ed with life and the power of reproduction.

No doubt, the impossibility for the individual to conceive of himself as
forever deprived of consciousness, was at the bottom of the primitive
theory of the perpetuity of existence in some form. Among ancient
religions, Buddhism alone frees itself from this theory and unfolds a
bold doctrine of the possibility of a complete annihilation. The
question, however, whether the continuity of existence was a blessing or
a curse was raised by many ancient nations. The Babylonians are among
these who are inclined to take a gloomy view of the passage from this
world to the existence in store for humanity after death, and the
religious leaders were either powerless or disinclined to controvert
this view.

Location and Names of the Gathering Place of the Dead.

We have already had occasion[1113] to refer to the great cave underneath
the earth in which the dead were supposed to dwell, and since the earth
itself was regarded as a mountain, the cave is pictured as a hollow
within, or rather underneath, a mountain. A conception of this kind must
have arisen among a people that was once familiar with a mountainous
district. The settlers of the Euphrates Valley brought the belief with
them from an earlier mountain home. The cave, moreover, points to
cave-dwelling and to cave-burial as conditions that prevailed at one
time among the populace, precisely as the imitation of the mountain with
its caves in the case of the Egyptian pyramids, is due to similar
influences. To this cave various names are assigned in the literature of
the Babylonians,--some of popular origin, others reflecting scholastic
views. The most common name is Aralu.[1114] We also find the term 'house
of Aralu.'[1115] The etymology of the term is obscure. Aralu was
pictured as a vast place, dark and gloomy. It is sometimes called a
land, sometimes a great house. The approach to it was difficult. It lay
in the lowest part of the mountain that represented the earth, not far
from the hollow underneath the mountain into which the 'Apsu' flowed.
Surrounded by seven walls and strongly guarded, it was a place to which
no living person could go and from which no mortal could ever depart
after once entering it. To Aralu all went whose existence in this world
had come to an end. Another name which specifies the relationship of
Aralu to the world is Ekur or 'mountain house' of the dead. Ekur is one
of the names for the earth,[1116] but