On Ancient Sumerian Spells and Incantations
Posted: Sat May 26, 2007 9:41 pm
Original post: ensuhkeshdanna
I was going to put this in ancient magic, but when I did a search most of the discussion of these texts I found was in this forum, so I put it here, I'm new to this board and wasn't really sure where to put it, so let me know if I'm not posting this in the right place.
The earliest of Sumerian incantations come from around 2600-2300BC, these are not too well understood, the bulk of them come from a city north of Mesopotamia called Ebla around 2350BC. The Eblaites spoke their own (Semitic) language, and wrote their spells in a combination of their own language and poorly written Sumerian. The spells from Ebla can be divided into two groups, those of Sumerian origin, and those from their own tradition. The spells of Sumerian origin favor purification as a method of getting rid of demons, the ones of Eblaite origin, binding magic. The Sumerian texts always begin with the word "enur", which denotes a particular kind of spell, and end with the invocation of the goddess Nin-girima, who is associated with a kind of holy water. If you're looking to read more about these texts, your best source, unfortunately in German, is M. Krebernik's Beschwörungen aus Fara und Ebla.
There are another group of incantations from a later period in Sumerian history 2100-2000BC which are a bit easier to understand. A good source for these, with English translations this time, is M. Geller's URIII incantations.
Now we move up to the Old Babylonian period, around 1800BC, most of our Sumerian literature comes from this time, but by this time Sumerian was already a dead language. A great big collection of spells appears at this time, written in Sumerian, but by Akkadian speaking Babylonians, while bearing great similarity to the earlier Sumerian texts, it is clear the Babylonians changed some stuff around a bit, particulary as to the demonology. Most of these texts are simply known as "udug hul", that's Sumerian for evil demon. An excellent complete edition of these texts is available: M. Geller's, Forerunners to udug-hul - Sumerian Exorcistic Incantations.
Udug-Hul was re-edited into a bilingual version, Sumerian with an interlinear Akkadian translation a little over a thousand years later, in the Neo-Babylonian period. By this time the current understanding of Sumerian wasn't so great, and the Akkadian translations aren't always correct. The only modern edition of this text is Campbell Thompson's Evil Spirits of Babylonia, written about 100 years ago. Unfortunately, at that time nobody understood Sumerian too well, so his translations are only good as to the Akkadian parts of the text.
There are many other forms of magic as well, namburbi, which are rituals to undo evil omens, nam-erim-bur-ru-da, for undoing a curse. Shurpu, a kind of exorcism ritual involving burning objects, associated with whatever evil force is afflicting the person. You even get the ocasional love spell using binding magic, not so different from love spells anywhere else really.
The word for demon in Sumerian is "udug", but it doesn't actually mean an evil one, in that case it would be an"udug hul", good demons, udug du10 or udug sag10, also exist. Although as time went on "udug" mostly referred to the bad ones, and the word "lamma", came to mean a good one. Most demons are actually ghosts who died in unpleasant way, or whose bodies were not properely cared for after death. The word for ghost is "gidim", in the case of a bad one, "gidim hul". There are a variety of categories of demons, perhaps the most famous the "lilitu" Akk. or "munus lil2" Sum., this translates as "wind woman", but they are your traditional succubus, according to the texts this is the ghost of a woman who died still a virgin, there's a male version too. In the case of the demoness Lamashtu (who afflicts pregnant women and small children) they invoke another demon, Pazuzu, to drive her off.
The main deities involved in Sumerian magic are Enki and his son, Asalluhi (later equated with the Babylonian god Marduk). Enki is the god of fresh water, magic, and knowledge. Enki is also a god of fertility and procreative sex, Enki has a lot of sex, and it always produces offspring immediately, unless something is seriously wrong. Enki is also the god who tends to help out people and other gods who are in trouble, Enki helped Inanna out of the netherworld and saved mankind from The Flood. Enki lives in a realm which he created known as the abzu, it is from Enki and the abzu that all the knowldege and aspects of civilization came forth, known in Sumerian as the "me", this term can literally be translated as "being, or essence". The wise men who dwell with Enki are known as "abgal" in Sumerian and are depicted as half fish half man.
During a ritual the person performing the ritual will call himself, " the abgal, the man of Enki and Asalluhi, and their messenger". Then sometimes following this is what is commonly known as the "Marduk-Ea formula"; this passage is one in which Asalluhi describes to Enki the problem which the ritual is supposed to fix, and Enki tells Asalluhi that "you know all I know", in this way the knowledge and power of Enki is transferred down to the ritual practitioner. And as I said before, the goddess Nin-girima is also frequently invoked, although not much is known about her, she is associated with "shiny, pure water."
Other books I would recommend on the subject: G. Cunningham's Deliver me from Evil, Mesopotamian Incantations 2500-1500BC and Black and Green's Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. If anyone is interested in a specific area, I can give a more complete bibliography. I can also continue with this in several different directions, if people are interested. I noticed a thread a while back where someone was trying to translate the bilingual version of "udug-hul", I could just go through that a little bit at a time with the original cuneiform text and give better transliterations and translations than you will get in Thompson's book, or I could go in an entirely different direction, or I could just stop if you guys have had enough already.
I was going to put this in ancient magic, but when I did a search most of the discussion of these texts I found was in this forum, so I put it here, I'm new to this board and wasn't really sure where to put it, so let me know if I'm not posting this in the right place.
The earliest of Sumerian incantations come from around 2600-2300BC, these are not too well understood, the bulk of them come from a city north of Mesopotamia called Ebla around 2350BC. The Eblaites spoke their own (Semitic) language, and wrote their spells in a combination of their own language and poorly written Sumerian. The spells from Ebla can be divided into two groups, those of Sumerian origin, and those from their own tradition. The spells of Sumerian origin favor purification as a method of getting rid of demons, the ones of Eblaite origin, binding magic. The Sumerian texts always begin with the word "enur", which denotes a particular kind of spell, and end with the invocation of the goddess Nin-girima, who is associated with a kind of holy water. If you're looking to read more about these texts, your best source, unfortunately in German, is M. Krebernik's Beschwörungen aus Fara und Ebla.
There are another group of incantations from a later period in Sumerian history 2100-2000BC which are a bit easier to understand. A good source for these, with English translations this time, is M. Geller's URIII incantations.
Now we move up to the Old Babylonian period, around 1800BC, most of our Sumerian literature comes from this time, but by this time Sumerian was already a dead language. A great big collection of spells appears at this time, written in Sumerian, but by Akkadian speaking Babylonians, while bearing great similarity to the earlier Sumerian texts, it is clear the Babylonians changed some stuff around a bit, particulary as to the demonology. Most of these texts are simply known as "udug hul", that's Sumerian for evil demon. An excellent complete edition of these texts is available: M. Geller's, Forerunners to udug-hul - Sumerian Exorcistic Incantations.
Udug-Hul was re-edited into a bilingual version, Sumerian with an interlinear Akkadian translation a little over a thousand years later, in the Neo-Babylonian period. By this time the current understanding of Sumerian wasn't so great, and the Akkadian translations aren't always correct. The only modern edition of this text is Campbell Thompson's Evil Spirits of Babylonia, written about 100 years ago. Unfortunately, at that time nobody understood Sumerian too well, so his translations are only good as to the Akkadian parts of the text.
There are many other forms of magic as well, namburbi, which are rituals to undo evil omens, nam-erim-bur-ru-da, for undoing a curse. Shurpu, a kind of exorcism ritual involving burning objects, associated with whatever evil force is afflicting the person. You even get the ocasional love spell using binding magic, not so different from love spells anywhere else really.
The word for demon in Sumerian is "udug", but it doesn't actually mean an evil one, in that case it would be an"udug hul", good demons, udug du10 or udug sag10, also exist. Although as time went on "udug" mostly referred to the bad ones, and the word "lamma", came to mean a good one. Most demons are actually ghosts who died in unpleasant way, or whose bodies were not properely cared for after death. The word for ghost is "gidim", in the case of a bad one, "gidim hul". There are a variety of categories of demons, perhaps the most famous the "lilitu" Akk. or "munus lil2" Sum., this translates as "wind woman", but they are your traditional succubus, according to the texts this is the ghost of a woman who died still a virgin, there's a male version too. In the case of the demoness Lamashtu (who afflicts pregnant women and small children) they invoke another demon, Pazuzu, to drive her off.
The main deities involved in Sumerian magic are Enki and his son, Asalluhi (later equated with the Babylonian god Marduk). Enki is the god of fresh water, magic, and knowledge. Enki is also a god of fertility and procreative sex, Enki has a lot of sex, and it always produces offspring immediately, unless something is seriously wrong. Enki is also the god who tends to help out people and other gods who are in trouble, Enki helped Inanna out of the netherworld and saved mankind from The Flood. Enki lives in a realm which he created known as the abzu, it is from Enki and the abzu that all the knowldege and aspects of civilization came forth, known in Sumerian as the "me", this term can literally be translated as "being, or essence". The wise men who dwell with Enki are known as "abgal" in Sumerian and are depicted as half fish half man.
During a ritual the person performing the ritual will call himself, " the abgal, the man of Enki and Asalluhi, and their messenger". Then sometimes following this is what is commonly known as the "Marduk-Ea formula"; this passage is one in which Asalluhi describes to Enki the problem which the ritual is supposed to fix, and Enki tells Asalluhi that "you know all I know", in this way the knowledge and power of Enki is transferred down to the ritual practitioner. And as I said before, the goddess Nin-girima is also frequently invoked, although not much is known about her, she is associated with "shiny, pure water."
Other books I would recommend on the subject: G. Cunningham's Deliver me from Evil, Mesopotamian Incantations 2500-1500BC and Black and Green's Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. If anyone is interested in a specific area, I can give a more complete bibliography. I can also continue with this in several different directions, if people are interested. I noticed a thread a while back where someone was trying to translate the bilingual version of "udug-hul", I could just go through that a little bit at a time with the original cuneiform text and give better transliterations and translations than you will get in Thompson's book, or I could go in an entirely different direction, or I could just stop if you guys have had enough already.
