I believe that it is, though in making the attempt we are of course treading upon precarious ground. There are certain curious coincidences, one of which, since it goes to the heart of Sumerian and Egyptian religion, is necessarily of considerable weight. But they are all, it must be remembered, more in the nature of indications and possibilities than of ascertained facts. Eridu meant in Sumerian “the good city.” Memphis (Men-nofer), “the good place,” the name of the first capital of united Egypt, had the same signification. In the case of Eridu the name had something to do with the fact that the city was the seat of Ea, the god of beneficent spells and incantations, who had given the arts and sciences to man, and was ever ready to heal those that were sick. The son and vice-gerent of Ea, who carried his commands to earth and spent his time in curing diseases and raising “the dead to life,” was Asari, “the prince,” who was usually entitled Mulu-dugga, “the good” or “beneficent one.” The character and attributes of Asari are thus the same as those of the Egyptian Osiris, who was also known as Ati, “the prince,” and was commonly addressed as Un-nofer, “the good being.” Unlike most of the Egyptian deities, Osiris had the same human form as Asari of Eridu, and the resemblance between the names of Asari and Osiris--Asar in Egyptian--is rendered more striking by the remarkable fact that they are both represented by two ideographs or hieroglyphs of precisely the same shape and signification.[100] It does not appear possible to ascribe such a threefold identity to mere coincidence. And the theory of coincidence becomes still more improbable when we remember that while the story of Osiris centres in his death and resurrection, one of the chief offices of the Sumerian Asari was to “raise the dead to life.” Nowhere else in Babylonian literature, whether Sumerian or Semitic, do we find any reference to a resurrection; the Semitic Babylonians, indeed, did not look forward to a future life at all, or if they did, it was to a shadowy existence in a subterranean land of darkness “where all things are forgotten.” It is only in connection with Asari that we hear of a possibility that the dead may live again.