A Good Day To Join The Hittite Army, Chapter Five: A Quick Trip to the Underworld

A Good Day to Join the Hittite Army, Chapter One.

A Good Day to Join the Hittite Army, Chapter Two.

A Good Day to Join the Hittite Army, Chapter Three.

A Good Day to Join the Hittite Army, Chapter Four.

I wonder if you have ever been on a descent to the underworld? The Mycenaeans call it a katabasis. I understand it is quite a popular venture with them, and they almost consider any journey from home that does not include at least one stop in the land of the dead quite a waste of time. You will recall that when we last spoke, I was clinging to a small rock half submerged in the middle of the World-Sea, having recently lost my comrades, or more accurately my captors, on board the Dispute to a great black wave which drowned everyone but myself. For all the danger of my position I did consider myself lucky, since only moments before my comrades had been engaged in serious conversation about the merits of throwing myself bodily overboard. That instead the reverse had happened seemed to me (and still does) a clear sign of the favor of the gods, although of which gods precisely I cannot be certain.

Now anyone who has traveled further than his own front door knows that there are many entrances to the lower world which can be accessed by the living. There are several fields in Thrinacia (what the Illyrians call Sicania or Sicilia) which open into it; the bottomless Alcyonian Lake in Lerna, near Argos; a cave in Lake Avernus in Lucania; another cave in Lake Curtius, among the Sabines; the River Acheron, in Epirus; a cave in Taenarum, a little further south from Lerna; a certain temple in Tarquinia; and beneath the stool of the Sibyl at Delphi. There is also of course the traditional route.¹

One can also reach the fields of sorrow by sailing beyond the edges of the World-Sea. I would not have guessed that the Dispute had traveled quite so far in her journey to Uluburun, but then again this was my very first sea voyage, and I had nothing to compare it to.

A katabasis, I need hardly add, is not the same thing as a nekyia. The surest way to show that you yourself have never made a living voyage to the underworld is to refer to a katabasis and a nekyia as if they were the same thing. Those of us who have been tend to think pretty poorly of this sort of thing. A katabasis might begin with a nekyia, of course, but it just as well might not — and of course one can successfully complete a nekyia without ever even attempting a katabasis.

In a nekyia, one has only to pop into an unplumbed cavern whose channels communicate with the Underworld, such as those found in Heraclea Pontica, or at Ephyra, or Taenaron and Avernus, or indeed any tomb, slay a few rams, pour out a libation and recite a few choice words, and thereby call up a ghost or two, who will answer willingly any questions you put to him that he can possibly answer. If any of this is too difficult you can enlist a magus or prophet to recite the words and pour out the libation for you. The whole time you yourself remain squarely topside, and after your business is concluded, the spirits return to the house of shadows alone. In a katabasis, you may or may not sacrifice a ram, but you cannot simply visit a cave or a tomb and wait for the Underworld to come to you; you have to penetrate the veil that separates the living from the dead yourself.

None of this is to knock the nekyia, which is a very useful ritual that has helped a great many people plan boat trips and find their lost luggage, but as you can see the two don’t really compare. In the latter, one or two members of the dead come to you for a polite chat in public, while in the former, you visit the dead in their own quiet homes. It is the difference between sending a letter to the King of Kings and journeying to Babylon on a golden litter to see him yourself, face to face.

As I said, I was clinging to a rock in the middle of the World-Sea for quite some time, serenely awaiting whatever deliverance the gods saw fit to send me, when eventually my hands gave way and I at last fell completely beneath the waves, where everything around me was absorbed into a cold green roar. This continued for quite some time — longer than I would have believed possible — and yet I found myself feeling surprisingly at ease, considering this was my first time underwater.

All at once I was ejected from this green eternity and landed on a dark couch of sand, underneath a starless sky, and I knew right away I was in the antechamber to the halls of the dead. But I felt my own limbs as sure and as straight as they had ever been, and my breath rose and fell easy in my throat, so I knew I must still be living. I wondered if I would see any of my former companions, who must themselves have recently arrived here, although by quite another road.

At first this vestibule was quiet and empty, as if I were the only visitor it had ever seen, but gradually and by degrees I began to be aware of a great crowd of spirits that swelled all around me, of new brides and unwedded youths, old men and garlanded athletes, shepherds and maidens with hearts yet untouched by sorrow. And there were also the spirits of many who had been cut down in battle, still in their armor and gore.

Also my mother was there, which surprised me a great deal, since it had been only a few months since I had last seen her at home and very much alive.

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1. Now the Egyptians say there is only one entrance to the underworld, and that all the dead must travel through it before being presented to the gods, where they are faced with many challenges and locked doors, whereafter they are judged according to their deeds. The good are sent on to a pleasant land of reeds, while the wicked are eaten or set on fire. But the Sumerians say all lands in the underworld are the same, that all spirits are merely pronounced “dead” by Ereshkigal, without any further division into good or bad, and that it can be reached by a staircase.