Note 220.1 — Chapter XII · Eschatologic Ideas of East and West.

This exposition of the Eastern and Western ideas concerning death and the ritual of the dead is merely a slight sketch of a great subject; but may serve the present purpose, the testing the question of early religious contact. We have noted much general resemblance, but only such as is found among various races of the world: on the other hand, certain striking differences, both in detail and general conception, that argue strongly against the theory of contact or borrowing in the second millennium. Nor can we discover in the earliest Greek mythology a single Mesopotamian name or myth associated with the lower world.220.1