Note 292 — Chapter I

It is well known that whereas Odysseus meets the spirits of the dead across Oceanus, upon the surface of the earth, there is in the Iliad mention of a subterranean Hades. The Assyrio-Babylonians had also the idea of an earth-encircling ocean stream,—the word Ὠκεανὸς the Greeks said was of foreign origin,—and on the south of it they placed the sea of the dead, which held the island homes of the departed. As in the Odyssey, it was a place given over to dust and darkness, and the doors of it were strongly barred; no living being save a god or a chosen hero might come there. Schrader, Namen d. Meere in d. Assyrischen Inschriften (Abhandl. d. k. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin, 1877, p. 169). Jeremias, Die Babylonisch-Assyrischen Vorstellungen vom Leben nach dem Tode (Leipzig, 1887). The Israelites, on the other hand, imagined the home of the dead as underground. Numbers, xvi. 30, 32, 33.