Note 214.1 — Chapter XII · Eschatologic Ideas of East and West.

Evidence has been adduced pointing to an early Greek belief that the spirit of the departed ancestor might reincarnate itself in a descendant: a belief fairly common among savage peoples. I have not been able to find any indication of it in Babylonian records, nor am I aware of any trace of it among other Semitic peoples except, possibly, a late Phoenician inscription from the tomb of Eshmunazar, King of Sidon about B.C. 300: in the curse which he invokes against the violator of his tomb he prays that such a man’s posterity may be rooted out: “May they have no root in the world below, nor fruit above, nor any bloom in the life under the sun.”214.1 These strange words contain the idea of a family-tree; the fruit and the bloom are the living members who are in the light of the sun: the root are the ancestral spirits. If the figure is to be interpreted literally, we must regard these latter as the source of the life that is on the earth, and the curse would mean “may the departed ancestors no longer have the power to reappear in the living.” But we cannot feel sure how much sense we can press into the words.