It was another Sumerian belief which exercised a greater influence upon the Semitic mind. This was the belief in ghosts. The _lil_ or ghost was distinct from the _Zi_; while the _Zi_ belonged to the world of the living, the _lil_ belonged to the world of the dead. The _lil_ consequently was no counterpart or double of either man or god, but a being with an independent existence of its own. Its home was beneath the earth, where the dead had their dwelling; but it visited this upper world under the shadow of night, or in desert places to which nothing living came.(221) It was essentially a spirit of darkness, and one of the names by which it was known was that of “the light-despoiler.”(222) It came in the raging wind which darkens the heaven with clouds, or in the cloud of dust which betokens the approach of the storm. The _lil_, in fact, was essentially a demon, “without husband or wife,” one of those evil spirits who tormented and perplexed mankind. The sexless Lil was waited on by “a maid,” who under the cover of night enticed men to their destruction, or seduced them in their dreams. She was a veritable vampire, providing the Lil she served with its human food. When the Semite succeeded to the heritage of the Sumerian, the sexless Lil disappeared. Semitic grammar demanded that there should be a distinction between masculine and feminine, and Semitic modes of thought equally demanded that a female Lilît should take her place by the side of a male Lilu. The attributes of the “serving-maid” of the Sumerian Lil were transferred to the new creation of the Semitic mind, and the siren who lured men to their destruction ceased to be a serving-maid, and became the female Lilît herself. But the origin of the powers she exercised was never forgotten. When the name and character of the Babylonian Lilît were borrowed by the Hebrews under the form of Lilith, she was conceived of as a single individual spirit rather than as a class. Isaiah (xxxiv. 14) tells us how Lilith shall haunt the desolate ruins of Edom, and find among them “a place of rest”; while, according to the Rabbis, Lilith had been the first wife of man, in appearance the fairest of women, but in reality a vampire demon who sucked at night the blood of her victims.