The Faceless Udug Demon

[us4-he2-gal2]

Hey all: I've decided to post below the enenuru annual address (i.e. my mass e-mail to the group) from 2015. This address contained some interesting observations concerning the udug demon from one of Geller's recent articles, and a few observations I added.

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Hey e n e n u r u :



Unlike the administrators of so many fleeting and unfortunate online ANE groups, I am pleased to wish our little community a happy 8th birthday. March 30th 2007 enenuru came into being and has remained, for me, a home and a gathering place of knowledge and of people who esteem that knowledge. Welcome to all new members, seeker666utu, mesopotamiankaraite, goat, nocodeyv, admitteddilettante, and others.

Today I wanted to write a little about an article I have recently acquired, written by M. Geller and entitled The Faceless Udug-Demon. This article was based on a paper that Geller read in 2011 at a conference on Mesopotamian Demonology held at the “Sapienza” University of Rome. The proceedings were published in SMSR 77, which I have (with great difficulty) finally laid hands on.

As the man who edited both the early and the late incantation series which focused on counteracting, among others, the udug demon (see Forerunners to Udug-hul and Evil Demons: Canonical Utūkku Lemnūtu Incantations), Geller seems to be the one to discuss the subject. The udug demon (Akkadian: utūkku ) is attested in Mesopotamian incantation literature from the earliest incantations (2600 BC) through to the late period, and the name of this demon became a generic designation of demons of general. However it is this same generic, ubiquitous quality that has made the character of the udug demon very difficult to describe for Assyriologists (the demon seems indeed “faceless” as the name of the article implies). Geller states: “It is not clear from our sources whether the udug-demon had its own personality or was simply a generic embodiment of the idea of “demon”. Our task is to find a solution to this conundrum.”
The conference in Italy and the ensuing publication and its articles were not intended to solve the many problems relating to Mesopotamian demonology, however, but to give a ‘state-of-the-field’ overview. It follows that Geller does not actually provide a solution to the enigma of the udug demon in this article. Despite this fact, several important observations which follow from the author’s long study of the subject are stated anew:

p. 335: ”… the concept of “demon” was itself neutral and had to be specified; a demon could either harm or protect, depending upon its orientation.” In support of this, Geller refers to 2 passages in the udug-hul series in which the line gišma-nu giš-ḫul-dúb-ba udug an-na-ke4 “the erû-wood scepter, ‘protector’ of Anu” occurs. Here, the word udug is translated as ‘protector’ as the context of a cult object would demand.

p. 336: In many cases, the Sumerian word udug is translated into Akkadian by the direct loanword utukku, however, at other points, the Akkadian scribes choose to translate udug using another Akkadian word: rābiṣu. Geller has long recognized that this rābiṣu was a sort of ‘bailiff demon’ who was envisioned as ‘an official court advocate of a lower rank.’ The Mesopotamian association between demons and court officials is curious at first, but when one thinks of the way that the demons stalk Dumuzi through the country side seeking to bind him and bring him back to the netherworld, perhaps no metaphor is more appropriate than that of the court official, the bailiff. Geller prefers to see the association as one between demons and corrupt officials, in particular, stating: “This explains how the udug’s demonic position and authority is perceived as being either an obstructive or helpful supernatural bureaucrat.”

- Of additional interest, and something I think has been under studied, is the relation between between gidim and udug. One might think ‘Is there a relation between the two?’ This relation is first implied by the signs used to write udug and gidim in the earliest texts: apparently, in 3rd millennium texts, the signs used to write these two terms are indistinguishable, are one and the same.
The sign in question occurs in BFE 24, an Early Dynastic incantation from Ebla treated by Prof. Krebernik in 1984. To view this on CDLI the number is P242007 line #2. While the assumption could be made that we have here the earliest instance of the udug (see for example, Cunningham 1996 p. 38) others have pointed to the ambiguity of the situation: given that the same sign signified both udug and gidim in the period, might we have an ‘evil-ghost’ instead of an ‘evil-demon’ ? (see Steinert 2012 p. 304 n.34)

www.enenuru.net/storage/EarlyUdug.png

Pictured above is the occurrence of udug in BFE 24. One can observe that following the udug sign is the signs which form hul, the adjective translated as ‘evil.’ I was able to ask Prof. Krebernik about his grounds for translating udug here and not gidim, and it was for contextual reasons mainly, that is, since udug-hul occurs more often in later texts than gidim-hul, it seems the more logical interpretation.



I have recently been fortunate to able to attend an international conference on the subject of Mesopotamian incantation lore, and will make some posts on the board about some information discussed there. For anyone curious about how these conferences and talks go, there are a number of interest audio clips available at the BabMED website (including a talk by Geller and one by F.A.M Wiggermann):

www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/babmed/Listen-and-watch/index.html







Must run for now - best regards,

Bill