the
story.

My only brother, let me not perish.
On the day of Tammuz, play for me on the flute of lapis lazuli,
together with the lyre[1187] of pearl play for me.
Together let the professional dirge singers, male and female, play
for me,
That the dead may arise and inhale the incense of offerings.

The lines impress one as snatches from a dirge, sung or recited in
memory of the dead, and introduced here as an appropriate illustration
of the conclusion to be drawn from the tale. At all events, the
consolation that the mourner receives lies in this thought,--the dead
can hear the lamentation. The survivors are called upon not to forget
the dead. When the festival of Tammuz comes, let them combine with the
weeping for the god, a dirge in memory of the dead. Let them pray to
Ishtar and Tammuz. If remembered by the living, the dead will at least
enjoy the offerings made to them, regain, as it were, a temporary sense
of life; but more cannot with certainty be hoped for.

The outlook for the dead, it will be seen, is not hopeful. Their
condition is at best a tolerable one. What we may glean from other
sources but confirms the general impression, conveyed by the opening and
closing lines of the Ishtar story, or makes the picture a still gloomier
one. The day of death is a day of sorrow, 'the day without mercy.' The
word for corpse conveys the idea that things have 'come to an end.'
Whenever death is referred to in the literature, it is described as an
unmitigated evil. A dirge introduced into an impressive hymn to
Nergal[1188] laments the fate of him who

... has descended to the breast of the earth,
Satiated,[1189] [he has gone] to the land of the dead.
Full of lament on the day that he encountered sorrow,
In the month which does not bring to completion the year,[1190]
On the road of destruction for mankind,
To the wailing-place (?),
The hero [has gone], to the distant invisible land.

We must not be misled by an epithet bestowed upon several gods, Marduk,
Ninib, and Gula, of 'the restorer of the dead to life,' into the belief
that the dead could be brought back from Aralu. These epithets appear
chiefly in incantations and hymns addressed to the gods for some
specific purpose, such as deliverance of a sufferer from disease. The
gods are appealed to against the demons, whose grasp means death. Ninib
and Gula are viewed as gods of healing.[1191] To be cured through their
aid was to be snat