From Abusch 2002, 17.ĭuring the course of the night, rituals would continue, centred on the patient’s bedroom. May the son of Ea, the magus (of the gods), cut off your emanations. The demon, the spirit, the lurker, the ghost, I raise up the torch and burn the statues of The ceremony started at night, by invoking the Gods of Night and burning representations of witches. It seems one performance of it occurred in 670 BC on the estate of a high-ranking person, possibly even for an Assyrian or Babylonian king. The most detailed exorcism-ritual we have documented is known as the maqlû – The Burning – and probably describes a single complex ceremony from the first millennium BC in order to deliver them from the unwelcome attentions of evil sorcerers. The aim of the exercise was often to transfer the evil into an inanimate object such as a piece of wool or a figurine, which could then easily be disposed of. Alongside this spoken element, there could also be physical practices such as the use of incense and amulets, or tying and untying knots. These might be gods or they might be something less animate: an exorcist could call on oil or fire, for example. This could last a few hours or several days, and would usually involve incantation and prayers in which the exorcist both addressed the evil being cast out and invoked benevolent forces for aid.
Exorcists could be affiliated with temples and might be involved in some aspects of regular cult, but generally they worked with private clients – in fact, usually only they and their client would be present during a ritual. With all these dangers, it’s no surprise that exorcism was a flourishing profession in Mesopotamia and other parts of the Near East. It’s telling that this film and its sequels look to ancient Mesopotamia for their star demon: the entity which possesses the unfortunate Regan is identified as Pazuzu, a very real (or at least, very believed-to-be-real you know what I mean) Mesopotamian wind demon.
SCRIBE MESOPOTAMIA MOVIE
I’ve already alluded to the book and movie The Exorcist, which more than anything else has probably shaped the popular image of the profession. Mesopotamian folklore is filled with creatures like the rabiṣu – ‘the Lurker’, ‘The Fog’, ‘the Strangler’ and more. If misfortune inexplicably befell you, if you got ill or if your animals were acting strangely, the chances were that either a human sorcerer or some fearsome demon had it in for you. In the ancient Near East, witchcraft and demons were very real worries. And what better time than Hallowe’en? Draw the curtains, make your incantations against Pazuzu and rotate your heads 360 degrees (don’t really do this) as we take a trip into the demon-haunted and bewitched world of Mesopotamian exorcism.Īssyrian statuette of the demon Pazuzu, 8th C BC. This is good material for a CREWS Project blog post, because the link between writing and exorcism in ancient Mesopotamia was much closer than you might expect.
Which is, I think you'll agree, one of the great sitcom ideas of the ancient world.įor a while now I’ve been meaning to dig up the original reference and write something about Mesopotamian exorcists that had a more solid foundation than my off-the-cuff and hazy memories. Just a reminder: there's an Old Babylonian tablet that mentions a family of exorcists who live together in a house.
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