"ere the world
sinks". After the battle of the gods and demons,

The sun is darkened, earth sinks in the sea.

In time, however, a new world appears.

I see uprising a second time
Earth from the Ocean, green anew;
The waters fall, on high the eagle
Flies o'er the fell and catches fish.

When the surviving gods return, they will talk, according to the Vala
(prophetess), of "the great world serpent" (Tiamat). The fields will
be sown and "Balder will come"[242]--apparently as Tammuz came. The
association of Balder with corn suggests that, like Nata of the Nahua
tribes, he was a harvest spirit, among other things.

Leaving, meantime, the many problems which arise from consideration of
the Deluge legends and their connection with primitive agricultural
myths, the attention of readers may be directed to the Babylonian
conception of the Otherworld.

Pir-napishtim, who escaped destruction at the Flood, resides in an
Island Paradise, which resembles the Greek "Islands of the Blessed",
and the Irish "Tir nan og" or "Land of the Young", situated in the
western ocean, and identical with the British[243]

island-valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies
Deep meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea.[244]

Only two human beings were permitted to reside on the Babylonian
island paradise, however. These were Pir-napishtim and his wife.
Apparently Gilgamesh could not join them there. His gods did not
transport heroes and other favoured individuals to a happy isle or
isles like those of the Greeks and Celts and Aryo-Indians. There was
no Heaven for the Babylonian dead. All mankind were doomed to enter
the gloomy Hades of the Underworld, "the land of darkness and the
shadow of death; a land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the
shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is darkness",
as Job exclaimed in the hour of despair, lamenting his fate.[245]

This gloomy habitation of the dead resembles the Greek Hades, the
Teutonic Nifelhel, and the Indian "Put". No detailed description of it
has been found. The references, however, in the "Descent of Ishtar"
and the Gilgamesh epic suggest that it resembled the hidden regions of
the Egyptians, in which souls were tortured by demons who stabbed
them, plunged them in pools of fire, and thrust them into cold outer
darkness w