ABSTRACT
He had failed to find it on earth and he tried to find it in the kingdom of the dead. He applied to the priests, but they one and all failed him, and he thought that if only he could hold converse with his beloved friend Enkidu, he would be able to find out what he wished to know. He appealed to Bel and Sin to raise up the spirit of Enkidu for him, but each god refused. Then he appealed to Ea, who ordered Nergal, the god of war, to produce the spirit of Enkidu. Nergal opened a shaft in the ground through which the spirit of Enkidu passed up into this world "like a breath of wind." Gjlgamish began to question the spirit of Enkidu but he gained little information from him and certainly no satisfaction. What the spirit of Enkidu was like we shall never know, but Gilgamish must have seen something, or he could not have asked his questions. The priest of Nergal was probably a medium who burnt incense and by suggestion or hypnotism made Gilgamish see some kind of figure. The witch of Endor also was probably a medium and used the same means as the priest of Nergal, and showed Saul a figure of Samuel in the smoke of the incense. I t is something of this sort which is done to-day in parts of North-east Africa where men, and women, in difficulties, seek for information from their dead kinsfolk. And necromancers like Cecrops, Apollonius of Tyana, Jamblichus, Porphyry and others who made divination by the dead probably used a similar method.
