ance, and would receive no sepulture." They were content
to resign themselves, therefore, to the dreary lot of eternal misery
which awaited them after death, provided they enjoyed in this world a
long and prosperous existence. Some of them felt and rebelled against
the injustice of the idea, which assigned one and the same fate, without
discrimination, to the coward and the hero killed on the battle-field,
to the tyrant and the mild ruler of his people, to the wicked and
the righteous. These therefore supposed that the gods would make
distinctions, that they would separate such heroes from the common herd,
welcome them in a fertile, sunlit island, separated from the abode of
men by the waters of death--the impassable river which leads to the
house of Allat. The tree of life flourished there, the spring of life
poured forth there its revivifying waters; thither Ea transferred
Xisuthros after the Deluge; Gilgames saw the shores of this island and
returned from it, strong and healthy as in the days of his youth. The
site of this region of delights was at first placed in the centre of
the marshes of the Euphrates, where this river flows into the sea;
afterwards when the country became better known, it was transferred
beyond the ocean. In proportion as the limits of the Chaldaean
horizon were thrust further and further away by mercantile or warlike
expeditions, this mysterious island was placed more and more to the
east, afterwards to the north, and at length at a distance so great that
it tended to vanish altogether. As a final resource, the gods of heaven
themselves became the hosts, and welcomed into their own kingdom the
purified souls of the heroes.

These souls were not so securely isolated from humanity that the
inhabitants of the world were not at times tempted to rejoin them before
their last hour had come. Just as Gilgames had dared of old the
dangers of the desert and the ocean in order to discover the island of
Khasisadra, so Etana darted through the air in order to ascend to the
sky of Anu, to become incorporated while still living in the choir of
the blessed. The legend gives an account of his friendship with the
eagle of Shamash, and of the many favours he had obtained from and
rendered to the bird. It happened at last, that his wife could not bring
forth the son which lay in her womb; the hero, addressing himself to
the eagle, asked from her the plant which alleviates the birth-pangs
of women and facilitates