Mesopotamian magic: ancient tablets reveal a world of witches, sorcerers and exorcists
Top Image: Sorcerer in hood standing in front of an ancient destructed Babylon tower with flood, fire & hurricane illustration.
Ancient Mesopotamia was a vast region in Western Asia which has become known as the ‘cradle of civilization’ due to the huge number of feats the culture achieved. Agriculture, animal herding, and domestication had developed there by 8000 years ago. By 3000 BC they had created the world’s oldest known cities and invented the wheel. And along with their advanced solutions to the practical needs of a society, ran sophisticated traditions of occult rituals and witchcraft, which is clearly documented in the Maqlú tablets.
What is the Maqlú?
A deep insight into the Mesopotamian civilization has been gained from the hundreds of thousands of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, one of the earliest forms of writing, that they left.
Maqlú, which means ‘burning’, is a work composed around 700 BC spanning nine tablets. It details a ceremony which was supposed to thwart and drive away evil magic, protect the intended target from the bad magic, and weaken the person who was responsible for casting the malevolent spell or curse. The first eight tablets feature almost 100 incantations, and the ninth gives directions for the ritual. It is a work intended to aide an exorcist and his patient.
The Maqlú tablets give detailed instructions to burn a figurine representing the witch in order to dispel the effects of their magic, and this ritual is what gives the inscription its name.
For a text like Maqlú to have been created, there has to have been some need in Mesopotamian society for a guide like this. What can Maqlú tell us about witchcraft in Ancient Mesopotamia?
The Practice of Mesopotamian Witchcraft
One of the main aspects of witchcraft that Maqlú highlights is the anonymity of the witch. It is interesting to note the ceremony is not fixated on discovering who has been practicing witchcraft and wronged the patient, it chooses instead to replace the witch with a nameless effigy and trusts that the Gods will know who the intended target is.
We can also learn a lot from the fact that to counteract evil magic, a magical ceremony was undertaken by an exorcist. Maqlú, along with several other Mesopotamian texts, paint a picture of a society where magic was practiced both legitimately and openly, and illegitimately and maliciously.
It is implied that evil magic worked as the practitioners tricked the Gods into believing they were assisting a genuine need. The ritual in Maqlú was supposed to work by revealing the deception to the Gods so they would reverse what they had done to help the evil doer. But we can also build up a picture of a society in which ‘good’ magic was an everyday part of life for many people.
Mesopotamian Omens
Akkadian was the language of Ancient Mesopotamia, and although cuneiform was used over several millennia by a number of different ancient cultures, it is estimated that 30% of the surviving Akkadian cuneiform inscriptions are about witchcraft and the supernatural. A lot of these are not witchcraft in the way we may think of it today in the form of magic spells and rituals, but things surrounding the unknown.
Although Mesopotamia was remarkably advanced in many respects, things such as celestial bodies and unpredictable natural phenomena were not fully understood. These things were often looked to as a way of trying to predict and avoid negative events and a lot of the surviving inscriptions are very detailed attempts to list omens and help evade disaster.
One notable mystical text was the Enuma Anu Enlil, which is details around 7000 celestial omens relating specifically to the king and state. The king was sent regular updates and reports from the predictions by his personal scholars, who were tasked with deciphering the premonitions.
Another set of omens is the Šumma ālu ina mēlê šakin, which consists of 120 clay tablets and over ten thousand ill omens linked to there being too many of one kind of person at any given time. Perhaps today these particular omens would be seen as common sense more than esoteric.
One of the more unusual set of omens is the Šumma izbu. These are omens which are connected to deformed human births and bizarre animal births such as conjoined animals. They were not always negative and they were often linked to the side of the body the deformity related to – a deformity on the right hand side was bad, but on the left it may have been seen as lucky.
Evidence of Magic in Day to Day Life
There is one tablet which provides evidence of everyday witchcraft, listing types of stones and their magical associations so the user would know what kind of stone to carry to attract or dispel particular Gods and Goddesses.
Further evidence of the everyday belief in and practice of witchcraft is visible in a plethora of surviving artifacts. Clay figurines representing gods, animals, and mystical creatures have been found at homes across Mesopotamia and they were often kept hidden in areas of the house that could have been seen as prone to access by spirits and demons.
And just as a representation of an evil witch could be used to repel their magic in an exorcism, there is evidence that pregnant women wore pendants with representations of the demoness Lamashtu, who was known to attack pregnant women and infants, in an attempt to ward off her spirit and provide a wearable form of protection against her.
The Mesopotamian Hell Plaque
One specific exorcism rite is detailed on a bronze figure of the demon Pazuzu, whose outstretched arms are holding a tablet depicting symbols similar to those on the boundary stones, a type of stone document used that records the end of one land and the beginning of another. It is a small amulet, only about 5 and a half inches (14 cm) high, by 3 and a half inches (9 cm) wide. It is referred to as the Hell Plaque
On the top first row are divine symbols like those typically found on boundary stones, including the symbol of Utu (a solar disc). Utu (later known as Shamash) was the ancient Mesopotamian sun god. He represented truth, justice, and morality. According to Sumerian mythology, Utu was the twin brother of the goddess Inanna, the Queen of Heaven. He would spend his days travelling through the sky in a sun chariot, keeping a watchful eye on all the humans below. It was believed that he was very powerful and would intervene between demons and humans to help those in distress and enforce divine retribution.
The second row shows seven gallu, (the earliest root of the word ghoul), demons that carried victims off to the Mesopotamian underworld, having the heads of animals. These animal-human hybrid beings are a common element among human depictions of demons. It is a theme that arises from the pressures of adapting from a primitive or wild existence to one that is more civilized. This theme is found throughout ancient art and proto-literature, hinting to a dualistic concept of “good versus evil,” or the struggle between wild man and civilized man.
The Exorcism Rite of the Hell Plaque
The third row of the Hell Plaque shows the actual exorcism rite. In the middle, there is a possessed person lying on a bed. At the head and foot of the bed are priests, which are identified by their fish-like robes, indicating that they are priests of the water god, Ea. There is a demon behind the right priest who is holding two other demons at bay. The other priest is holding a lamp, which symbolizes the god of fire, Nusku.
The last row shows objects such as a bowl, water bladder, two jars, and various foods. These are offerings for the demons. In the very center of this last row is a large depiction of Lamashtu, who is holding a snake each hand. She is breastfeeding two pigs and kneeling on a donkey, which is her symbol. The donkey is resting on a ship, sailing on water where there are fish swimming from left to right.
To Lamashtu’s left is her threatening husband, Pazuzu, who is trying to attack her with a whip. Pazuzu was summoned by the priests to defend the patient from her. The demon Pazuzu was often invoked to protect pregnant women and mothers against Lamashtu, because she would steal their babies out of jealousy. This was the explanation for miscarriages, still-born infants, and sudden infant death, making tablets and amulets of Pazuzu some of the most popular in ancient Mesopotamia.
In the modern world, Pazuzu’s reputation has suffered, and rather severely. For it was Pazuzu who was chosen by author William Peter Blatty as the demon that would possess 13-year-old Regan McNeil in the book and movie The Exorcist, and in this portrayal Pazuzu represented pure malevolence and evil.
Evaluating Ancient Mesopotamia Fairly
When cuneiform was first decoded in the mid-19th century it made it possible to access hundreds of thousands of texts for the first time. It must have been surprising to learn people in ancient Mesopotamia were so advanced and made so many significant discoveries. It must also have been a major juxtaposition that a society which made so many logical and intellectual leaps would also believe so widely in magic, which is perceived by many today as irrational.
In the temple-schools of Mesopotamia, students actually learned exorcism rituals, how to mix healing atonements, perform astrology, and how to cure demonic possession. While these skills may seem archaic now, the temple-schools served as the first medical schools, elevating medicine and exorcism simultaneously.
Rather than scoffing at such practices, or dismissing them as unenlightened, maybe the Mesopotamian belief in magic should be recast as further evidence of their rationality and intelligence. The belief in the protective power of Pazuzu, or the ritual exorcism described in Maqlú might seen hopelessly archaic today, but it provided comfort and reassurance to the victim. Perhaps more importantly it dispelled and punished the witch anonymously, which avoided any need for a public witch hunt – something that would have ended in confrontation and violence, as happened as recently as the late 17th century in the Salem witch trials.