That abode is described as ‘a gloomy realm beneath the earth, wherein the spirits of the dead flit about in darkness, with dust and mud for their food and drink.’[54] No hint is there of reward or punishment; the same dreary lot awaits the evil and the good alike so soon as they have quitted the light of day. The only attempt at a differential treatment is found in that aristocratic conception of Elysium which provides a place there for heroes and great men alone; a conception which the ancient inhabitants of Chaldæa shared with many races of very different type and origin, including several of the peoples of Central America and Polynesia, and, apparently, the early Aryans of Europe. In fact, the whole Chaldæan theory of the future life is very rudimentary, notwithstanding the great proficiency in several departments of culture to which the Accadian and Assyrian races had attained. The Median conquest of Assyria and Babylon introduced the Hebrew exiles to the Zoroastrian religion, with its mythology richer than any which the Semitic or Pre-Semitic races had evolved, and taught them an eschatology more elaborate than their own. The Avesta inculcated an ethic of high morality, and taught a very systematic theory of rewards and punishments in the future life. The experiences of the soul after death are described with great minuteness and copiousness of detail. For three nights after death the soul sits by the head of the body, and all this time, if a righteous soul, experiences the consciousness of a delight as great as any that the whole living world together are capable of enjoying. At the end of this time it becomes aware of a sweet-scented wind blowing from the south, and feels a pleasant sense of being borne into a place of fragrant trees and verdure. The evil soul, on the contrary, experiences a corresponding amount of misery during its vigil, at the close of which it is assailed by a foul wind from the north. Its vigil ended, every soul, good or bad, had to cross the narrow Chinvât Bridge (_cinvata peretush_, the ‘Accountant’s Bridge’), where good and evil spirits struggled for possession of it, as did the angels and devils for the soul of Goethe’s Faust, and as Michael and Satan contended for Moses, according to the tradition referred to in the Book of Jude (ver. 9). On reaching the bridge head, the soul of ‘good thoughts, good deeds, good words, and good religion’ was met by a lovely maiden, who was his own conscience. By her he was conducted to the place of Judgment,[55] and there a book was opened wherein had been kept a record of all the good and evil he had wrought in life. Upon his righteousness being admitted, he was received with acclamation by the celestial powers, and a place was allotted to him among their golden seats.[56] The Avestan Elysium is described as a holy mountain, its summit clothed with everlasting light, whither ‘come neither night nor darkness, no cold wind and no hot wind, no