Month of Ghosts (Halloween 2008!)

[saharda]

This is the month roughly conforming to the month of ghosts in the Sumerian calendar. OK, the Nippurian calendar, but they had just about the most stable calendar and that's the one my temple uses. Anyhow this is the time when the dead come up to spend a few days with the living. Something like the Sumerian Halloween.

So I suppose you are wondering what this has to do with demons. Well it depends on if you count Gidim as demons or merely ghosts. There is a bit of a gray area there. Either way they can be agents of sickness.

The Gidim could enter through the ear and posses a person. They could thereby cause his death in order that they could piggyback on the person's burial. (Or at least this is the impression I get from some of the books I have been reading. Some of the nature of the Gidim still eludes me.)

You will find some discussion of the Gidim in the vampire thread. What I want to know is what sources do we have that talk about the Gidim? What do they say about it's nature? and how does this change over time?

[amarsin]

Which is the month of ghosts? The 12 Nippur months are:

1) bara2-za3-gar (Mar/Apr)
2) gu4-si-su (Apr/May)
3) sig4-ga (May/June)
4) szu-numun (June/July)
5) NE-NE-gar (July/Aug)
6) kin-{d}inanna (Aug/Sept)
7) du6-ku3 (Sept/Oct)
8) apin-du8-a (Oct/Nov)
9) GAN-GAN-e3 (Nov/Dec)
10) AB-e3 (Dec/Jan)
11) ziz2-a (Jan/Feb)
12) sze-kin-ku5 (Feb/Mar)

So tonight will be the approximate start of the Nippur 6th month, Kin-Inanna. But my thinking was always that the month of spirits was the 10th month, "AB-e3", though obviously there is some dispute. I'm not a calendar expert, though, and there may be festivals, etc.-- esp. for later periods of Mesopotamian history-- that more fulling detail things.

As for gidim, it's a hard question-- not the least problem of which is the fact that the gidim sign is virtually indistinguishable from the udug sign in OB! I don't know much, but this web site has got me looking into such things in my free time...

[saharda]

Your coronations are not exactly valid on a lunar calendar. Not completely invalid, just that the months move around the calendar slightly. We would be in month five presently. Month six, Kin Inanna, contains the Equinox. Looking at your chart however it does start Aug/Sept.

The tenth month was the time when dead kings were honored, so in a way it is also a month of the dead, but month five is more appropriately the month of ghosts.

As for it being the start of the month, That happened with the new moon. Aug 12 or 13 depending on where you are on the earth.

[amarsin]

Oh, well I guess you're talking about current events? Obviously months moth around. And in ancient Sumer, they tried very hard to get things to stay constant through calendrical manipulations, like adding diri-months, and the like. I'll look into the month NE-NE-gar, as I know it has a complex history.

[amarsin]

Hmm. I see. So the post Ur III Nippur calendar has its 5th month as Abum, which was some sort of mount designating a passage to the Netherworld. The Abum festival was attested in Ur III documents, it seems. It appears to equate to the month NE.NE-gar, though in some local calendars, this month isn't the 5th month at all. And the CAD has some discussion on the month, too, s.v. abu B. There's lots still to say about the Mesopotamian calendar, especially the earliest versions when there were multiple versions floating around. I just saw that the topic of the 2010 Rencontre in Spain is (in part) "Time" so if we all stick around long enough, perhaps some sort of paper topic can emerge from discussions about the early Mesopotamian calendars!

[us4-he2-gal2]

Amarsin/Saharda- I see youve moved things along with this thread, and we're approaching the thick of it. As this is another one of those nights where I have six Mesopotamian themed hours on hand, I can elaborate some here.

Yearly cultic festivals are a great thing to explore when considering the religious fabric of a people. As some of these are difficult and or obscure, and rarely approached, they have potential here. I consider the festival of ghosts a particularly fascinating topic, similarities can be be seen in key Roman (paternalia), Chinese and Celtic observances. My focus is solely on the Mesopotamian exemplar, which may provide the earliest record of these surreal occasions in any case
I first looked into this topic about a year ago in the course of work at the T/S page, and obtained some basic data I think could be refined or expanded on. For a few months it was a matter of collecting scraps from footnotes, and semi-relevant off-hand remarks. Eventually however I was able to refer directly to a book which actually delt with the subject, "The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East" , by M. Cohen 1993. Because this is the primary work I have access to which deals with the material in question, and most of the 'scraps' were quotes from the book anyway, I rely on it for most of the below.

Ab-e3- 10th Nippurian month

About the mentions of the Ab-e3 month, and its significance, there is something to that. For sure this name is sometimes associated with the dead. To get to specifics about the Nippur calendar, the tenth month is Ab-e3, as for the cultic function of this month in Nippur, that gets a bit complicated. One reason as I read in Cohen 1993 pg.117, is that all the venerated month names of the Nippurian calendar remained constant throughout recorded history, with the single exception though of month 10. The original name for this month was ^itiku3-su_x. In any case Cohen indicates the first attestation of the Ab-e3 as the name for the 10th month in Nippur, is in a Drehem document which refers to festival provisions for the "Ab-e Festival of Sulgi" and its remarked "this tablet may refer to the very first observance of the ab-e3 festival in Nippur."
Interestingly, Cohen explains this as an offering to the deceased king's funeral shrine, and notes "the ab-e3 festival in Nippur may have centered solely about the deceased Ur III kings, and was not a paternalia for the general populace." So the change of month name may have been the result of political preasure from Ur. The new festival activity of the month focused on the deceased Ur III kings, and its observance was "relegated to the religious and political elite of Nippur."
As early as the pre-Sargonic period, one of the calendars from Lagash (one of those multi-version localities) had a tenth month by the name ab-e3 as well, its evident this was centered around the dead in some capacity. Indicators are that offerings were made to underworld deities, distinguishing this from the Nippurian ab-e3 (offerings to deceased UrIII kings) and the Nippurian Ne-IZI-gar (offerings to deities on behalf of the ancestors of the general populace.)

The Abum (or Apum) festival:

As you say Amarsin, the earliest attestations for this festival is UrIII period, Abum would seem to have become a widely observed occasion, particularly in northern localities. The basic premise of the Abum was indeed conceptually similar to that of the ne-IZI-gar festival, in that offerings were made to the deceased. The abum itself is reportedly a mound covering a passage to the netherworld, offerings would be made via this passage on the festival. This is also something that would differentiate the abum from the ne.IZI.gar festival as the latter doesnt utilize this same sort of passage.
As a side note, The sacred mound [du6-ku3] festival of the seventh Nippurian month may actually be closer to the Abum festival. Among its other aspects, Cohen has suggested that the sacred mound may also have covered a passageway to the netherworld, and explained that the du6-ku3 festival was on ' the 27th of its month just before the disappearance of the moon - a time of ill omens, when the spirits of the dead may have been most active.' Offerings would seem to have been directed toward netherworld deities during the Du6-ku3 festival.


Ne.IZI.gar - the fifth Nippurian month

- Cohen translates ne-IZI-gar as '(the month when) lamps/braziers are lit' , its mentioned a reading of ne-ne-gar is also possible. The ne-IZI-gar observance is dated as early as pre-Sargonic era, with one early receipt from that era reading "3 for Ninurta, 1 for Dingirmah, 1 for Inanna, 1 for Nusku, 1 for Nintinugga, 1 for Enki, 1 for Irda and 1 for Dingirmah [again!] l they are nidba offerings of the ne-IZI-gar (observance)"
Its apparent that ne-IZI-gar was held in various parts of Sumer, Ur, Adab, Larsa etc. However when it is held at other locals the date varies - it is not the 5th month - and the significance of the offerings vary as well, for example in Ur, Ibbi-Sin held a ne-IZI-gar observance as a one time event likely in honor of the recently deceased Su-sin. This is not the same significance ne-IZI-gar had in Nippur. In attempting to reconstruct the significance of the Nippurian ne-IZI-gar, Cohen relied on his own translations and interpretations of lines from the Death of Gilgamesh. They read:


"Let.. , the child of sun-god Utu,
light up for him the netherworld, the place of darkness!
Let him set up a threshold there (as bright) as the moon
(for) all mankind, whatever their names be,
(for those whose statues were fashioned in the days of yore,
(for) the heroes, the young men, and the...!
From there the strong and the mighty march out.
Without him no light would be there during the month ne-IZI-gar , during
the festi[val of the gh]osts."


Cross referencing this myth with the festival he interprets the following: "According to this passage the "festival of ghosts" occurred during the month ne-IZI-gar, a time when the spirits of the dead followed a special passage of light leading from the darkness of the netherworld back into the world of the living for a brief stay. The setting of fires and lighting of torches by each household would guide the spirits back to the ancestral home, where a ceremonial meal, presumably the ne-IZI-gar offering, awaited. Langdon likens this occasion to the Roman paternalia with "funeral means.., and families entertained the ghosts of their dead relatives."
Hence the meaning of the month name, '(the month when) lamps/braziers are lit' . Despite these remarks, Cohen does note that the texts only record economic receipts for offerings to deity during this festival, not to the ancestors - but in support of the above interpretation, the idea that these offerings may be to buy passage for the visiting spirits is put forward. Lastly, Cohen does not read or interpret Sisig in the first line of the Death of Gilgamesh passage above, but numerous other translations suggest this line should read 'Let Sisig, the child of the sun-god Utu.' The Sisig thread is an attempt to see how this deity might fit in with Cohen's interpretation of the festival, and to attempt detailed exploration this rare deity. Revisions will need to be made there.

[saratara]

Some additional remark:
Sallaberger who wrote a very interesting book about the cultic calendar published the same year as Cohen's one is far more cautious about the interpretation of the ne-IZI-gar admitting that there are no direct proofs. The connection with the fire seems sure and to be confirmed by later texts like the Astrolabium B. Sallaberger cites MVN 15 118, list of offerings for the festival where female deities like Ninsun, Inanna, Ninegalla, Geštinanna prevail. A connection with lamentations and cult of the dead can be for Sallaberger deduced by the presence of Ninsun and Geštinanna who are the ones who mourn Dumuzi’s death. See Sallaberger 1993, 126 and 206.

ne-IZI-gar attested in other sites: at Larsa offerings with this name to the temples are attested for the 8° month and the same in Ur and Adab. At Ur are attested also during the 9° and 10° month (to Nanna, to Šu-Sin “the beloved of Nanna”, to Ninsun, Gula, Allatum and Meslamtaea, “at day break, provided by the king”). But in Ur they could refer to offerings to the deceased kings during the inthronization of the new king (the summentioned text is dated to the first year of Ibbi-Sin). At Uruk the sixth month is called iti ab-N[E-IZI (?)]-gar. In Old-Babylonian Ešnunna it was the 4° month connected to the goddesses Belat-terraban and Belat-šuhner, who appear in ur as related to the funerary lamentations. The offerings were not for the dead but for many gods. For Cohen the offerings had as goal to prevent the exit of evil spirits or to let the gods guide the spirits to their families, but of course nothing sure sustains this theory.

ab-è or Abu month: The most ancient reference is in the Pre-Sargonic calendar of Lagaš for the 10° month. The festival was connected with the god Lugalurub, later identified with Dumuzi. This is interesting because also in Neo-Assyrian period the month was connected to Dumuzi.

During the first millennium the month abu (July-August) is also connected to the fire-god: the “month of the coming down of Girru”
Astrolabyum B, 10-12: “the mount Abu…of Ninurta, braziers are kindled, a torch is raised to the Anunna gods, Girra comes down form the sky and rivals the sun, the month of Gilgameš, for nine days men contest in wrestling ad athletics in their city quarters”
a text dated to Sargon II recites “in the month Abu, the month in which the fire god comes down (to the earth), who dries out the wet field, (the month) when one lays the foundations of cities and houses”
In my opinion the fact that the month was both dedicated to dead and foundation is connected to the fact these festivals had something to do with openings and connections between the actual world and the underworld (and the act of foundation could link the two). The ritual activities were probably aimed not only at celebrating the encounter but at controlling its subtended danger in a ritual way.

For Langdon 1935 the name ab-è means “the ancestors go out”

In my opinion the evidence is too scarce but the continuity in time would point to a confermation to these moments as moments of encounter between two world also for the frequent links to Gilgamesh and Dumuzi. What it is not sure at all is how it happened in the Mesopotamian imagery, one source is not enough...

[us4-he2-gal2]

Halloween 2008:

Happy Halloween Enenurians! Everyone knows I love this time of year and also the theme of the festival of the dead and the macabre in general so must make a Halloween post. I've got my pumpkin carved, candles lit and fake skull on desk - wonderful time to stumble on something fresh about ne.IZI.gar or the Mesopotamian festival of the dead!

(Im a creepy cowboy this year!)
(Acrtually, Im a creepy cowboy everyday.. o_0hehheh)
(Look - candles. I told ya)

On that note I am at this moment reading through some of D. Katz excellent material on the Netherworld which Madness has supplied for us on the pool the resources thread (in a very timely manner). So I will be taking notes this year before going out and dancing, possibly drinking, and before I eat all the Halloween candy before the kids start showing up. While I hope to find something that touches on the festival, this can't be guaranteed - but I certainly will note funerary stuff and stuff to do with the dead soul at the least!


Dina Katz is an ANE researcher based out of Leiden in the Netherlands I believe. Her often cited (at enenuru anyway) book "The Image of the Netherworld in Sumerian Sources", 2003, is an exhaustive and highly specialized look at the Netherworld - she furthers this examination with the two articles I am reviewing today:

a) Death they Dispensed to Mankind: The Funerary World of Ancient Mesopotamia, in Historiae 2, 2005
b) Sumerian Funerary Rituals in Context, in Performing Death: Social Analysis of Funerary Rituals in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean, 2007





Katz on IM and Gidim/



I have in other places briefly mentioned Katz' commentary on the Sumerian concept of the body and soul, back on the Living Soul in Sumer thread (which badly needs to be updated by now.) An interesting discussion occurs in her book from 2003 when she discusses IM and GIDIM, and on that thread I had summed this as follows:


Living Soul in Sumer

---

(Katz:) "In principal the idea is simple, the difference between life and death is the difference between a lively human being and his motionless corpse. Thus, the breath that stops after death makes the difference; it appears as the element that animates the body and endows it with the human faculties, speech, senses, and emotions- namely, with a soul. After death, during the performance of the funerary ritual the soul is released from the body to ensure the continuation of its existence as a spirit of the netherworld. Then the body is interred to perish"

So she is saying here that breath as the animating factor is in effect the soul. This is "simple" enough at face value, a challenge to address textually and mythologically I believe. In the next sentence Katz says:

"The soul that leaves the body during the ritual to become a dead spirit is designated im [meaning] "wind." This wind image indicates that the soul was actualized in the breath."

If this "indication" is accurate, it would imply that
A) the breath/soul was present in the body before death thus a living soul
B) This breath/soul is transformed or converted in some way to wind/im>Gidim during funerary rituals

---

These realizations led Katz to further suggest a consciousness of or inclination toward a concept of dualism among Sumerian thinkers: "The concept of dualism, that virtually humankind constitutes a unity of a living soul within a perishable body, mitigated the contradiction between perceptible reality and the belief in survival after death." So a human was at the same time man and living soul - a ghost (gidim) was not precisely that living soul. How did the soul change?





Transforming IM to GIDIM/

---

"Evil spirits moved freely in and out of the netherworld, not so with human beings. Their journey to the abode of the dead is the liminal phase during which the soul is transformed from 'wind' to 'ghost'.

Katz 2005 (a)

Katz special insight into these fascinating conceptual processes stem mainly from her study of materials pertaining to the funerary rites of the Sumerians. The scarcity of these textual sources and their challenges require long consideration and careful study, and Katz' 2007 article (b) is her best discussion yet on the subject. New here seems to be an examination of a small economic text -TIM 6 10 - which discusses what offerings are to be given on the occasion of the funeral of Tezanmama - a daughter of Shulgi.

TIM 6 10, see CDLI P134015

---

The text conveys the following specifications: "[1] fat sheep for when the "wind" (/im/) of Tezenmama was seized. The first day. 1 big goat for Ninsun, (and) 2 fat sheep when the wooden altar (ĝeš-a-naĝ) of the ghost (/gidim) of Tezenmama is performed. The eighth day." Katz notes on this: "Between the two rituals the /im/ became a /gidim/, a ghost. Therefore, we may conclude the /im/ designates a spirit still in the form of the breath, which is caught up in the body on the moment of death - the dead soul if you like. And /gidim/, however, is the breath after it was transformed into a ghost. How /im/ changes into /gidim/ we learn from the ritual of Egime who was instructed to pronounce the formula "his /im/ is released/."


Some idea of burial or funerary rites can also be found on the Scurlock's Death and Afterlife thread, where I quoted one of the two main Funerary texts that Katz has referenced in her 2003 work. The other text is the one she just now mentioned, the ritual of Egime, which Egime the sister works to release the IM of Lulil. Egime is a name which means "my sister", it is a generic name and Katz explains it may represent figuratively any sister or women in this cultic role - Lulil means literal "man-spirit" and is again generic, the name means the spirit of the man dying, the spirit which is at the same time undergoing the change this ritual ensures. The text is beautiful as is the ceremony which was conducted, one can imagine, with cultic precision but at the same time with the tenderness or fondness of a final rite:

Ritual of Egime (Lulil and his sister)

---

The brother answered his sister:
Release me my sister, release me
Egime release me, my sister release me
Sister, do not reproach me, I am not a man who can see,
Egime, do not reproach me, I am not a man who can see,
My mother, the exalted lady, do not reproach me, I am not a man who can see.

After you have called my "his spirit is released" fetch me the bed!
Set up a chair and seat the statue (on it)!
Place the garment on the chair and cover the statue (with it)!
Place the bread offering and wipe it!
Pour the water into the libation pipe, pour it in the dust of the netherworld!
Pour out the warm soup(?)...!

[/center]


In these funerary instructions we see therefore, that a spoken formula, his spirit is released, "liberated the ghost from the flesh", and transformed IM to GIDIM. After consideration of the implications of these texts, and due consideration of the use of figurines (note in the above, the "statue" mentioned represents the departed ghosts - the actions performed on it are transfered to the departed) - Katz comes to the following surmises:

- It is possibly or likely that first the deceased was buried, because the the statue would serve to represent the deceased, meaning the corpse was not present.
- Then, after burial the release was performed, changing IM to GIDIM. Thus the departing would find the gates to the Netherworld from the grave - and the living would not encounter the Gidim.
- "Presumably, the full funerary ritual was the magic power that could turn the grave from a mere pit in the ground to a gate the the world of the dead."

Looking back to the Festival of Ghosts

Funerary rites and the Festival of the Dead?/



Katz 2007 treated an additional text which is quite significant for its wealth of information- It is an economic text which records the sacrifices which are to be made on the occasion of the death of the Ur king Šu-Suen. The proceedings for this king`s funeral stretch across four days, and involve grand food offerings to Netherworld gods Ereshkigal, Ninazu and Ningishzida, as well as offerings to the "wooden altar of the spirit of the breath" - (the IM of the king as the author understands it.) This economic text adds substance to the literary works like the Death of Gilgamesh, and the Death of Ur-Nammu which list offerings to be to similar deities in anticipation of the departing of the spirit.

Certain of the offerings made in the ne.IZI.gar festivals were made to the deities as is attested by what evidence remains - economic texts having to do with the rites of the temple during these festivals. An exception, interestingly, is a record that preserves offerings made at the Ur ne.IZI.gar festival to Šu-Suen himself - similar in nature to his own funeral it would seem. Cohen states this exceptional ne.IZI.gar festival (in which the offerings on the economic texts are recorded as dedicated to a dead king and not to netherworld gods) may have been arranged by Ibbi-Suen who had just succeeded Šu-Suen. (As Sara has also mentioned above).
When we deal with other proposed aspects of the ne.IZI.gar festival such as the Cohen`s idea of offerings made by each family to returned ancestors, evidence in more indirect than any economic tablet to be found. We know which ghosts return on those nights, thanks to Cohen`s translation of those lines from the Death of Gilgamesh includes the lines:

"Let him set up a threshold there (as bright) as the moon
(for) all mankind, whatever their names be,
(for those whose statues were fashioned in the days of yore"


Those entering the threshold, the gateway, to the world of the living that night are those whose statues were made in the days of yore - ancestors who had been sent off with a funerary rite that included the use of a figurine (statue) as in the ritual of Egime. While on the official level the scale of sacrifices and the deities receiving may have been similar during the ne.IZI.gar offering, and during Royal funerals we know from literature, for the motivation of the exchange between between living and dead that took place on the family level we may find a better idea in the funerary rites and ancestral worship such as Katz explores or such as our new member Sara explores. It is at length the fulfillment of an annual cultic obligation that only starts with the grave, and only ends at the limits of familial loyalty.


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