Ishtar's army of the dead

The oldest surviving reference to the dead rising to eat the living is a threat, not a story. In the Akkadian Descent of Ishtar the goddess, refused entry to the underworld, promises to release its inhabitants on the world above, and in the Epic of Gilgamesh she repeats the threat to get her way in heaven. The dead never actually rise in either text. The idea itself, a mass of hungry corpses overwhelming the living, was nevertheless already familiar some three thousand years ago.123

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