The Descent To The Underworld

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The Descent To The Underworld

• World Literature I
• Presentation by
• Ralph Monday

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"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
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From the land of the living to the realm of the
dead.
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A journey to the underworld is archetypal.
Charon driving The Damned in Michelangelo's Last
Judgment
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Cultural Conceptions of the Underworld

• Babylonian/Sumerian
• Hebrew
• Greek
• Roman
• Judeo-Christian

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

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Hebrew
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• 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.

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• 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.

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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.

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• 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 Erebuswhere the dead pass as soon as they
  die--and

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• Tartarusa deeper location where the Titans are
  kept. The Greek underworld is a shadowy place
  where
• shades of all sortsvillains and heroeslead a
  miserable existence.
• These shades are neither punished nor rewarded.
  They simply live a miserable existence after
  death.

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Hades, King of the Greek Underworld
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Hades abducting Persephone
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Roman

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

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• A journey to Virgils 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.
• Virgils underworld is the model that Dante bases
  his Inferno upon.

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Hades and Persephone with the three headed dog
Cerebus.
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Aeneid, Map of the Underworld