Binding the Serpent’s Mouth:
Early Snake Charmers in Mesopotamia
A snake charmer [muš-laḫ5-e] had a snake. He pulled out the tooth ……
Sumerian Proverb of unknown provenance: ETCSL t.6.2.5
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1.0 Introduction:Of the many Sumerian professions designated with the determinative LÚ, few are so stubbornly obscure in modern literature as the Sum. muš-laḫ4, Akk. mušlahhu, the snake-charmer . While the function and methodology of the Mesopotamian snake-charmer have eluded description, comparative evidence is available from Ugarit and from the practices of modern snake-charmers in Iraq. As Michael Astour,\ who studied snake charming in Ugarit, describes it: “Professional snake charmers demonstrate their power by performing with tame serpents of a notoriously venomous species, preferably cobras, which they handle with complete immunity.”
1 In modern Iraq, it is sometimes a practice of the snake charmer to remove the fangs of a poisonous snake,
2 and a similar practice seems suggestible in Sumerian contexts by the proverb given above (ETCSL t.6.2.5). In an Ugaritic snake charm it is apparent that the practice of removing the venom gland of the serpent was a trade secret by that time (and probably earlier) in the ANE.
3Another feature of Ugaritic snake charming texts is the ritual “binding” of the snake, which Astour has suggested resembles the Babylonian word for binding, kaṣāru, having the connotation ‘bewitchment.’ This becomes understandable in the light of modern snake charming practice, wherein the snake is hypnotized by the rhythmic gestures and movements of the charmer.
4 With the comparative approach a dim picture begins to emerge, but only takes us so far.
In his recent overview of magic and ritual in Mesopotamia, Daniel Schwemer sees the role of the snake charmer in Mesopotamia as overlapping with that of the āšipu (exorcist) but there were obvious differences as the author observes: “the snake-charmer, the eššebû-‘owlman’ and the qadištu-woman, offered their services in the streets of cities and villages.”
5 However, the gudug priest, the āšipu of early Sumer, functioned as a purification priest at temples and was a member of the temple staff.
6 Another significant difference pointed out was that the snake charmer had no access to the written tradition, and so the profession is known mainly from the ‘distorted characterizations’ of the incantations of the professional exorcist. In fact, late period exorcists were so disdainful that they would offer insult to hostile sorceresses (witches) by likening them to snake charmers.
7 But is this a fair picture of an ancient Mesopotamian profession?
In the following short paper an attempt will be made to elucidate and qualify the position of the snake charmer in ancient Mesopotamia. First, indirect evidence from early exorcistic snake incantations and snake-god theology will be considered in order to make the argument that the official response to hostile snakes falls soundly within the methodology of the ancient snake charmer – and may have been influenced by it. Secondly, evidence from Early Dynastic Lagaš will be considered in order to demonstrate that not all snake charmers worked in the streets; some were paid practitioners of the royal or temple houses, and some even served the king directly.
2.0 Snakes and the magical response in Mesopotamia: why magic? In the late 1930s a doctor and professor of zoology working out of Iraq, Norman L Corkill,
8 had occasion to observe and document the native snake species current in Iraq at the time. Among the 9 species he focused on, 5 were basically non-poisonous: the Javelin Sand boa, Gray’s Whip snake, the European Whip snake, the common Water snake, and the Montpellier snake; however, 4 were highly venomous: the Hoodless cobra, the Levantine viper, the Carpet viper and the Horned viper.
9The Horned viper proves particularly interesting for Assyriological studies. It is the only snake from Iraq which can be identified both by its Mesopotamian terms: Sum. ušum/muš-sà-tùr, Akk. bašmu,
10 and by its modern scientific name: Cerastes cerastes (var. Cerastes cornutus) .
11 The reason this particular specimen is so identifiable is likely the same reason that the snake is so well attested in the mythical imagination – the Horned viper really has horns. (see fig.1).
Some of the earliest mentions of the snake in writing are the instances of venomous snakes occurring in the Early Dynastic literature from Fara and Ebla. In these earliest incantations snakes and scorpions, along with the Udug demon, represent the major agents of illness.
12 Unexpectedly these texts feature Enki as the cause of illnesses in several cases; in several other texts, Enki is associated with snakes and they mention the ‘snake of Enki’ (muš dEnki) and ‘the place of the black snake in the middle of the abzu’ (ki muš-gi6 SU-AB-šà
13 By the Ur III period chaos monsters of the serpent type such as the ušumgal or the fierce serpent (muš-huš) had become the target and concern of some incantations.
14So why the magical response to something so seemingly earthly and mundane as the snake? Irving Finkel suggests that the Mesopotamian physician, the asû, would have had no luck: “Prescriptions for bites and stings by and large did not enter the traditional corpus of therapeutic medical texts; obviously no effective treatment for snake-bite or scorpion sting will have been stumbled upon, and thus dealing with these problems was usually left to the more ‘magical’ stratum of curative practice.”
15 And while the corpora of the professional exorcist reflected a substantial body of snake incantations in the periods up until the Old Babylonian period, the paucity of such texts afterward may reflect an abandonment of relevant practices among this group as well.
162.1 Ningirim and early snake magic:The goddess Ningirim held a very important role in the Early Dynastic incantation texts.
17 She was an early goddess of incantations associated variously with Enlil or with Enki and the abzu. In these texts she assumed the role of junior god, approaching the senior god for wisdom and advice on behalf of the patient, a role later assumed by Asalluhi/Marduk in the Marduk/Ea type incantations.
18 The authorship of ED incantations was often attributed to Ningirim and the formulaic closing ‘the incantation of Ningirim,’ was a custom meant to imbue the text with her legitimation.
19 Krebernik’s very complicated analysis of the goddesses name, written in early texts d-Nin-A.HA.MUŠ.DU (A =water HA (or KU6) = fish MUŠ =snake DU = phonetic compliment) suggests that her name may have eluded to a water filled shrine in which snakes were worshipped,
20 although this remains somewhat speculative. And yet the deities concern with snakes seems definitive when an Early Dynastic incantation describes her as a gudu priest binding the snake: “The gudu-priestess Ningirim has bound the snake at the teeth for me (and) cut the scorpion at the tail for me.”
21 Similarly, an incantation from the same period states that the gudu priest of Ningirim, at the pure house of Ningirim, “bound the mouth (or the teeth) of the snake for me, has cut the tail of the scorpion for me.”
22 Further, an incantation from the Old Babylonian period, VS 17 1, has resulted in the suggestion of Ningirim’s connection to snake charming. Niek Veldhuis’ translation of VS 17 1 reads as follows:
23The white-eyed snake, the black-eyed snake, the red-eyed snake, the snake with multi-coloured eyes, the snake with yellow-green eyes, the snake with the evil eye, the snake with the good eye, the snake
[ ]
the snake with [ ] eyes
Asarluhi, the son [Enki saw it]
You are crying [ ]
The word spoken by Ningirim [ ]
Asarluhi, the inhabitant of Eridu [ ]
Open your mouths! [ ]
Krebernik, commenting in his RLA 9 entry for Ningirim, called this incantation ‘a Sumerian snake charm’ which dubs Ningirim ‘your (the snakes) mistress.’ This however indicates some interpretational differences with Veldhuis. Concerning the same text, van Dijk reconstructs the final line “(snakes) open (your) mouth (to speak)” a command which he suggests “might be the words of a snake charmer.”
24 In sum, the available textual evidence attests to the concern of the major goddess of early exorcistic incantations with snakes, and makes her relevance to the snake charmer suggestible - however, the texts themselves indicate their tie to the gudu priestly class rather then the muš-laḫ snake charmers and nothing makes the suggested connection explicit.
3.1 The Snake God Sub-group in Mesopotamian Theology:Given the theistically charged worldview of the ancient Mesopotamians, a people who saw both natural and cultural phenomena as proceeding from the gods, consideration of the divine is often worthwhile. In addition to the abzu, a second cosmological association is given to snakes in the Early Dynastic period: the netherworld, which, like the abzu, was located underground. On the ED Stele of Vultures a curse formula requests that Ninki (a name for Ereškigal) punish any transgressors by sending ‘a snake from the netherworld’
25 The netherworld associations of the snake gods is evident in the ways that the Mesopotamians themselves grouped these gods. For example, in the AN:anum god list, the snake gods are listed together with Ereškigal in a netherworld sub-group consisting of Ereškigal, Ninazu, Ningišhzida, Tišpak, Inšušinak and Ištaran.
26 To briefly sketch some of their mythological relations, Ninazu (in Enegi) is the son of Ereškigal and Ningišzida is the son of Ninazu. Both father and son had custody of the muš-huššu, the fierce dragon, as their heraldic animal.
27 In the Old Akkadan period, foreigners infiltrated one of Ninazu’s cult centers (Eshnunna) and Tišpak replaced Ninazu there; Tišpak assimilated some of Ninazu’s traits and took possession of the muš-huššu.
28An additional common trait for this sub-group of chthonic gods which is important is that most of them were also dying gods
29 Jacobsen understood the dying god aspect of Ningišzida and his son Damu as relating to the importance of the orchard at their respective cult centres, and the association with these deities to the vital power of the trees; the death of these gods then corresponds to the yearly waning of vegetation in the dry season.
30 It emerges from the fact that they were lamented together, and that they were paired in the Adapa myth, that both Dumuzi and Ningišzida were ‘deceased’ during the same period, mid-winter to mid-summer.
313.1 Ninazu, king of snakes: Perhaps the most significant snake god in the context of this study is Ninazu. His name means “lord healer” and as mentioned above, he was considered to be the son of Ereškigal at the cult center of Enegi in southern Mesopotamia;\
32 but in Eshnunna, and prior to Tishpak’s arrival, Ninazu had become a warrior god and he comes to be seen as the son of Enlil and Ninlil, likely in analogy to the god Ninurta.
33 Ninazu is known as the “king of snakes” in Ur III and Old Babylonian period incantations
34 and the Šhulgi hymns call him the ‘fearsome snake’ (muš huš) and relate that he was born on the kurmušša (possibly, ‘snake mountain’)
35 An Ur III incantation refers to Ninazu as follows, and contains some rituals steps taken by the specialist:
5. Snake, your king has sent me to you,
6. your king Ninazu
7. has sent me to you.
8. I have tied your nose with a cord!
9. I have tied your tongue with string.
10. Wild goat, I have tied you at the nose (and) tongue with taut cord.
11. Do not attack the one that struggles…
In 1985 J.J. van Dijk published a group of incantations currently stored at Yale in the volume YOS 11. A portion of these texts, dating to the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods, were connected with the site of Enegi by the author following two justifications: i) text No. 64 contains a registration of prebends in the temple of Ninazu on the reverse and ii) a large number of these texts deal with snake and scorpion incantations, subject matter that van Dijk felt relates them to Ninazu.
36 A particularly interesting text in this corpus is YOS 11 37, an Ur III incantation. Regrettably, the brief text has never been fully translated although the subscript explaining the function of the text received the author’s attention. It reads simply ‘concerning a scorpion to be carried in the hand (?)’. Here van Dijk comments: “the allusion, rather, is to magical practices involving scorpions as illustrated in the glyptic. .. these magical practices are not surprising in a civilization which held the occupation of the snake charmer (muš-laḫ4) in high esteem and connect it with the gods Ninazu at Enegi and Ningizzida at nearby Gišbanda.”
37 It has to be admitted however that the glyptic van Dijk alludes to, seal impressions from the Fara period (specifically Amiet 1961 nos. 941 & 945), are not entirely convincing as images of snake or scorpion charming.
3.2 Ninmada, the snake charmer: While Ninazu’s involvement in the ritual control of dangerous snakes seems to be attestable, he is never explicitly called a snake charmer - his brother Ninmada is however. Due to fairly sparse textual attestations, the nature and character of Ninmada remain woefully enigmatic although scholars are able to make rough sketches.
38 Ninmada is called the snake charmer of An (AN:Anum
I 346) or of Enlil (MSL 4 5:29).
39 On these grounds, and the fact that in one myth Ninmada helps his brother Ninazu bring grain to Sumer, Wiggermann associates the two with the netherworld sub-group discussed above.
40 The myth in question, sometimes referred to as “How Grain Came to Sumer,” refers to a primordial time when the gods had barley and flax but men still ate “grass with their mouths like sheep.”
41 In a plot twist, the gods Ninazu and Ninmada decide to bring barley and flax to humankind, a development that corresponds to Ninazu’s aspect as a chthonic dying god (and which may suggest a similar aspect for Ninmada). Both gods must proceed to kur, a cosmological location most often translated as “mountain”, but which Dina Katz rightly understands here as meaning instead “netherworld.”
42 It is only in proceeding from the Netherworld each growing season that a dying god can be understood as bringing fertility. Unfortunately, neither this myth nor any other text feature Ninmada in any acts of snake charming.
4.0 The muš-laḫ4 (snake-charmer) and the exorcist:The snake charmer is known in Mesopotamian contexts by the Sumerian designations muš-laḫ4/ muš-laḫ5 or more rarely, nigru, or by the Akkadian mušlahhu. While the late exorcistic tradition seemed disdainful of this profession, relating witches to them,
43 Mesopotamian society itself may have seen the profession quite differently. The later lexical tradition, specifically MSL 12 133, gives the following list of synonyms (abbreviated):
44[tīgi] = a-š[i-p]u “exorcist”
[l]ú-tu6=gál = KI.MIN (ditto) “exorcist” (lit. man having a spell)
….
nigru = muš-laḫ4 “snake-charmer”
muš-laḫ4 = KI.MIN (ditto) “snake-charmer”
The grouping of the list actually suggests that the āšipu and the muš-laḫ4 are synonymous. Mesopotamian lexical lists can present a logic of association that is difficult for modern commentators to follow. M.J. Geller, in addressing the apparent equivalency given to the snake charmer and exorcist
in MSL 12 133, states that “the job of the snake charmer would hardly describe the exorcist’s primary occupation or concern.”
45 Yet he also speculated that the entry just above muš-laḫ4, nigru (also with the standard translation ‘snake-charmer’), “probably alludes to the substantial corpus of Sumerian and Akkadian incantations for snakebite and dog-bite etc.” While critically we may note that their jobs were distinct, the overlap of their functions, at least up until the OB period, helps to explain why a Mesopotamian scribe would group them in the lexical tradition.
4.1 the muš-laḫ4 as entertainer and gìr-sè-ga personal:In his classic study of Mesopotamian entertainers, I.J. Gelb focuses on the contents of BM 14618, a Sumerian list of household personnel from the Ur III period.
46 The text is a listing of singers and entertainers in 7 main localities in the Lagaš region and, importantly, Gelb notes that the colophon labels them as gìr-sè-ga. Gìr-sè-ga is a collective term for personnel attached to temple or royal households. These were not priests or officials, but they did receive rations in the same way as carpenters, smiths, shepherds etc. did. As an example, one text dealing with rations allots portions of barley and wool to one baker, one cupbearer, one gatekeeper, one muš-laḫ4 and 15 nar musicians, all in the employee of the house of Šulgi in Guabba.
48 Gelb’s personnel list further divides the gìr-sè-ga personnel into two categories:62 gala and 180 nar. The gala are “cantors” while the nar are 168 “singers/musicians,” 7 UD.DA.KU “bear wards,” and 5 muš-laḫ4 “snake-charmers.”
49 Like modern snake charmers, and in addition to their magical functions, Gelb assigns the muš-laḫ4 the role of performer. He has two justifications: first, the muš laḫ4 is listed amongst the nar musicians and the bear wards (who utilized the tambourine) in BM 14618;
50 and on this point, it’s interesting that the ED LÚ profession list already lists the muš-laḫ4 directly below the nar functionaries
51 Secondly, he analyzes laḫ4 in muš laḫ4 as meaning “to drive” or “to steer” rather than “to drive away.”
52 Thus Gelb sees the name of the profession as referring to the entertainer rather than the magic practitioner.
Given the observations above which note the profession enjoyed a reasonable standing within Mesopotamian society, or at least Sumerian society, it may be less of a surprise to note the high level of royal endorsement apparently afforded to some snake charmers in ED Lagaš: on Ur-Nanshe’s Bas-relief C, it has been noted that “the second figure in the lower register is labeled ba lul/muš-lah5(DU.DU)gal ‘Balul, chief snake charmer.’
53 (fig. 1) And on Bas-relief A belonging to the same king, the first figure facing the king in the lower register is again, Balul.
54 (fig. 2)
5.0 Conclusion: Faced with a lack of direct documentation this paper has attempted to look for indirect attestations as to the snake charmer’s practice and his perception among Mesopotamian society. Consideration was given to gods associated with snakes (Enki and Ningirim in the early period) and to the snake gods (Ninazu and Ninmada). Far from being seen as hostile or evil for their association with a hostile force (snakes), these were gods of healing. In each case it can be inferred that it was the deities proximity to and control of snakes that was behind their efficacy in anti-snake incantations. The same dynamic is at work in the efficacy of the snake charmer as a real world profession.
From the earliest period the gudug priests and the āšipu followed first Ningirim and then Ninazu in counteracting the threat of the snake. Scholars have made tentative connections between these deities and the snake charmer’s craft, but nothing is definitive; however, it’s interesting to note that both deities are invoked in incantations dealing with binding the mouth of the snake, terminology known from the Ugaritic snake charms. It comes as little surprise that the two professions were given as synonyms in some of the profession lists. Is it possible (as van Dijk seemed tempted to say regarding a group of his texts in YOS 11) that the exorcist borrowed ritual methods and/or incantation terminology from the muš-laḫ4? Should this idea prove tenable, an extended study of snake incantations within the exorcistic corpus may prove to be our best window into the world of the Mesopotamian snake charmer.
Despite what modern analogies (such as the snake-charmer in India right now) may suggest, the snake charmer wasn’tmerely confined to street performances - the ration lists at Lagaš have demonstrated that this was a paid profession at royal and temple households. That the profession was once highly respected in Mesopotamia, one possibly worth emulating, is borne out by Ur-Nanshe’s reliefs, one of which depicts the lead snake charmer directly opposite the king himself.
fig. 1 : Urn. 22
fig. 2 : Urn. 20:
1.Astour 1968 pg. 18
2. Corkill 1939, pg. 48
3. Astour 1968. pg. 16
4. ibid. pg. 18
5. Schwemer 2011 pg. 423
6. Black 2004 pg. 112
7. ibid.
8.Corkill was as associate of Max Malloween and Agatha Christie, who sparked his interest in archaeolgoy– his large collection of seals and cuneiform tablets was posthumously donated to the RAMM museum in the UK.
www.rammuseum.org.uk/collections/overseas-archaeology/mesopotamian-archaeology 9. Corkill 1939 pg. 45/46
10. Wiggermann 1992 pg. 166 gives these equations
11. A. Green states in CANE 3 pg. 1844: " Ningishzida is represented with horned Bašmu snakes (the horned viper Cerastes cerastes) rising from his shoulders.” Further, Krebernik 1984 #36 makes reference to a muš-si-pi ‘snake with horns’ and identifies this with Cerastes cornutus (the same species as Green mentions.)
12. Cunningham 1997 pg, 36-38
13. ibid. pg. 37
14.ibid. pg. 89-91
15.Finkel 1999 pg. 213
16.ibid. pg. 213
17.Cunningham 1997 pg. 17
18.Krebernik RLA 9: Nin-girim 1
19.Cunningham 1997 pg. 16
20.Krebernik RLA 9: Nin-girim 1; Cunningham 1997 pg. 17 “The latter is possibly a cult-toponym consisting of water associated with fish and snakes and as such similar to the abzu and possibly related to the LAK 358 featured in the incantations' opening formula
21. Cunningham 1997 #10; Krebernik 1984 #3
22.Krebernik 1984 #3
23.This translation is published by Veldhuis in ‘Comments on IGI-HUL’. N. A. B. U. 43, 33-34. The text was originally published (but not translated) in VS 17 (1) ‘Nicht-kanonische Beschwörungen und sonstige literarische Texte’ (van Dijk 1971).
24.van Dijk 1985 pg. 30
25.Cunningham 1997 pg. 78
26.Wiggermann 1997 pg. 34. The author describes their shared ophidian traits on pg.47: They are theropmorphic snake gods (Ninazu/Tišpak, Ištaran), king of snakes (Ninazu) or master of one of the various dragons (Ninazu/Tišpak, Ningišzida, Ištaran, Inšušinak).
27.Wiggermann 1989 pg. 125
28.ibid. The muš huššu continues to be associated with Ninazu at Enegi however and with his son Ningishzida.
29.Wiggermann states that the case for dying god status can be made in for each god in this subgroup excepting Ereškigal and Inšušinak. Wiggermann 1997 pg. 47
30.Jacobsen 1970 pg. 23
31.Wiggermann 1997 pg. 41
31.D. Katz 2003 pg. 433 explains that the character of Ninazu in Enegi is captured in the OB lamentations Edina-isagake where he appears as the young dying god of Enegi. She adds that his dying god status is reinforced by Ereškigal as a mourning mother in Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld lines 200-205.
33.Wiggermann 1997 pg. 35
34.ibid.
35.Cunningham 1997 pg. 98
36.van Dijk 1985 pg. 2/3
37. ibid. pg. 7/8
38.It should be mentioned that scholars are aware of a female Ninmada with some (but not all) of the same associations of the male Ninmada; it’s unclear whether they represent the same deity or no. I follow Wiggermann who treats them as distinct and discusses the male Ninmada in the context of the Ninazu group. see RLA 9: Ninmada
39.Wiggermann 1989 pg. 122
40.Wiggermann 1992 pg. 42. However,
41.http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.7.6
42.Katz 2006 pg. 116
43.As mentioned above. Schwemer 2011 pg. 433 makes this point referring to texts relating to the Maqlu ritual. Maqlu III 40 45 ‘The witch, the murderess, “the one above”,…/the female snake-charmer,…/the qadištu, naditu, the one dedicated to Ištar, the zermašitu…’ ‘Who kills men and does not spare women’
44. Translation from Geller 2010 pg. 45
45. Geller 2010 pg. 46
46. Gelb, ‘Homo Ludens in Ancient Mesopotamia’ Studia Orientalia 46, 1975 pp. 43-74
47.Gelb 1975 pg. 55
48.ibid. pg 53. Referring to CT VII 13
49.ibid. 57
50.Gelb 1975 pg. 60
51.http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/dcclt/xis/sux/r01efe lines 27/28
52.ibid. Although the ePSD seems to give laḫ4 the meaning “to bring” ? - this does not argue against Gelb here however.
53.J. S Cooper 1980 pg. 94, referring to Ur-Nanshe’s Bas-relief C (Sollberger, Corpus Urn. 22; Bose, UAVA 6, T7)
54. ibid. referring to Ur-Nanshe’s Bas-relief A (Urn. 20;UAVA 6, T4).
