Living Toward Death

Living Toward Death August 14, 2014

One of the crucial differences is the role of death. According to Heidel (Babylonian Genesis, 137-8), “The destructive power of death, according to Babylonian and Assyrian speculations, extended not only over mankind and over plant and animal life but even over the gods. While the proverbially immortal gods could not die a natural death, they could perish through violence. Apsu and Mummu were killed by Ea; Ti’amat lost her life in combat with Marduk; Kingu and the Lamga deities were slaughtered for the purpose of creating mankind; Ereshkigal’s husband Gugalanna met with a violent death; youthful Tammuz in some way lost his life through Ishtar’s fault; and Ishtar descended to the underworld alive but was deprived of life in that dark and gloomy hollow.” This “death existed even prior to the creation of the universe,” embodied in Uggae, the Sumerian death god.

What happens to the gods can certainly happen to human beings: Death “was not attributed to some fall into sin on the part of man. On the contrary, according to the main Babylonian creation story, man was formed with the blood of wicked Kungu and therefore was evil from the very beginning of his existence. Furthermore, we read in the Babylonian theodicy: ‘Narru, king from of old, the creator of mankind; gigantic Zulummar, who pinched off their clay; and lady Mama, the queen, who fashioned them, have presented to mankind perverse speech, lies and untruth they presented to them forever.’ Death was the result of man’s natural constitution; it was one of the inexorable laws of nature, a law divinely ordained at the time of man’s creation. Gilgamesh was told by Siduri, the divine barmaid: ‘When the gods created mankind, they allotted death to mankind, (but) life the retained in their keeping.”

Heidegger’s life toward death was pre-Socratic indeed.

On the other hand: Mesopotamian grave sites indicate that royal servants and wives were often buried with a king, so as to continue serving him after death. The king took not only his body to the grave, but much of his household with him. Ancient Mesopotamians would not have grasped Heidegger’s claim that death is the individuating event of a life. For the ancient Mesopotamian, one’s death is not his own.


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