In the lines repeated by the exorcizer above noted we notice as significant the appeal to farduk. The invocation of the greater deities was the leading characteristic of these counter- spells. Demons were related to the gods as in- feriors to superiors. Doubtless, in some cases, the dividing line was slight, but that the mastery belonged to the Great Gods is clear. Those in- voked were chiefly Samas, who, as the rising sun, was supposed to scare away the Bapniane spectres of the night; Sin, the guardian and illuminator of the darkness; Istar and her consort Tammuz. But the most important place in these incanta- tions was held by the magical triad Ea, Marduk, and Gibil (as well as Nusku). Here the two points to be noticed are, (1) the appeal to the gods of light, Marduk, Samaé, and Sin, as opposed to darkness, and the works of sorcery carried on in darkness (cf. Ps 91° #5), (2) Water and fire, as the two purifying elements, are summoned to the magician’s aid through the gods whom he invokes. Observe that it is in fire the images of the witches were burned, while the cleansing and healing properties of water were recognized even in those primitive times. Ea was the Babylonian rod of water as well as of wisdom, the city of Eridu being the ancient seat of his cult. He is the lord of all secrets, whose name was awful,
that the demons were always endowed with some animal or buman shape. Frequently they are embodied in serpents,
scorpions, or other monsters. Comp. WAZ Iv. pl. δ, and Perrot and Chipiez, Hist. of Art in Chaldwa and Aasyria, i. pp. 61, 62, p. SL.
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MAGIC, MAGICIAN 209 ineffable, and disguised in ciphers. His wonder- working name was inscribed on the sacred brazen vessels. But he stood on too lofty an eminence to be practically useful. In his place Marduk,* god of the sun as he rises from the ocean and brings with him the water of purification, is usually invoked by the exorcizing priest. On the other hand, Gibil and Nusku were invoked as re- presenting the sacred element of fire. The follow- ing incantation—
*Nusku, great God, counsellor of the Great Gods, Guarding the sacrificial gifts of all the heavenly spirits, Founder of cities, renewer of sanctuaries, . . .
I prostrate myself before thee ; Burn the sorcerer and the sorceress ; May the life of my sorcerer and sorceress be destroyed ’—
was recited in a whisper before the wax image of the sorcerer or witch. A noticeable feature of these invocations of the fire-deity is the lofty language in which they are expressed. We con- clude with the following (Tallq. Τα, i. 130 f.)—
‘The witch who has charmed me, Through the charm with which she has charmed me, charm her ; Those who have made images of me, reproducing my features, Who have taken away my breath, torn my. hairs, Who have rent my clothes, have hindered my feet from treading the dust, May the fire-god, the strong one, break their charm.’
We have no space to refer to many other interest- ing features of this great subject of Babylonian magic, more especially to the ethical ideas that occasionally appear in the Surpu texts. These must be studied in the attractive pages of Morris Jastrow’s work from which quotation has been made. The importance of Babylonia in its rela- tion to Greek and Roman culture must not be forgotten, and in the realm of astrology and magic this especially holds true. In the early days of the Roman empire the mathematici or ‘ astro- logers’ were also called Chaldqi (cf. Gell, i. 9). Far more potent was the influence of Babylonia upon Israel. The influence of Egypt over the ancient Hebrews is by no means so definite.t Certainly no inference confirmatory of such influence can be drawn from the post-exilian passage, Ex 7! (P). The Piel partic. of »w>2, there used to characterize the magicians and their practices, is connected by
Semitic philologists with the Arabic root WS ‘cut off’ (used of an eclipse). The Ethpa. of the same root, employed in Syriac in the sense of
ead ς a ‘pray’ (cf. lasar ‘prayer’), is combined in Gesen. Heb. Lex. with 1 K 1838, where reference is made to the self-mutilation of the devotees of Baal. But this isa highly precarious speculation, and we are on a safer path if we go to the ancient Semitic Babylonian for light. KaSdpu in Assyrian means ‘to bewitch,’ and kijpu means sorcery.
* We cannot fall to note the corresponding réle in com 0 with Ea played by Marduk in the cosmogonic legen See OCosmoaory.
t The influence exercised by Egypt was far more definite and powerful from the 8rd cent. B.o, onwards, when Alexandria be- came a centre where Greek and Oriental culture met. We see this in the later Jewish literature, from which Blau gives copi- ous citations (Das alt-Jiidische Zauberwesen, p. 38{.). Thus in Kiddushin 49) we read that out of the ten measures (1.3) of sorcery which descended into the world, Egypt claimed for itself as many as nine. In Menachoth 85a we find an interest- ing reference to Jannes and Mambres (Johana and Mamra), the heads of the Egyptian magicians (cf. 2 Ti 85), Blau thinks that the Egyptian potion "9sD7 ΟἽ, to which Pesach. til. 1 refers, was a magical healing draught. Among the Greeks and Romans Egypt was regarded as the classical land of magic and medicine. Yet this is more true of the later than of the earlier Greek history, and it is obvious that the Jewish Midrash read the con- ceptions of its own time into OT passages. Thus in 1 K 45° the ‘wisdom of the sons of the east,’ which Solomon's wisdom ex- ceeded, is interpreted to mean the wisdom of the Kyyptians