An Introduction to the Study of Mesopotamian Magic
Mar 26, 2012 13:00:29 GMT -5
Post by us4-he2-gal2 on Mar 26, 2012 13:00:29 GMT -5
- An Introduction to the Study -
I wrote the following introduction for another board somewhere on the net, but decided it would potentially be useful for newcomers here; I know I've mentioned it before, I hope someone will tell me if it's already posted somewhere on enenuru?
About Mesopotamian Magic: A good strategy toward understanding magic in this culture, in my opinion, is to first look at the earliest incantations and these belong to the Sumerians. While cuneiform writing begin somewhere around 3200 BC, the earliest literature that was complex enough to include stories and incantations comes from the Early Dynastic period (2900-2400 BC) a time when the Sumerians were the dominate culture of all of Mesopotamia. Following the final fall of the Sumerian people in the Old Babylonian period, 1900 BC, the Semites who had always shared the land (particularly the land in the northern part of Mesopotamia) rose up; these were the Babylonians and Assyrians (two groups whose language descends from the earlier Akkadians of the same land). While the Sumerians were at an end by this time, their culture is everywhere evident in the myths, religion and magic of their Semite successors, who recognized the cultural sophistication of the Sumerians and merged it carefully with their own. Therefore the magical principals of the Sumerians are fundamental for all Mesopotamian magic.
The types of magic that you will ever find in Mesopotamia: It is probably helpful to set some sort of realistic expectation on what one hopes to find in the corpus of magical texts from this region. First of all, we are limited in we can hope to learn not by the range of magical practices the Mesopotamians had, they probably did more with magic more than we now can tell, but by the texts that will ever be available. The problem is that the vast majority of Mesopotamians were illiterate - only a very small number were given the privilege of a scribal training, usually this was an inherited privilege. The literate scribes worked their craft for money and the majority of scribes were in the employ of the temple or the palace. What this means is, only those magic users who practice was officially sanctioned ever had their incantations and rituals written down, and these practitioners worked what can loosely be called 'white magic'. While we think that there *may* have been what can loosely be called 'black magic' and/or 'witchcraft' in Mesopotamia (and we think that because the works of 'white magic' occasionally contain spells against these practices) , we will *never* know what it was, who practiced it or how etc. , because this magic was never written down. All texts so far recovered and translated relate to the practice of the officially sanctioned mašmaš / āšipu functionary, a role given the loose translation of "exorcist" as the bulk of material is exorcistic.
Sumerian incantations spanning some 700 years:
Early Dynastic incantations from about 2600 BC - Writing did not become sufficiently sophisticated for recording incantations until approx. 2600 when the first Sumerian incantations began to be recorded in cuneiform on clay tablets. These incantations are generally considered to be the oldest written incantations in the world. There are about 31 Sumerian incantations found from this era, however, there are several unfortunate aspects to this corpus - first, the writing although decipherable to scholars, is very difficult to read and the early incantations are usually very brief and confusing. Secondly, a serious translation of all 31 texts has so far only been undertaken by a German scholar, Manfeld Krebernik. His book is on amazon:
Amazon link
Fortunately, an example of one Early Dynastic Incantation which was translated into English is available here:
cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlb/2006/cdlb2006_002.html
Akkadian Incantations in 2400 BC: Technically, these incantations are not Sumerian but are attributed to the Akkadians, a Semitic people who subdued Sumerian cities around 2400 and dominated for a brief time. Perhaps due to the brevity of their incursion, or that we have never found their capital city of Agade / Akkad, only four incantations from this period has so far been recovered. They demonstrate an intimate connection with the magical principals of Sumerian incantations.
Ur III incantations in 2150 BC: The revival of Sumerian culture in 2150 produced a "flowering" of Sumerian literature and here we have incantations taking on more coherence (relatively speaking) and more of the form they would assume in Mesopotamia for the next 2000 years. We have some 55 incantations from this period, translated more surely then earlier incantations and often English translations are available. The following volume by M. J. Geller contains 23 of those texts in English translation:
Eisenbrauns link
Old Babylonian incantations from about 1900: These texts dating from the first Dynastic of the Babylonians, the successors of Sumerian culture, are still treated as Sumerian incantations for the reason that the Babylonian scribes were copying Sumerian incantations word for word - again this has to do with the absorbtion by the Semites of much of the older culture of the land, which they respected. They even learned Sumerian, copied the texts in the original language, and Sumerian became the language of religious and magical texts for centuries after (much as Latin continued as the sacred language in Europe). There are over 300 Old Babylonian incantations translated however they are found in diverse journals and volumes making consideration of the corpus difficult.. but not impossible. A good place to start would again be with M. J. Geller, who translated a large collection of exorcistic incantations of a certain type in this volume:
https://www.eisenbra.../_38W104CI6.HTM (damn. it would seem to be out of print at the moment, but there are other ways.)
The Dynamic and Focus of Sumerian Magic: Gods - Excepting the Early Dynastic period, the major gods of magic are the Sumerian gods Enki and Asalluhi - there are goddesses of some occasional importance in the incantations particularly Ningirim in early texts and Gula somewhat later, but these Enki and Asalluhi are pivotal. Enki is the god of wisdom, water, crafts and magic, and Asalluhi, his son, often acts as the young exorcist who goes to his father for advice. A common type of incantation consists of formulaic sequence whereby Asalluhi is told the problem of the (human) exorcist's patient - the patient is sick and suffering from the malicious presence of a demon. Asalluhi takes the problem before his father, Enki - Enki insists that he couldn't possible know more than Asalluhi, but proceeds to give the Asalluhi ritual instructions to remove the demon anyway - the incantation will finish with adjurations to the demon, exorcistic commands that he be gone. We can only imagine that the real human exorcist has enacted the ritual instructions Enki gave (ostensibly) to his son Asalluhi while this later part of the text is voiced. Later, when the Babylonians took over Mesopotamia, they maintained this type of incantation text using the name EA for Enki and merging the identity of Asalluhi with their own city god: Marduk.
For more on this incantation type and an example text, see:
enenuru.net/html/cuneiform_magic/anatomie_incant_uriii.htm
Demons: As explained above, the vast majority of Incantation material recovered so far is exorcistic - there are exceptions, as occasionally love incantations (incantations to make someone love someone) have turned up, there is a series of texts dedicated to potency issues (often attacking a demon or agent of illness thought to be responcible for sexual dysfunction) and besides this there is an entirely separate functionary from the exorcist who was closer to an ancient physician who also used incantations at times.. But the important corpus is exorcistic and therefore demons are a prime concern.
The word 'demon' is a crude term for the Mesopotamian concept in question, Mesopotamian religion was hardly a good fit for the dualistic notions of good and evil we carry around today; some scholars use the terms 'agents of illness' instead. Demons were understood to be hostile forces and were the ancient explanation for illness, disease and other sorts of invisible misfortune in general. Although they were the objects of primal fears they are sometimes depicted doing the will of the gods - executors of the gods displeasure as it were. It was only through divine intervention that the magic had power to reverse this condemnation, through the support of Enki in particular who also has the traditional role of human benefactor. Demon types were very limited in the Early Dynastic incantation - only snakes, scorpians and the Udug demon were mentioned in these texts. By the Ur III period, the number of enemies had grown somewhat to include the Herald demon, alû-demon, the galla demon and a few others; but it was really in the Old Babylonian period that agents of illness increased in number greatly, to include demons such as the lil2 demon (a forerunner of the demon known as Lilith in Hebrew lore), Lamashtu, different sorts of "Chaos Monsters", and some texts begin to target hostile sorcerers for the first time in this period - again we don't have the writings of any black magic users from Mesopotamia - if they were real and not imagined that is.
Mediation as method in Mesopotamia: The exorcist relied again and again on the gods for the power to dispell these demons who afflicted his patient (the exorcists, whose incantation texts we now have, were paid specialists associated with the temple, their most common task was to make the sick recover). It is an established tenet of Mesopotamian religion that temples and ziggurats were thought to mediate between divine and mortal realms; that is, they formed a bond between heaven and earth. The temple formed a sort of sacred space, connecting man with his gods and focusing their beneficial attention - in the same way then, the exorcist attempted to do just that, ritually creating a mediation point with his incantation and ritual. Many of the exorcistic texts contain praise and reference to what are called 'divine purifiers'; these were ritual items used in the exorcism and were thought to connect heaven and earth in various ways. An obvious example is the reed, a divine purifier, which naturally sank on the one hand down toward the netherworld and on the other reached up to heaven. Some texts indicated that the reed was thought to be able to carry messages to Enki, god of sweet waters (certainly the reed would have been seen to physically have its roots in the water table below the surface soil). Exorcists were experts in ritually mediating between heaven and earth then, using items they thought (for various reasons) had that innate power themselves; the goal was to procure the assistance of the divine, the main way to save their patient. Modern scholars have now begun to debate the difference between magic and religion in Mesopotamia, as the distinctions of early anthropologists (like Frazer) seem to have less and less meaning the more we learn from the texts.
Among other indications, the ritual instructions given by Enki sometimes suggest those age old principals of magic have roots in Mesopotamia: sympathetic relations such as when the exorcist states that he breaks the demons influence like a pot, and follows that up by ritually breaking a pot; threats such as "So long as you do not [withdraw or remove yourself] from the body of the man [son of his god], you must neither dine nor drink with him. I [have adjured you] by heaven and earth together, so that [you] will depart" and other conventions such as magic circles and so forth.
