“Lift the mountain on your hands,” or How to Cross a Netherworld Border
february 2025 | Vol. 13.2
By Shane M. Thompson
The netherworld is an ever-present aspect of life (and death) in many ancient Near Eastern cultures. While there is substantial extant evidence from Egypt regarding the netherworld, the same cannot be said for its ancient West Asian neighbors. Mesopotamian texts which discuss the netherworld in depth are rare, although these texts constitute some of our most famous exemplars of Sumerian and Akkadian literature. For instance, Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld displays the state of those living in the netherworld as witnessed by Enkidu. The Descent of Inanna depicts the confined nature of this netherworld, enclosed by seven gates. These texts, among other references to the netherworld in the Mesopotamian literary corpus, represent a land which is bounded – both keeping outsiders from entering and inhabitants from leaving.
Yet, borders are seldom entirely unable to be crossed. This is most evident in the world of the living, where some borders are unmarked and easy to traverse, while others are difficult to cross due to factors such as extreme landscape features — yet even these most difficult to navigate borders can still be negotiated with difficulty.
The same is suggested in ancient Near Eastern viewpoints on the borders of the netherworld. For instance, while the netherworld is clearly bounded in the previously mentioned Gilgamesh and Inanna texts, the characters of Enkidu and Inanna are both able to enter and exit. In addition, the ability to cross outside of the land of the dead and into the land of the living is implied through the offering of libations and food to the deceased. The assumption, then, is that the deceased spirit is able to enter into the world of the living to partake in these offerings. Thus, while netherworld boundaries present as borders which are difficult to traverse, their crossing is indeed possible.
Several ancient Near Eastern texts depict the manner in which these borders may be crossed, and, most interestingly, suggest that the borders exist in the land of the living. For instance, “scorpion-men” stand guard at the gate to the Mesopotamian netherworld located at the base(s) of Mount Mašu:
37) ša ša-di-i še-mu-šú ma-š[u-um-ma]
38) ana ša-ad ma-a-ši i-na ka-š[á-di-šu]
39) šá u4-mi-šam-ma i-na-aṣ-ṣa-ru a-ṣ[e-e dšamši(utu)ši]
40) e-lu-šu-nu šu-pu-uk šame(an)e i[n-du?]
41) šap-liš a-ra-le-e i-rat-su-nu ˹kaš-da-át˺
42) gír-tab-lú-u18-lu i-na-aṣ-ṣa-ru bāb(ká)-šu
37) The mountain was named Mašu.
38) When he arrived at Mount Mašu,
39) which daily guards the rising [of the sun],
40) their tops [support] the fabric of the heavens,
41) their bases reach down to the Netherworld,
42) there were scorpion-men guarding its gate.
Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI, 37-42
The Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI, from Nineveh. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Mountains as markers signaling a border with the netherworld are also present outside of Mesopotamia at the Syrian site of Ugarit. This is explicitly stated in The Baʿal Cycle:
1) idk.al.ttn.pnm
2) ʿm.ǵr.trǵzz
3) ʿm.ǵr.ṯrmg
4) ʿm.tlm.ǵṣr.arṣ
1) Then you will indeed set [your] face
2) toward Mount TRǴZZ,
3) toward Mount ṮRMG,
4) toward the two hills at the border of the land/Netherworld.
CAT 1.4 viii, 1-4
A third mountain is mentioned several lines later, suggesting that three mountains serve as borders with the Ugaritic netherworld:
11b) idk
12) pnk.alttn.tkǵr
13a) knkny
11b-12) …Then you will set your face
13a) for Mount KNKNY
CAT 1.5 v, 11b-13a
A Tablet from the Ugaritic Baʿal Cycle, from Ras Shamra. Louvre AO 16641, AO 16642. © 2024 GrandPalaisRmn (musée du Louvre) / Adrien Didierjean.
Passage to the netherworld appears to have been accessible beneath these mountains, as conveyed in CAT 1.4 viii, 5-6 and CAT 1.5 v, 13-14, which give the directive to “Lift the mountain on (your) hands, the hill on top of (your) palms.”
The possibility of water as a border of the netherworld present in both the land of the living and the land of the dead is also extant from the Baʿal Cycle:
3b) sbn
4) [y].lq[ṣm.arṣ]ʿd
5a) ksm.myht
We went to the edge of the earth, to the limits of the waters.
CAT 1.5 vi, 3-5
Immediately following, an account of a journey through the netherworld is described, suggesting that these unnamed deities traveled from the land of the living to the land of the dead via water. But how did they do so? In order to answer this question, it is important to combine the archaeological and textual evidence.
In addition, the evidence concerning Ugarit’s netherworld borders suggests that they are not merely a narrative construction, but instead a lived reality. In fact, I posit that Ugarit’s netherworld borders mirror its borders in the real world, with the three mountains discussed above representing the mountainous topography of Ugarit’s northern, eastern, and southern borders, while the reference to a water border represents the Mediterranean Sea on Ugarit’s western limits.
Map of Ugarit, here designated by its modern name of Ras Shamra. The mountainous borders on the north and east are represented in brown, while the Western border of the Mediterranean Sea is represented in blue. Image by Zunkir, CC By-SA 4.0.
Jebel Aqra (north of Ugarit) where it meets the Mediterranean Sea at Samra beach, on the border between Syria and Türkiye. Photo by Kevorkmail via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0.
While there is no iconographic or archaeological evidence which depicts the crossing of mountainous borders in order to reach the netherworld, there is evidence that suggests the possibility for crossing the western water border. I point here to two in situ stone anchors excavated from the entrance to Tomb 36 in the Ville Basse. There are a likely additional five anchors in burial contexts from Minet el Beida. It is, in my opinion, likely that these anchors were created solely for inclusion in the burial of these individuals for their use in the afterlife, typical of grave goods in West Asian and North African funerary contexts from this period.
Stone anchor from the Temple of Baʿal at Ugarit, likely serving as an offering by those who spent their life at sea and related to a maritime cult. Photo by Mike Bishop, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
The inclusion of these anchors for use in the afterlife suggests that the borders of the netherworld, while difficult to cross, are indeed able to be traversed. Specifically, the deceased buried with anchors at Ugarit may use these anchors to assist in their crossing of the western border of the netherworld, likely identified with the Mediterranean Sea.
Thus, in addition to the ability to cross the border between the land of the living and the land of the dead to partake in offerings, as well as the ability to cross into the land of the dead from the land of the living depicted in the above texts, it is also possible to cross borders that exist within the netherworld. This possibility supports the reasoning for the depictions of the netherworld as a bounded, enclosed space. There is no need for gates and walls to keep the inhabitants of the netherworld inside unless there is the ability for those inside to go beyond those borders.
Therefore, while the land of the dead exists in a different plane than the land of the living, this land of the dead mirrors the land of the living in many ways. For instance, landscape features, such as the mountains and sea, noted as borders of the netherworld in the Baʿal Cycle, may simultaneously exist in both realms. In addition, the borders of the Ugaritic and Mesopotamian netherworlds may also reflect the actual borders of Ugarit and Mesopotamia in the land of the living. While these respective netherworlds were bounded, the evidence from Ugarit suggests that the inhabitants of these netherworlds were perhaps envisioned as able to cross into neighboring netherworlds, albeit with great difficulty.
Shane M. Thompson is Assistant Professor of Bible and the Ancient Near East at North Carolina Wesleyan University.
Further Reading
CAT = The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag.
Astour, M.C. 1980. “The Nether World and Its Denizens at Ugarit.” In: B. Alster (ed.). Deathin Mesopotamia: XXVIe Rencontre assyriologique internationale Mesopotamia 8. Copenhagen, Akademisk Forlag, 227-238.
de Moor, J. 2014. “Concepts of Afterlife in Canaan” In: Ugarit-Forschungen 45, 374-388.
Frost, H. 1991. “Anchors sacred and profane.” In: M. Yon (ed.). Arts et Industries de le Pierre. Paris, Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations.
Gellar, M.J. 1999. “The Landscape of the ‘Netherworld.’” In: L. Milano (ed.). Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers, and Horizons in the Ancient Near East. Padova, Sargon.
Healey, J.F. 1980. “The Sun Deity and the Underworld: Mesopotamia and Ugarit.” In: B. Alster (ed.). Death in Mesopotamia: XXVIe Rencontre assyriologique internationale Mesopotamia 8. Copenhagen, Akademisk Forlag, 239-242.
Horowitz, W. 1998. Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography. Winona Lake, Eisenbrauns.
Katz, D. 2003. The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources. Bethesda, CDL Press.
Paul, S.M. 1995. “‘Emigration from the Netherworld in the Ancient Near East.” In: K. van Lerberghe and A. Schoors (eds.). Immigration and Emigration within the Ancient Near East: Festschrift E. Lipiński. Leuven, Peeters, 221-227.
Suriano, M.J. 2012. “Ruin Hills at the Threshold of the Netherworld: The Tell in the
Conceptual Landscape of the Baʿal Cycle and Ancient Near Eastern Mythology.” In: Die Welt des Orients 42, 210-230.
Thompson, S.M. 2024. “The Borders of the Netherworld in Ugaritic Thought,” In: Antiguo Oriente 21, 77-98.
Tsevat, M. 1974. “Sun Mountains at Ugarit.” In: Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 3, 71-75.
How to cite this article:
Thompson, S. M. 2025. “‘Lift the mountain on your hands,’ or How to Cross a Netherworld Border.” The Ancient Near East Today 13.2. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/cross-netherworld-border/.
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