the departed: for he was the destroying sun of summer, and the genius of pestilence and battle. His functions, however, in heaven and earth took up so much of his time that he had little leisure to visit his nether kingdom, and he was consequently obliged to content himself with the _rôle_ of providing subjects for it by despatching thither the thousands of recruits which he gathered daily from the abodes of men or from the field of battle. Allât was the actual sovereign of the country. She was represented with the body of a woman, ill-formed and shaggy, the grinning muzzle of a lion, and the claws of a bird of prey. She brandished in each hand a large serpent--a real animated javelin, whose poisonous bite inflicted a fatal wound upon the enemy. Her children were two lions, which she is represented as suckling, and she passed through her empire, not seated in the saddle, but standing upright or kneeling on the back of a horse, which seems oppressed by her weight. Sometimes she set out on an expedition upon the river which communicates with the countries of light, in order to meet the procession of newly arrived souls ceaselessly despatched to her: she embarked in this case upon an enchanted vessel, which made its way without sail or oars, its prow projecting like the beak of a bird, and its stern terminating in the head of an ox. She overcomes all resistance, and nothing can escape from her: the gods themselves can pass into her empire only on the condition of submitting to death like mortals, and of humbly avowing themselves her slaves.