STUDIES

IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

(UMNBOOK SEIES)

EDITED BY

H.G. IPPBERG • E.T. AWSON

VOLUME XXII
 .

SELF, SOUL AND BODY

IN RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

EDITED BY

A.I. BAUMGARTEN
]. ASSMANN
G.G. STROUMSA

BRILL
LEIDEN · BOSTON · KON
1998
 GHOST AND GOD: SOME OBSERVATIONS ON A
BABLONIAN UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE1

TzviAbsch

In the present essay, I shall take up some quesions associated with

the understanding of body, soul, and self in ancient Mesopotamia. I
shall do so first by examining a speciic formulaion of the Babylo­
nian understanding of the nature of man, and then by exploring
some relevant issues according to categories suggested by the text
itsel£ The text that I propose to start from is a mythological passage
that deals with the creaion anl composiion of man. The passage
ll be seen to focus on two components: flesh and intellect; hese
consitute, respecively, the ghost and god of the individual human
being. I shall then take up each one of the components in tum: I)
Having noiced that in the aforementioned text, man's ghost derives
from the lesh of the god, we ll tum our attenion to ituals that
treat the ehd of human life and comment on the nature of the ghost
and the treatment of the corpse. It should come as no suprise that
we ll notice some relaionship between birth and death, between
myths of creaion and rituals of death. 2) And having observed,
moreover, that the god from whom man is created possessed intelli­
gence, we ll suggest a connecion between this intelligence and
everyman's personal god and thereby try to understand something
about Mesopotamian psychology.
Some of what I ll say has already been noiced by others, but I
hope here and there to have added something new to the x. Sll I

1 Some of the ideas in his paper were worked out, and a draft for the conference

written, while I was a Fellow of the Netherlands Insitute for Advanced Study in the
Humaniies and Social Sciences, during the academic year 1994-95. I should like to
hnk Shaul Shaked, Karel van der Toon, and especially Frans Wiggermann for
discussing the topic with me while I was preparing that draft, and the whole NIAS
research heme group 'Magic �d Religion in he Ancient Near East' for discussing
the drat subsequent to its presentaion in Israel. I wish also to thank R. Abus�h, S.A.
Geller, L. Pearce, and especially K. Kraviz for criiquing drafts of this paper. I m
grateful to the Conference organizers for the oppornity to take up the problem,
and to the staf of NIAS for he wonderul working condiions that allowed me to
write this essay.
364 TI BUSCH

must emphasize that some of my observaions are speculaive and

provisional and that the treatment as a whole should be regarded as
a work in progress, a work stimulated by the challenge of the confer­
ence theme: Body, Soul, and Self in Religious Eperience.

Pat 1· yholocal Fomulaion

We tum now to the account of the creaion of human beings found

in the mythological story of Atra.asis, the Babylonian Noah. The
Atra.asis composition was probably composed duing the Old Baby­
lonian period (ca. 2000-1600 BeE). n any case, the oldest version of
the text is preserved in a copy that dates to that peiod; more pre­
cisely, it was found at Sippar and is dated to he reign of Am�a­
duqa, a seventeenth-century monarch of Babylon.2
The Atra.asis myth deals ith the human order, with problems of
human reproducion and death. It tells of the creaion of humans,
but it also recounts how the Flood came about because the newly
created human population had increased without limits because
death due to illness and old age did not yet exist; subsequent to the
Flood, the gods deal with the problem in a more permanent manner:
they curtail human reproducion and mark a nomal limit to the days
of human life. This myth preserves ancient tradiions while also pre­
sening an individual ariculaion of Mesopotamian theology and
anthropology.
The myth recounts that before the creaion of man, the gods were
men; more precisely, they possessed human and divine characterisics
and funcions. The mass of gods served as workers for and sevants to
the few. The mass of gods dug and maintained the irrigaion canals
that, on the human plane, made Mesopotamia a wealthy country
and the cradle of civilization. The very tasks hat the gods performed
were those that human beings actually pefomed in order to main-

2 For ediions of Arabasis, see W.G. Lambert and A.R. Millard, Atra-bass: e

Babyonan Soy fhe Food (Oxford: Clarendon, 1 969) and W. von Soden, "Die erste
Tafel des altbabylonischen Arambasis-Mythus. 'Haupttext' und Parallelversionen,"
ZA 68 ( 1978) 50-94. For ranslaions, see lso S. Dalley, yhs rom Mesopoamia
(Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1 989) 1-38; B.R. Foster, Bore e
Muses: An Anholoy ofAadan Lierature (2 vols.; Bethesda: CDL, 1993) 1 . 1 58-20 I, and
bibliography there, pp. 1 98-1 99; nd W. von Soden, "Der altbabylonische Aram­
chasis-Mythos," n K. Hecker, et al., ytn und Epn I (0. Kaiser, ed., Texte aus
der Umwelt des Alten Testaments III/4; Giitersloh: Giitersloher Verlagshaus, 1 994)
612-645.
 GHOST ND GOD 365

tain the human community and to uphold the temple regime. The
work was onerous and the mass of gods, the workers, rebelled, re­
fused to coninue woring, and went out on strike. The social and
natural order was threatened. Finally, a soluion was worked out,
namely, to ll the god who had led the rebellion and to create
humanity from his body in order to provide a source of labor that
would free the gods from their toil.
Let us now examine porions I 192-226) of the passage that tells of
the killing of the god and the cre;ion of humanity. 3

They summoned and asked the goddess,

The midwife of the gods, wise Mami:
'You are the womb-goddess, (to be the) creator of mankind!
Create a human being that he may bear the yoke! (195)
Let him bear the yoke, the work of Enlil,
Let man assume the load of the god!'
Nintu made her voice heard
And spoke to the great gods:
'By me alone he cannot be fashioned. (200)
Only together with Enki can the the task be done;
He alone makes everything pure!
Let him give me the clay that I may do the task.'
Enki made his voice heard
And spoke to the great gods: (205)
'

Let the leader-god4 be slaughtered,

With his lesh and his blood (210)

Let Nintu mix clay
That both the god himself and man
May be mixed together in the clay.
For ll days to come let us hear the m [= heart(beat)], (214)
FPm5 the god's lesh let there be a ghost/ (215)
To the living creature, let it make known its sign, (216)
That there be no forgeting let there be a ghost.' (21 7)
They) answered 'yes' in the assembly

3 For the text, see Lambert/Millard, Atra-Jas, pp. 56-59; for recent ranslaions,
see Foster, Bfore he Mss, 1 . 1 65 - 1 66 and S.A. Geller, "Some Sound and Word Plays
in the First Tablet of the Old Babylonian Ars Epic," in B. Walfish, ed., e Frank
Talmge Mmoal Volue (2 vols.; Haifa: Hifa University Press, 1 993) 1 .62-63. I omit
several lines which might confuse he issue and divert our attenion.
4 With W.L. Moran, "The Creaion of Mn in Arahasis I 1 92- 248," BASOR 200

(1 970) 50: "the leader-god."

5 Or, "in."

6 Or, perhaps better, "let a ghost come into being."

366 TZVI BUSCH

The great Anunnaki, who ssign the fates. (219-220)

lWe-ila (or We, the god) who has intelligence

They slaughtered n their assembly.
With his lesh and his blood (225)
Nintu mixed the clay
<So that both the god himself and man
Were mixed together in the clay>.

From7 the god's lesh there was a ghost,8 (228)

To the liing creature, it made known its sign, (229)
The ghost existed so that there be no forgeting. (230)
The Atrabasis text is one of the main sources of the biblical account
of Creaion and of the Flood and, like the biblical account, tells about
the creaion of humanity and the oigin of human knowledge and
mortality. But in this text, mankind is created by the miing of divine
flesh and blood with/in clay. Thus, our Babylonian text is also quite
diferent from the biblical one. For unlike the Yahwistic account
where man is created from earth enlivened by the divine breath (see
Genesis 2:7), in Atrabasis, man is created from the mixing in clay of
the blood and flesh of a slain god.
The god is slain and his lesh is the source of the human ghost, a
derivaion that remains true whether the eemmu, 'ghost' was origi­
nally the god's own ghost or, rather, a human ghost that came into
existence only after the god's flesh (fu) was used to form the human
being. 9 Here, then, I should comment that the creaion of the human

7 Or, "in."
8 Or, "a ghost came into eistence."
9 ines 2 14-2 1 7 (/I 227-230) pose some serious problems. I cannot take up ll of
them here. I would note, however, hat in my opinion, line 2 1 5 does not coninue
line 2 14, and line 2 1 7 does not coninue line 2 1 6; rather, 2 1 6 develops the thought
of 2 14, and 2 1 7 that of 2 1 5 . I arrived at this conclusion recendy while sruggling over
the pssage; I am herefore ll he more pleased to note that I.M. kawada already
arrived at a similar conclusion many years ago, for he "points out that the uppu line,
Arahasis I 2 1 4 (and 227) belongs to a quarain of the BB patten." (kawada,
apud A.D. Kilmer, "Notes on Akkadian uppu," in M. deJong Ellis, ed. ssays on he
nnt Near Est n Mmoy fJacob Joel Fnesn Memoirs of the Connecicut Acad­
emy of s and Sciences 1 9; Hamden: Archon Books, 1 977] 1 30, n. 4, and earlier,
A.D. Kilmer, "The Mesopotamian Concept of Overpopulaion and Its Soluion as
Reflected in the Mythology," Or NS 41 [1972) 1 63, where Kilmer sets out the
interpreive context for that obsevaion.) I accept the suggesion that upu is the
heart(beat) ('drum' = 'beaing heart'--see Kilmer, "Mesopotamian Concept of
Ovepopulaion," 1 63, and "Notes on Akkadian uppu," and c. Th.Jacobsen, apud
Moran,"Creaion of Man," 5 6. The form here-Ar + B1; A2 + B2-may be
 GHOST D GOD 367

being from a slain god imparts not only immortality or divinity to

man but also mortality. Motality is inherited with the flesh itsel£ But
in this strin of Mesopotamian mythology (in contpast perhaps to that
earlier one hat deals with ferility), gods do not age and die in he
natural course of events; they die only as a result of iolence. And
thus, oiinally, human mortality is a mortality derived from a slin
god. Iniially, human death, then, comes only from violence, though
subsequently, at the end of Atra}asis and in related Flood accounts,
natural death is intoduced and, thereby, the human mortality that
iniially derived from the slaying of a god is redefined.
There are some interesing concepts here that deserve our atten­
ion. s noted, manind is created from a mixture of the flesh and
blood of a slain god. But creaion in this text is achieved not only by
means of acion. Also language, more precisely, linguisic plays as­
sume and produce a form of reality. Let us begin, then, with the
linguisic plays, some of which have already been noiced by others,
but especially by Jean Bottero and Stephen Geler, 10 for they consi-

eplained as either a conflaion, a mistake, or [since these lines difer in form from
the surounding ones, which re organized either in consecuive narraion and/ or
the poeic form AI I I A2: B1 I I B2] a change of form due to the incorporaion of a
radiional utternce from another context. Further support for his posiion may
perhaps be found in the o?ission of line 228 in one of the manuscripts, see Lambert/
Millard, Atra-s, 58, variant to line 228.) Thus, I understand lines 214 and 216 as
developing the issue of heart-blood and lines 215 and 217 as developing that of flesh.
10
See, e.g., J. Bottero, ';La creaion de l'homme et son nature dans le poeme
d'AtrlS," in M.A. Dandarayev, et al., eds., Soceties and angugs f e Ancent Near
East, Studs n Honour fLM. Dionff(Varminster: Aris & Phillips, 1982) 24-32, and
for a summary statement, idem, Mesopomia: Wti, Reasonn, nd e os (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992) 241; Geller, "Some Sound and Word Plays";
ilmer, "Mesopotainian Concept of Overpopulaion," .163-165; Lambert/Millard,
Atra-s, 21-22 nd 153; K. Oberhuber, "Ein Versuch zum Verstindnis von Ara­
Hasis I 223 und I 1," in G. n briel, et al., eds., Zkir Smm: Assyrioogcal Studes
rsened o .R. Kras on e Occaon f his Sveneh Bhday (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982)
279-281.
It is apparent that I do not follow W. von Soden's reading Widimmu/Edimmu for
emmu, for which see his "Der Mensch bescheidet sich nicht: Obelegungen zu
Schopfungsezahlungen in Babylonien und Israel," in M.A. Beek, et al., eds., ymbo­
e Biblcae et Mesopoamcae Francisco Maro heodoro e e Bhl Dedcaae (Leiden: EJ.
Bill, 1973) 350-353, and s more recent "Der Urmensch im Ara.asis-Mythos,"
in L. de Meyer and H. Gasche, eds., Mesopotame et Eam: Acs de a X!me
Rncontre Assyoogique Inemaonae (Mesopotaian History and Environment, Series
4: Occasional Publicaions 1; 1991) 4 7-51, "Die Igigu-Gitter in altbabylonischer Zeit
und Edimmu il Ara.asis-Mythos," in . Cagni and H.-P. Miller, eds., As
Sprache, Geschche und Relon Babyonens; Gesammele Asit.e (Series Minor 32; Naples:
Isituto Universitario Oientale, Diparimento di Studi Asiaici, 1989) 339-349, and
"Altbabylonische Aramchasis-Mythos," 614-615 and 623-624. Regrding von So-
368 TZI BUSCH

tute an important fom of thought and, in any case, point clealy to

the undamental ideas and expressive power of the composiion. Re­
call that the common nouns in kkadian for 'god' and 'man', respec­
ively, are ilu and awflu; the name of the god who is killed so that man
might be created is We-ila, and he is characterized as the god sa U
ema, "the god who possesses emu" (that is, 'understanding', 'intelli­
gence', 'deliberaion'); and, inally, the word for 'blood' is damu, for
'intelligence' mu, for 'ghost' eemmu.
Note, then, the similarity in sound and the punning between awflu,
'man', and the god's name we(-)ia. Thus, when alive, mankind re­
ceives both its life and its name awflu, 'man' from this god ((a)we-ilu ) .
One scholar has gone so far as to claim that "he god We(ila) was
chosen to be slaughtered because his name contained the phoneme
lwl through which the new creature, man (awzlum), was to be disin­
guished from divinity (ilum). n the first line of the epic the phrase ilu
-awzlum is to be regarded as a compound term.... It reflects an oiginal
uniy of humanity and divinity that was sundered by slaughter of the
god and the resuling difereniaion of ilum and awuum."11
Note further the similaity in sound between emu, 'intelligence',
and damu, 'blood', a word-play that seems not to have been previ­
ously noiced. 12 What does this homophony accomplish? In this crea­
ion myth, man's composiion includes divine blood. The homo­
phony of amulemu highlights the source of human intelligence:
intelligence has been impated to mankind through the god's blood.
By the homophony, the slaughtered god characteized as possessing
mu imparts his intellectual quality to human beings.
But the linguistic play or punning goes beyond this. Man lives on
after death, and this, too, is signaled by the name. Note, then, also
the similarity in sound between the god's name and characteization
den's objecion to the use of <we> in the wriing w-e-em-mu in s E ("Erstens ist
emmu aus sum. jdm endehnt. Ein -Alaut ist daher undenkbar, weil das Su­
meische kein w-Phonem kennt." ["Urmensch," 48]), note that· the iing is in­
tended as a way of combining the name of the god and mu, and therefore objecions
bsed upon the absence of the lwl phoneme in Sumerian are irrelevant (see below).
For a recent discussion of sholly opinion on Ar.ais I 214-217 I I 227-230
nd an understanding of these lines that is diferent rom the one suggested in this
paper, see J. Tropper, Neromnte. Tonbrgug m Altn Ont nd m Aln esamnt
(AOAT 223; KevelaeriNeuirchen-Vlun: Butzon & Bercker and Neuirchener
Verlag, 1989) 49-55.
11
I quote rom Geler's Summary of his "Some Sound and Word Plays" (e
Frk T/mge Mmoal Volume, vol. I, 41).
12
Note that emphaic 1!1 nd ldl were probably even more ke in pronuncia­
ion than ltl and ldl.
 GHOST D GOD 369

"we-e ila who possesses ma," on the one side, and the Babylonian
word eemmu, 'ghost', on the other. The text, thus, implicitly treats
eemmu, 'ghost', as having been fomed from (or in some way related
to) the combinaion of the We of the god's name and his mu. Thus,
because of man's origin from a particular divinity and the nature of
the god from whom he deives, mankind possesses not only intelli­
gence but also a ghost and survives after death in the fom of that
ghost. And it is the mu, 'intelligence', that unites the two peiods of
human eistence, for it· is exercised during life in dily acions and is
present after death phonetically as part of eemmu.
It. is ·possible that one manuscript (Lambert/Millard, Ms. E, lines
215 and 217) even renders the combinaion of the We of the god's
name and his fu explicit by represening the benng of the word
eemmu by means of the <we> sign instead of the nomal <e> of the
other manuscipts. Moreover, I should noice that although the god's
name and the menion of the eemmu are several lines apart, support
for the correctness of treaing we-e .... ma as an exegesis or eymol­
ogy of eemmu is provided by a late commentary text, where in the
course of explicaing a magical text and eplaining and providing
etymologies for eemmu, the commentary states:

36 ... e-.e]m-me : qa-bu-u B-e-me

37 E : qa-bu-u : K[Ne-e]m4·maIi : B-e-me.13
There is more to be leaned from Atrabasis, and several addiional
features of this text may serve -to advance the argument of this paper.
Let us take a closer look at the creaion of both man's life force and
his ghost. In Mesopotamia, there is a tradiion reflected in such other
creaion accounts as E. Ebeling, eischitexe aus ssur reien Inhals
(Leipzig, 1915-23), no. 4 and Enuma is that man s created from
the remins of a slain god and hus, for better and for worse, contains
divine elements. 14 On the face of it, then, it is not terribly surpising

13 H. Hunger, Spitbabyonsche Txe aus U, Teil 1 (Ausgrabungen der deutschen

Forschungsgemeinschat in Uruk-Warka, vol. 9; Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1976)
no. 49, rev. 36b-37; rnsliterated and ranslated, pp. 58-60. (I owe s reference to
Frans Wiggermann.) Hunger, ibid., p. 59, ranslates these lines: "eemmu (= Toten­
geist) heisst 'der Befehl gibt', denn e heisst sagen, und demma heisst Befehl," and
comments, p. 60, "ein weiteres Beispeil ir Erkl.rung durch Wortzerlegung: e.emmu
wird in e-emmu zerteilt und dadurch als qibU mi verstanden."
14 For discussions of these texts nd the radiion, see, e.g., G. Petinato, Ds

alonalische Mnschenbild und de sumeschn nd aadschen Sch'pongsmyhen (Heidel­

berg: Crl Winter, 1971), especially, pp. 39-46, and, more recendy, M. Dierich,
"Die Totung einer Gottheit in der Eridu-Babylon-Mythologie," in D.R. Daniels, U.
370 TZI BUSCH

that also in our Atrabasis text, man is created from the flesh and
blood of a god. Divine and human are thus joined up in what we call
the human being.15
But our text s clear that mankind is created not only from a
mixture of the lesh and blood of the slain god, but also from the
mixture of these with clay. And with this observation we are immedi­
ately sensiized to an apparent discrepancy in the account, one which
accentuates or highlights our text's understanding of aspects of the
human consituion or condiion that might otherwise have gone
unremarked. I note that either the flesh or the clay, one or the other,
would seem to be superluous, a point that is made abundanly clear
by a urther comparison with the related ealy Sumeian text Enki
and Ninmab, on the one side, and the later Babylonian text Enna
Elis, on the other. In the former, man is created from lay and water,
in the latter from the blood of a slain god who had incited a war
against Marduk's lineage ("he created manind from his blood").
Properly speaking, then, it would have suiced f there had been
no mention of the lesh and if the blood of the god had simply been
mixed with the clay, for the blood and clay are like the breath of God
and the clods of earth in Genesis, with the blood s�rely represening
the life principle, see, e.g., Genesis 9:4-5, Leviticus 17:11 and 14, and
Deuteronomy 12:23, where 'the life is in the blood'.
We thus see how very special the paricular ariculaion of our
passage is. (Here I underscore especially the fact that according to this
text the god's flesh seves as the source of the human ghost. Others
have already noted this derivaion; one of the goals of this paper is to
eplore further the sificance of the fact that the ghost adheres to the
human body and the paradox that the apparently insubstanial ghost
derives from flesh-even divine flesh.) Our passage represents a con­
flaion o, or an overlay upon, an earlier craftsman story which told of
the creaion of man by the mixing of clay and water. But the conflaion
is more than just an historical vesige and accidental overlay; .ther it
serves a pronounced pupose, for it formulates nd presents a paricu-

Glessmer, nd M. Rosel, eds., Emn, ws mn : Fsschritiir as Koch zu snm 65.

ebursg Neuirchen-Vluyn: Neuirchener Verlag, 1991) 49-73, and W.G. Lam­
bert, ''Mh and Mythmaing n Sumer and Akkad," n J.M. Sasson, et. l., ed.,
Cvilizaas f he nnt Near Est (4 vols; New York: Charles Scibner's Sons, 1995)
3.1832-1834.
15 Of course, r usage such as the Akkadin idiom tu u damu, which literally means

''lesh and blood" nd conveys s n English a sense of kinship or faily, may well
have even conributed to the formulaion of our text.
 GHOST D GOD 371

lar understanding of man. For while the clay retains the older funcion
of matter, the god's blood and flesh represent the divine sources from
which, respecively, the life force and nature of man, on the one side,
and the body and ghost, on the other, are created.16
The passage epresses the noion that the mind and body derive
from he god. As noted above, I understnd lines 214 and 216 s

developing the theme of heart-blood and lines 215 and 217 as devel­
oping that of lesh. Assuming, then, that uppu refers to the heartbeat,
the BB structure of lines 214-217 (/I 227-230)17 allows us to
expand the amu-sfu pair nto the following structure:

ind: inner18: heart (uppu! libbu): blood (damu): inteligence (mu)

Body: outer: body (zum.): lesh (zu): ghost (eemmu)
The blood is the dynamic quality of intelligence, and the lesh is the
form of the body that is imposed oa the clay. The imu relects the
blood, the eemmu the body. The human being combines the qualiies
of intelligence and physical form derived from the god. And now
damu transmits human life and intelligence (mu), and fu provides
bodily fom, a fom which is preserved and continued by the eemmu.
With death he blood is gone, but the form remins and continues
into the hereafter.
Thus, while the clay represents the mateial form of man and
seves as a base, the blood and lesh transmit respecively the life and
llship of the god. That is to say, the blood serves as the force which
preserves and imparts to the living he characteristic quality 'god who
had a pla:' and thereby provides the life pinciple and intelligence,
while the lesh brings forth both the mortal and immortal ghost, the
ghost of man and the memorial to the god who had been· slain.19
From the god's blood comes the person, the se;20 from the god's
body, the ghost.

16
See Lambert/Millard, Ara-bass, 22, for a discussion of the blood and flesh.
17 I ranslate line 216 s follows: To the living creature(or, While alive), let it(=
the heart/blood) make nown. to him(= the human being) his(= the human being's)
sign(= he personal god) /or his(= he god's) sign(= mu = personl god). For a
discussion of the blood/intelligence/personal god, see below, Part 3.
18 I owe the category inner/outer to an observaion by Julia Asher-Greve.
19 I regret that I cannot accept W.L. Moran's argument, "Creaion of Man," 54,
that the eemmu belongs to the god alone, though I do concede many of s objec­
ions. The ghost may belong to both the god nd the human.
0 For the noion of person or sef, see especially M. Mauss, "A Categoy of the

Human Mind: The Noion of Person, The Noion of'Self," Socoloy and Psycholoy.
ssays(rans. B. B:ewster; ondon: Roudedge & Kegan Paul, 1979) 57-94.
372 TI BUSCH

And one is thus tempted to equate the lesh and ghost with the
physical image of God (of Genesis) and the blood and intelligence
with the soul. But, in any case, it would be remiss of me to pass on to
the next part of my eposiion without relaing our discussion, if only
cursoily, to a different approach to, or perhaps just a diferent termi­
nology for, he concept of the soul(s) in some primiive and ealy
societies. We might say that the god in Atrabasis serves, irst of ll, as
the source of that soul which elsewhere has been described as the
body soul, a soul which is often divided into such parts as the life soul.
and the ego soul; in a Semiic context, it is perhaps best treated as a
soul that imbues the individual with life and consciousness, or, in
modem terminology, with 'ego' or the 'se'. But the god is also the
source of the other soul, the death soul, the soul of the individual
after death, a soul that gradually loses individuality unil it becomes
part of the collecivity of the ancestors. 21

Part 11· e sgncance fesh s the source f the ghost

We have seen in the Atrabasis creaion account, irstly, that the god
who has imu serves as the source of the human life force or idenity.
This point, namely that the aforemenioned god imparts and defines
human life, ll eventually be our jumping of point for a discussion
of the self and of the personal god. But we have also seen that the
flesh of the god who has mu is the source of the human ghost. And
here we shall start with this latter poi.t and elaborate, if only briefly,
on the 'ghost', eemmu, 22 in order to noice some of the implicaions of
the creation account's contenion that the god's flesh is the source of
the human ghost.

21 F
or a recent discussion of some of these concepts and especially their applica­
ion to ancient Greek understanding, seeJ.N. Bremmer, e EarJ reek Concept ofhe
Soul(Princeton: inceton University Press, 1983) and idem, " the Soul, Death and
he terlife n Early and Classical Greece," n J.M. Bremer, Th.PJ. van den Hout,
and R. Peters, eds., Hdn Futures: Deah and lmmortaliJ in Ancient ypt, Anaolia, he
Casscal, Biblcal and Arabc-Isamc World(sterdam: Amsterdam University Press,
1994) 77-106. The limits of this paper do not allow a discussion of the conceptually
related terms napftu(Hebrew nephesh) I zaqfqu I ll breath, wind. Thus, I have also
=

not discussed the relaionship of the ree or dream soul to the death soul.
22
For the Mesopotamian concepion of eemmu,'ghost' and he care of the dead,
see my " Etemmu," in K. van der Toon, B. Becking, and P.W. vn der Horst, eds.,
Dctonay fDeites and Demons n he Bibe DDD)(Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1995) 588-594 and
bibliography there, 593-594(to the bibliography, add Trapper, Nekromnte, 47-109).
 GHOST D GOD 373

The Atrasis text recounts that human beings deive from an

admixture of the divine with clay; it not only informs us that the live
human derives from the divine, but also eplains how it is that while
the human being is mortal, having been created from a slain god,
part of him is also immortal and eists or appears in the form of an
eemmu, a ghost which exists apparently during life as well as ater
death.
Emmu, the term used in our own text, is the main term for 'ghost'
in Akkadian. It is the pimary Akkadian equivalent or translaion of
Sumerian Gidim, from which word it probably deives. Moreover, I
accept the recent suggesion (Frans Wiggermann, orally) that the
Sumeian term itself deives in tum from the Semiic qdzm, 'ances­
tor'. Ghosts are also designated by or associated with 'divinity'.23
In Mesopotamian thought, what remins after death is the lifeless
body and some form of intangible, but visible and audible emmu.
The body must be buried; otherwise, the ghost ll have no rest and
will not find its place in the community of the dead, usually associ­
ated with the netherworld. In addiion, burial is crucial for uture
care, for the dead are to be the recipients of ongoing mortuary ites,
which include invocaions of the name of the deceased, presentaion
of food, and libaion of water. In this way, the dead are cared for and
kept (alive) in memory. The dead may be remembered as indiiduals
for up to several generations and then become part of the ancesral
family.
Here burial consitutes a ite of passage, both integraing the dead
into the cosmic order and maintaining connecions between the liv­
ing and the dead. The living and dead maintain a permanent rela­
ionship ind form an ongoing community and thus burial was crucial
because it allowed for the preservaion and maintenance of the de­
ceased's idenity after death and for his coninued connection with
both the living and dead members of the family. Thus, whatever
other puposes it served, burial of the body preserved the idenity of
the deceased and provided a focus and locus for the ghost's conin-

23 Note also that wind imagery is associated with the ghost---cf. simply the use of
l, wind, for 'ghost'. The associaion of ghost and wind in Mesopotamia nay be
reminiscent of the associaion of nephsh and breah in the Hebrew Bible especially if
we accept the view hat West Semiic nephesh may someimes be the equivalent of
eemmu, ghost(seeJ.C. Greenield, "Un rite religieux arameen et ses paralleles," oJ
BibliqJ 80 [1973] 46-50). And we may wonder whether like the nephesh in the live
humn, the eemmu may not also exist during life. I note here only that it is certainly
possible to intepret Ara.asis, I, 215-216//228-229 in this manner.
374 TI BUSCH

ued existence, for its relationship and place, that is, among he living
and the dead.
Thus, when one wishes to depive the recent dead of the possibility
of retaining their individual and/or social idenity, one must destroy
their body/corpse. n light of our discussion of fu, 'flesh', in
Atrabasis and our recogiion that the eemmu is in the flesh of the
dead, it comes as no surpise that the destrucion of the dead is
someimes descibed in terms of the destrucion of their lesh: the
lesh is fed to amals and, thereby, both the individuality and even
the very humanity of the dead are destroyed. There are many exam­
ples of this ind of treatment in histoical texts,24 but one of the most
evocaive examples that I know comes from the world of itual. The
concluding secion of the ani-witchcraft itual Maql25 indicates that
the witch's body is not to be buried; rather her copse is to be de­
voured by animals. The penulimate incantaion and itual in Maqlu
VIII 81-89 II X 183-187) describe how the witch is fed to eagles,
vultures, and dogs. Note the reference there, in line 88, to the de­
struction of the witch's flesh, her fu. ·A porion of the incantaion
VIII 85-88) reads:

May eagle and vulture prey on your corpse,

May silence and shivering fll upon you,
May dog and bitch tear you apart,
May dog and bitch tear apart your lesh. (zk[z])

In itual pracice, images made of dough embedded in bread are fed

to dogs X 184-187). By feeding the witch to animals, she is ex­
ecuted, her copse is destroyed, and she herself is depived of any
possibility of buial. Thereby, the ritual achieves its purpose of de­
stroying the body and ghost of the witch.

24 See, e.g., A. Westenholz, "blm, mtm, and Old Akkadian I.GAL: Burial

of Dead Enemies n Ancient Mesopotamia," AJD 23 (1970) 29-30; R. Borger, e

Inschrien Asarhadons Kongs von Asn (O, Beiheft 9; Graz, 1956) 57-58: Episode
18, V 6; S. Parpola, "he Murder of Sennacherib," n B. Alster, ed., Deah n
Msopoamia Mesopotamia 8; Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1980) 175. C£ E.
Cassin, "e mort: valeur et representaion en Mesopotamie ancienne," n G. Gnoli
and J.-P. Venant, eds., a mot, s mors dns s socis ancnnes (Cambridge/Paris:
Cambridge University Press/Maison des Sciences de l'homme, 1982) 355-372.
25 For a general oveview of Maqlu, see T. Abusch, "Maqlu," in D.O. Edzard, ed.,

Reallon er Asiooe und vorderstischen Archologi8 VI/5-6 Berlin/New York:

Wlter de Gruyter, 1989) 346-351. For the text ofMaqlu, see provisionally, G. Meier,
e ssche BeschOrngssammlung Maqlu (O Beiheft 2; Berlin, 1937), nd idem,
" Studien zur Beschworungssammlung Maqlu," AJD 2 1(1966) 7 1-81.
 GHOST D GOD 375

Moreover, the body may also be bunt, for buning the body
makes it impossible to give it proper buial ites, and its ghost ll not
be found in the netheworld: thus, fitingly, in Gilgamesh, Enkidu,
and the Netherworld, Gilgamesh asks, "Did you see him who was set
on fire?" And Enidu answers, "I did not see him. His smoke went
up to the sky and his ghost does not live in the netheworld."26
Normally, then, the dead body was buied. But when a copse was
left unbuied and/or was destroyed by animals, fire, or the like, the
dead person would lose his human idenity and human community.
He could no longer be integrated into the structured community of
the dead and thereby into the ongoing and continuous community of
the living and the dead. In some cases, the remains are so totally
transfomed and disintegrated that the dead lose all vesiges of hu­
man idenity. Some texts suggest that those dead who were left
unburied and had their corpses destroyed are relegated to the form­
less and chaoic world someimes associated with steppe and winds,
may even become part of the demonic world that is neither human
nor god, male nor female, and/or may even lose ll semblance of
eistence and be transformed into fomlessness and even nothing­
ness. ut differently, even the actual ghost thus loses its human iden­
ity and eistenceY

26 See A. Shaffer, "Sumerian Sources of Tablet XII of he Epic of Gilgames"

(Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1963) 121: 3-4(variant rom Ur); c£ p. 1 19:
302-3:'"Did you see him who ws set on fire?' 'I saw.''How does he fre?''His spirit
is not about. His smoke went up to he sky'." Similarly, in Maqlu, the witch is
addressed and told: "Dissolve, melt, drip ever away! I May your smoke rise ever
heavenward, I May the sun exinguish your embers, I May the son of Ea(Asallubi),
the exorcist, cut of your emanaions" (I 140-143 I I V 152-155). Especially in the
rst : of Mqlu-see especially I 73-IV 95-emphasis is placed upon and impor­
tance accorded to bng the witch and desroying her body. n he Maqlu passage
just quoted, the witch's being rises up as smoke into the sky and is there scattered;
now her ghost cannot enter he netherworld. Thus, by bng her body or feeding
it to animals, the witch is deprived of burial and is alated; her body is desroyed,
and her ghost is no more.
27 Such is the fate not only of those who do not receive burial immediately after
death. The same awaits the dead who re disintered and whose skeletal remains re
desroyed. See my "The Socio-Religious Framework of the Babylonian Witchcraft
Ceremony Maqlu: Some Obsevaions on the Inroductory Secion of he Text, Part
I" (in press), and Cassin, "e mort," 358-359 and 362, as well as J.-P. Venant,
" India, Mesopotamia, Greece: Three Ideologies of Deah," in F. Zeitlin, ed., Morals
and Imortals: Colleced ssys(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) 78(Ver­
nant's icle originally formed he inroducion to the conference volume in which
Cassin's essay appeared).
Some historical and magical texts go so far as to suggest that a ransgressor may
never escape reibuion and can be punished even if he has already died. Thus, the
376 TI BUSCH

To be sure, Atrabasis is a unique creaion text insofar as it informs

us about the oigin of the ghost and therefore about the creaion of
an afterlife. One might have thought that the lesh was chosen simply
because the author needed to provide for the creaion of the ghost
and narraive logic presented the flesh as a convenient vehicle for this
purpose. Perhaps, but it now seems to me that the flesh is more than
just an author's fanciul "excuse" for, or explanaion of, the creaion
of the ghost. First and foremost, the choice of lesh relected the belief
that the human ghost and human lesh are closely linked, at least
prior to buial. Just as in Genesis 1:27 the physical image of God
gives form to the human being/body, so in Atrabasis the outward
physical body, the lesh, gives fom to the human being in life, to the
corpse in death, and to the ghost that inheres in that body. Hence,
destrucion of the body rather than its inhumaion consitutes, in
effect, the destruction of the ghost.
Whether or not the text consitutes an aeiology, one may reason­
ably surmise that the oigin of the ghost in the god's flesh reflects the
Semiic practice of burial and provides one particular understanding
of the importance accorded to burial of the body. Thus, f the flesh is
the source of the ghost, this belief would provide one explanaion­
perhaps an histoically valid one, perhaps just an aetiology-why in
contrast to some Indo-Europeans, the Semites, and the Mesopota­
mians among them, abhorred cremaion. Whereas among the
Greeks cremaion rendered the body hanos, 'pure', and freed the
ghost or, rather, allowed the pyche to enter the nether world, among
the Semites cremaion destroyed the ghost, for the ghost attached
itself in some pecliar way to the body.28

criminal who had died prior to being punished for his crimes may be deprived of
mortuary rites; moreover, his buial may be reversed by exhumaion and, occasion­
ally, his remains desroyed. His ghost, too, is thus excluded rom the community of
the dead. Even the actual ghost, then, does not escape punishment and may even
lose its human idenity.
28
To be sure, the flesh os after buial. At that point, the idenity of the indi­
vidual is associated with his skeleton or bones. The desucion of the bones, then,
consitutes the complete desrucion of the individual (see, e.g., Gassin, "e mort"
and Venant "India, Mesopotamia, Greece," 77-79). Here, therefore, we may won­
der how the Babylonians understood or consued he relaionship of the flesh and
bones of the dead. Perhaps immediately after death, the flesh or resh corpse repre­
sented the individual but, at a later stage in the process of disintegraion, it was the
bones that came to represent the individual. Rening to our Ara}sis text, we may
expand the quesion and suggest the following scheme, one which ·is rather obvious
and is made up of three stages-blood represents the life force of the live individual,
flesh (and bodily shape) the individul at death, and bones the penent dead
 GHOST ND GOD 377

I note, somewhat ironically, that some of what I have sid regard­

ing the buial of the body as a transfer or translaion of the living to
the dead is not ll that dissimilar from what has been said on the
Greek side about the buing of the body. Thus, for example, Jean­
Pierre V emant:

What does it mean to enter into the furthest reaches of death? The fatal
blow that skes the hero liberates his puch, which lees the limbs,
leaving behind its srength and youth. Yet for ll that, it has not passed
through the gates of death. Death is not a simple demise, a privaion of
life; it is a transformaion of which the corpse is both the insument
and the object, a ransmutaion of the subject that funcions in and
through the body. Funerary rites actualize s change of condiion; at
their conclusion, the individual has left the realm of the living, in the
same way as is cremated bory has vanished into the hereafter, and as
s puchi has reached the shores of Hades, never to return. .... fhere]
he coninues to exist ... in a form of being that is released from the
atriion of ime and destrucion. 29

And a bit later in the same essay:

The fire of the funerary pyre, by contrast, consumes and sends into the
realm of the invisible, along with the perishable lesh and blood, a
person's enire physical appearance and the attributes that can be seen
on the body .... The visible form of the body, such as is displayed when
it is laid out for viewing at the beginning of the funeral rites, can only be
saved from corrupion by disappearing into the invisible. 30

But the ghost retains the visible form of the body. 31 And we would
conclude this secion by emphasizing again that for the Mesopo­
tamians (as semeimes for ourselves) the body itself gives form to the
percepion of the self and of the other and provides the image under
which the deceased and his ghost remain in the mind of the living: a

individual. he siicance of the skeleton or bones as the permanent repository of

the human soul may well attain mythological formulaion in Enuma Elis I 5-6,
when Marduk says (ranslaion: Foster, BOre e Mss, 1.384): "I shall compact
blood, I shall cause bones to be, I·shall make stand a human being, let 'man' be its
name," and then used the blood of the ln leader of the rebel gods.
9 "A 'Beauil Deah' and the Disfigured Corpse in Homeric Epic," Moas and

Immos, 68.
30 Ibid., 70.
31 C£, e.g., Venant agin, but this ime in the essay ''Psuche: Simulacrum of the
Body or Image of the Divine?": "The psuce s like a body; as shown on works of t,•
on vases, it is represented like a niature body, a corpusculum; it is the double of the
living body, a replica hat can be taken for the body itself that has the same appear­
ance, clothing, gestures, and voice." (Moas and Immoas, 189.)
378 TI BUSCH

human fom or body. The eemmu derives from the body and pre­
serves the body image.

Pat IlL· od, temu and personal god

We noiced that the ghost is of divine origin and derives from the
god's flesh; accordingly, we discussed the flesh, the copse, and the
ghost. We noiced, in addiion, that also the life force is divine or of
divine origin. Thus, we should now tum to a consideraion of the
human being during his lifeime.
The god's blood is the source of man's life force; it is the channel
through which certain divine qualities enter into man. s noted ear­
lier, it is of paricular interest that the god to be slain is characterized
as one who possesses mu and that his blood (damu) is the channel
through which intelligence (mu) is imparted to humanity. Therefore,
we should here pay some attention to the intellectual quality of the
slain god. The possession of mu is crucial for this god and for hu­
manity. So before even eploring any further the concepts about this
god that define the human (or, rather, the reverse, the concepts about
the human that define the god), we should say a word or two about
mu. mu is plan, inspiraion, or inteligence as well as the verbal
fomulation that conveys or expresses these. In the context of
Atrabasis, the use of mu is the act of deiberaion about the slave
condiion of the �orker gods in an irigaion economy, the formula­
ion of a plan o( rebellion, and its execuion. 32 The god who hit upon
and developed the idea of the rebellion and who worked out the plan
of execuion serves as the progenitor of humanity.
The early Mesopotamian is an organizer, an innovator, who strug­
gles to understand and control his environment and must put his
mind to the future in order to create and maintain a system of in­
tense irrigaion. The concept of mu is an important component in
that ciization's understanding of man and in the Mesopotamian
concept of the personal god, who is, I believe, a personificaion of the
self.
Mesopotamian mu is strikingly similar to John Dewey's under­
standing of mind (which influenced American Interacionism and,
paricularly, the thought of George Herbert Mead and thereby the
concept of the 'self in the social sciences):

32 C., e.g., Moran, "Creaion of Man," 52.

 GHOST ND GOD 379

What is unique to humans, Dewey argued, is their capacity for think­

ing. Mind is not a sructure but a process that emerges out of eforts by
humans to adjust to their environment. Moreover, mind is the unique
capacity that allows humans to deal with condiions around them .
.. .. Mind for Dewey is the process of denoing objects in the environ­
ment, scertaining potenial lines of conduct, imagining the conse­
quences of pursuing each line, inhibiing inappropriate responses, and
then selecing a line of conduct that ll facilitate adjusment. Mind is
thus the process of ng, and thinking involves delibyraion.33

Dewey's understanding seems very much in line with our under­

standing of the Mesopotamian definiion of man and represents a set
of noions that the Babylonians would have associated with mu.
These concepts of human life and mind coincide to some extent with
the concept of the personal god, and thus we may now take up some
further implicaions of the Atrabasis passage for an understanding of
man. For it is possible that the Atra.asis passage even intends to
provide an aeiology for the eistence of he personal god and for his
acquisiion by man. 34 The personal god, to quote the late Thorild
Jacobsen, is "clearly a power for effecive ng, planning, and
inspiraion, and this is the central element in the concept."35 The
significance of the Atrabasis passage thus seems clear. Man's life'
force derives directly from a god who possessed and is characteized
in terms of the powers of intelligence and deliberation. Thus, just as
the slain god possessed the power of deliberation, so man who incor­
porated the god's blo�d now possesses that power. nd with that
power, man also possesses a personal god or rather the potenial to
acquire a personal god. For the personal god is a projection or per­
sonification of the human power of deliberation, decision, and plan­
ning. When man exercises his power� of deliberaion, he acquires its
personificaion in the form of his personal god. s the Mesopotamian
bilingual proverb states, "when you plan ahead your god is yours,
when you do not plan ahead your god is not yours."36

33 J.H. Tuner, 1he Structure f Socoocal 1heoy Homewood: Dorsey, 1 978, rev.
edit.) 3 1 4.
4 Perhaps indirecdy it also provides an aeiology for the relaionship of n to his

personal god.
3> h. Jacobsen, 1he Tresurs f Darknss: A Hsoy f Mesopotaman Relon (New
Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1 976) 1 56. For Jacobsen's understnding of
he personal god, see his "Mesopotamia," n H. Franfort, et al., 1he Intelectual
Advnture fAncent Man. An ssay on Specuatoe hoght n e Ancnt Near ast (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1 946) 202-208, s well s Tresures fDarness, 1 52- 1 64.
36 For the text of the proverb, see W. G. Lambert, Babyonan Wsom Lerature
(Oxford: Clrendon, 1 960) 227: 23-26; for its interpretaion, see Jacobsen, ''Mesopo­
taia," 204, and idem, Tresures f Darness, 1 56.
380 TI BUSCH

Later parts of Atrabasis lend support to my contenion that,

among other things, the creaion account at the benning of the
work dealt with the personal god and provided for his acquisiion by
man. That our Atrabasis passage recounts how humans irst acquired
a personal god may fmd conirmaion n the fact that, and eplain
why, the existence of service to personal gods is already taken for
granted as a basic fact of religious life later in the myth, when, as
each catastrophe took place, Ei advised Atrabasis to command
that the people cease providing service to their personal gods and
instead serve the god responsible for the destrucion:

Do not reverence your gods.

Do not pray to your goddess(es).
Namtar (Adad, resp.), seek his gate,
Bring a baked-loaf before it,
Let the meal-offering please him,
So that, embarrassed at the gifts,
He ll raise his hand.37

Here, I should perhaps place the concept of the personal god into a
clearer Mesopotamian context. The Mesopotamian did not formu­
late his own personal psychology pimarily n the form of intenal
categoies; rather he objectified and extenalized major aspects of
sel£ He could thus be surrounded by a series of divine beings38 who
represented aspects of self or perhaps even diferent life- or body­
souls. 39 Among these divine beings are the ilu and ftam, the personal
god and goddess.0 One may surmise that this god and goddess are
no more than psychologically intenalized father and mother figures
that ind epression among the Babylonians in the form of extenal­
ized, divinized iguresY Here, I limit myself to the ilu. It is possible

37 Namtar: I 378-383 I I I 393-398, f. I 405-410 (Lambert/Millad, Ara-s, 68-

7 1); Adad: I, col. i. (Lambert/Millard, Atra-s, 74-77). Translaion: W. L. Moran,

"Arabsis: The Babylonian Story of the lood," Bblca 52 (1971) 54. That the gods
to be nelected were the personal gods, and not simply gods and goddesses, was
argued convincingly by Moran, ibid., 55.
38 such as ilu, faru, utkku, massu, sdu, bftu, diu.
39 C. A.L. Oppenheim, Anent Msopom: Portrait f a Ded Cvilizaton (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1977; rev. edit.) 1 98-206.

0 By the second millennium, individuals seem to have had both a personal god

and a personal goddess (faru).

41 If for the Mesopotamians, the father is a force for acion or doing and the

mother a force for socializaion, it is perhaps not a coincidence that a late commen­
tary text (AT. Clay, Epcs, Hmns, ms, nd Or Txs Babylonian Records in the
Library of]. Pierpont Morgan, vol. 4 ; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923] no.
32, obv. 2-3, ranslaion: M. Stol, Epiep� n Babyona [Cuneiform Monographs 2;
 GHOST D GOD 381

that the god (ilu) originally represented the family or clan, but per­
haps because of the individual's close connecion to his group, the
god also became the personal god of the individual, especially as that
individual related to the world, to the present, and to the future.
Most of all, the god was evident in social success and in the ability to
have children.42
It should now be recalled that god and ghost serve many of the
same funcions. First of all, the personal god and the ghosts of the
family belong together in the sense that they both represent parents:
the one represents and preserves the norms of the family among the
living; the other represents and preserves the norms of the famly
among and from the dead. Human beings attain their idenity in no
small measure from their social contexts; these connecions extend
over both space and time, i.e., over the here-and-now and through
ime. Idenity is derived from the contemporary living context but
also from ancestors and progeny. n both dimensions, the Meso­
potamians encounter the numinous other, the divine. The ghost rep­
resents the ancestral kinship group, while the god who inhabits the
living body-the personal god-represents the living family and the
actual or daily social world. Ghost and personal god represent aspects
of both individual and group ego and superego.
The ancestral ghost requires coninued honor and care and may
become a hosile presence if disregarded. Not only the ghost but also
the personal god may make demands of the living person and punish
or reward him, accordingly, so that this god is undoubtedly an aspect

Groningen: Styx, 1993] 25) explains the illness 'hand of the god' as "he curses the
gods, he speaks insolence, he hits whom(ever) he sees," and the illness 'hand of he
goddess' as ''he has ... of heart-break, ime and again, nd forgets his (own) words,
ime and again." For the illness 'hand of the god' sees to be the ransformaion of
energy that cannot be ned to consrucive purposes into anger and aggression
against others, while he illness 'hand of the goddess' seems to represent the tung
of a feeling of not belonging, or of not being cared for, into anger against the self and
thereby into a state of anxiety and depression. he loss of the father is he loss of a
sense of consrucive acion in society, the lbss of the mother is the loss of a social
sense of belonging and feeling that others care for one.
42 Again to quote Jacobsen: "n a sense, and probaly his is the original aspect,

the personal god appears as the personificaion of a man's luck and success. Success
is interpreted as an outside power which infuses itself into a man's doings and makes
them produce results." ("Mesopotamia," 203) "s a diine power dwelling in the
man and causing him to succeed, he god would naturally be present and acive in
he most decisive nd necessary achievement of llment for the ancient Mesopota­
mian, hat of engendering a son." (Treasures f Darnss, 1 58)
382 TZI BUSCH

of superego or conscience. 43 But the personal god is also certainly an

aspect of ego. He belongs to the clan but through the corporate
identity of individuals as well as the identiicaion of the god with the
power of procreaion, he personal god became the personiicaion of
the luck and fortune, the well being, the effectiveness, accomplish­
ment, and success of the individual member of the group. Perhaps
the personal god even amounts to a sense of sel, for he is the power
for thought, the ability of the individual to plan and deliberate so that
he may act effecively and achieve success. The personal god is some­
thing like an extenalized ego, if by ego we understand that which
"bings into being the conscious sense of sel£ The ego engages in
secondary process thining, or the remembeing, planning, and
weighing of circumstances that permit us to mediate between the
fantasies of the id and the realiies of the outer world."4 For it is
through the sense of idenificaion with the personal god that man
'
acquires a sense of self as an intelligent and effecive being.
Just as the nu, 'intelligence', of the god imparts to collecive
mankind the ability to work as a society and serve the gods of the
state, so nu also imparts to the single ·man the ability to work as an
individual and thereby serve his personal god. 45
Just as the early Mesopotamians regarded the human city as cre­
ated by and belonging to the gods, human soc}ety as exising for the
sake of the gods, and human actions as deeds in the service of the
gods, in part in order to allay the anxieies aroused by their own
collective daing and the precaious nature of their eistence, 6 so
perhaps also their own individual attempts at imposing control over

43 This is exempliied nicely by a reference to ilu in an Old Assrian letter: "Your

god (nd mine) would want you to act in such a way."
4 S.A. Rathus and J.S. Nevid, Abnomal Pychooy (Englewood Clifs: Prenice

Hall, 1991 Insructor's Ediion]) 37.

45 The fact hat mu, 'intelligence' deives rom a 'rebel' god does not disqualiy

the lm that the aforemenioned power or quality allows he indiidual human to

be successul and to possess a personal god. Put differently, the fact that mu allows
humans to be efecive and seve the god in no way requires or even suggess hat the
mu must derive rom an 'innocent' god. Rather than deracing rom human ability
to provide service to the god(s), if anything, the orin of human intelligence in the
'rebel' god enhances it. For just as the human community in ArQasis makes use of
the mu of the leader of the sng gods to assume the work of the gods and to serve
he divine community, so the individual human makes use of this mu to seve his
personal god.
46 See H. Franfort, he Bih f Cvilzaton n ze Nar Est (Garden City, Y:

Doubleday, 1951), chapter 3, especially pp. 52-54 and 63-64.

 GHOST ND GOD 383

their environment led them to project their own raionality and

achievements onto a divine other, the personal god.

n Atra.asis the lesh defines physicl idenity, the body, and there­
with the ghost, and places the human being in relaionship to the
past, while the blood, and therewith the intelligence, defines the per­
sonality or living idenity and coninues into the future through the
blood (seed). Thus, the personal god and ghost may be drawn to­
gether for puposes of understanding a Mesopotamian construcion
of human nature. 47

47 For a recent reatment of he creaion of man in Enki and Ninmab, which

escaped my attenion duing the wriing of this essay, see now W.G. Lambert, "he
Relaionship of Sumerian nd Babylonian Myth as Seen in Accounts of Creaion,"
in D. Charpin and F. Joannes, eds., a circuaton ds bns, s personnes et des ies dJS
e roche-Ornt nn, XII' R.A.l (Paris: Ediions Recherche sur les Ciilisaions,
1992) 129- 135. Basing himself upon a bilingual version, Lambert argues that Eni
created man by mixing clay and blood (Lambert leaves open the quesion whether it
is Eni's blood or his mother's). If correct, this contenion (which difers in its con­
srucion of the text fom previous ranslaions) would rquire that the statement
(above, p. 370) hat man was created rom clay and water in Enki and Ninma. be
modified; but it in no way disqualiies he argument (above, p. 370) that the menion
Qf flesh alongside clay in Ara.asis was significant, for that argument depends not on
the absence of blood in Eni and Ninmab, but rather on the presence of flesh and
clay in Ara.asis and the absence of the former in Enki and Ninma..