‘May she die! Let me live!’
Cleansing potions concocted of various herbs are drunk by the victim, who hopes in this way to become ‘as pure as water,’ ‘resplendent as fire.’ As a specimen of a genuine incantation formula the following may serve— *Karth, earth, earth ! Gilgamesh* is the master of your witchcraft ; What ye have done, I know; What I do, you know not ; All the mischief wrought by my sorcerers is destroyed, dissolved—is gone.’ What is here expressed as a fact is intended as a hope to be realized after the accomplishment of the incantation rites. A variety of symbolical rites are then prescribed, such as depositing the image of the witch in a boat placed on the waters, and surrounded by an enclosure so as to prevent her escape; while, in connexion with the burning of the images, hymns, at times most impressive in diction, are addressed to the fire-god Nusku or Girru. The purpose of thus furnishing a variety of rites is to afford a chance to the exorcizer to select the one appropriate to the case with which he is asked to deal. No fewer than ten different kinds of material are prescribed for the making of the images—wax, earth, bronze, honey, clay, pitch, sesame flour, pitch with clay, and two varieties of wood.+ For each material a special incantation is prescribed, though the formulas do not differ very materially from one another. The thought, both in the mind of the exorcizer in re eage and of the victim in carrying out the urning rite, is clearly brought out in the words uttered as the images are consumed— ‘On this day, arise } to my judgment ; Suppress the mischief, overpower the evil. As these images tremble, dissolve, and melt away, So may the sorcerer and sorceress tremble, dissolve, and melt away.’ Just as the images of the sorcerer and the sorceress were made to be burnt in certain prescribed cases, so, in others, images of the demons were destroyed in a similar manner. An incantation in connexion with such a rite furnishes the names of the chief classes of demons— , ‘Lraise the torch, their images I burn— Of the utukku, the shedu, the rabisu, the ekimmu, The labartu, the labasu, the akhkhazu. Of the Zilu, lilitu, and ardat lili, And of every evil that seizes hold of men. Tremble, melt away and disappear ! May your smoke rise to heaven ! May Shamash destroy your limbs! May the son of Ea,§ the chief exorcizer, restrain your strength !’
Of these demons the two first appear to have been of a general character, both terms convey- ing the idea of strength. Rabisu, signifying ‘the one who lies in wait,’ is a demon who springs upon his victim unawares ; ekimnuu, also used to describe the ‘ghost’ of a man, represents the class of demons that infest the graves. Labartu is the demon who is particularly dangerous to women and children; of Jabasu, ‘the one who throws down,’ and akhkhazu, ‘the seizer,’ we only know that they have the power of securing their victims under their control; while /idw (‘night’), lilitu (feminine form of Jidw), and ardat lili (‘maid of night’) are mischievous spirits who ply their trade at night under cover of darkness.
* The semi-mythical hero whose deeds are celebrated in the Gilgamesh epic, upon which we shall touch later on.
+ One of them cedar; the other, called binu, has not been identified.
+ The address is ‘ to the fire-god.’
§ i.e. Marduk.
In regard to all these names, the remark applies that they represent general classes of demons rather than individual spirits, and that (excluding shedu) the first six named, moreover, are some- times used to designate demons in general. Simi- larly, two other designations that frequently occur in the incantation texts—alu, signifying probably ‘the strong one,’ and gallu, ‘the great one’—are used, though not always, in a very general way. This indicates that, if at one time a differentia- tion was attempted, that period was succeeded by one in which the various designations for demons represented, in the case of those most frequently used, merely the different forms of activity repre- sented by the demons, and in the case of others the time and the various ways in which they attack and secure control of their victims.
Somewhat different is the use of the term shedu, which is applied both to a hostile demon and to the protecting spirit who stands by man’s side and helps him in his endeavour to thwart the attack of the demons, or to rid himself of them. The latter use is the more usual, and in this sense the term is generally associated with damassu, which likewise represents a protecting power. The two, shedu and lamassu, were symbolized by fan- tastic creatures—one with the features of a lion, the other with those of a bull—placed as guardians at the entrances of palace gates and doors. This symbolization, however, which is an outcome prob- ably of the idea of strength connected with the demons, and recalled by the lion and the bull, appears to have belonged to a comparatively late period, for in the days of Hammurabi* we still find lamassu used to designate the chief protect- ing deity of a place. It is only, therefore, as the differentiation between god and spirit becomes sharply defined, that Jamassu—represented ideo- graphically by two signs with the force of ‘ strong god ’—is confined in its application to a protect- ing and favourably inclined spirit or demon, while the double sense in which shedu, also embodying the idea of ‘strength,’ is used, testifies to the currency of the earlier conception whereby the demons were viewed as either favourable or un- favourable.