The Descent To The Underworld

1. The Descent To The Underworld World Literature I Presentation by: Ralph Monday

2. "Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven." Friedrich Nietzsche

3. From the land of the living to the realm of the dead.

4. A journey to the underworld is archetypal. Charon driving The Damned in Michelangelo's Last Judgment

5. Cultural Conceptions of the Underworld • Babylonian/Sumerian • Hebrew • Greek • Roman • Judeo-Christian

6. The Setting Sun in the West, settling into the Underworld. Babylonian/Sumerian

7. Upon death the Sumerian would go to the land of the dead, a dark, • Shadowy place completely dark. • Here, Erishkigal, Queen of Darkness rules the land from which no one returns. • Gilgamesh went to this land, but by a boon of the gods, is allowed to return to the world of the living.

8. Hebrew

9. She'ol is the Hebrew abode of the dead; the underworld, grave or pit. • In the Hebrew Bible it is portrayed as a comfortless place beneath the earth, • beyond gates, where both the bad and the good, slave and king, pious and wicked • must go after death to sleep in silence and oblivion in the dust.

10. Sheol/Gehenna is a physical location characterized by fire and smoke. • A murky, shadowy place, the Hebrew underworld is much like a burning • garbage dump. • This was a place in Israel, the valley of Hinnom where sacrifices were made and later corpses were burned.

11. Greek • The Greeks believed that the underworld was one of the areas assigned to the Major Olympians after • The Olympian gods/goddesses overthrew the Titans, an earlier group of gods.

12. In dividing the “spoils” of the battle, Hades/Dis was given dominion over this region. Hades ruled this realm • With Persephone, a maiden that he kidnapped. Generally, in Greek epics the underworld is a vague, undefined place. • Sometimes the underworld is divided into two parts: Erebus—where the dead pass as soon as they die--and

13. Tartarus—a deeper location where the Titans are kept. The Greek underworld is a shadowy place where • “shades” of all sorts—villains and heroes—lead a miserable existence. • These shades are neither punished nor rewarded. They simply live a miserable existence after death.

14. Hades, King of the Greek Underworld

15. Hades abducting Persephone

16. Roman • In The Aeneid Virgil creates a more detailed picture of the underworld than any found in earlier writers. • Virgil’s underworld contains geographical features, and the wicked are separated from the brave and virtuous.

17. A journey to Virgil’s hell is dangerous. In order to enter the kingdom of the dead, Aeneas must secure a • “golden bough” and be guided and protected by the Sibyl of Cumae. • Virgil’s underworld is the model that Dante bases his Inferno upon.

18. Hades and Persephone with the three headed dog Cerebus.

19. Aeneid, Map of the Underworld