Semitic magic, its origins and development / by R. Campbell Thompson.

  • Reginald Campbell Thompson
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Semitic magic, its origins and development / by R. Campbell Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    commonly fidyah (fedtt), and according to Curtiss,1 who quotes one Derwish Hatib of Der Atiyeh, in the Syrian Desert, a lecturer who leads the mosque-service in that village, “ Fedou means that it redeems the other, in place of the other, substitute for the other. Something is going to happen to a man, and the sacrifice is a substitute for him. It prevents disease, sufferings, robbery, and enmity . . . Both repentance and the fedou cover.” From a passage quoted above on p. 84, the use of the word atonement’ will have suggested that the Assyrians were in the habit of performing some ceremony akin to that of the Hebrews. The most striking coincidence is, first, the parallel use of the word kuppuru in Assyrian with the Hebrew kipper. In the Old Testament kipper is undoubtedly an old word, although in the distinctively priestly phraseology (Ezekiel and ‘ P ’) it becomes more technical than in its other occurrences. Its subject is then the priest or sometimes the offering.2 In the cunei- form texts the word kuppuru is found in the incantations against disease, with a noun takpirtu from the same root. For instance, this latter word occurs in a cuneiform ceremony, thus :— “ [Cast] his takpirtu to the crossways, Leave his puhu to the kurpi (ash-heaps ?) of the land.” 3 1 Prim. Sem. Rel., 195. 2 Driver, Deuteronomy; 426, and also Robertson Smith, 0. T. in Jewish Church, 381. G. F. Moore (Encycl. Bibl., 4220) says that this word “ is not so common in old toroth as might be expected. It occurs with especial frequency in the old laws for trespass offering.” 3 Devils, ii, 3, Asakku Series, Tablet III, 1. 5 ff. On takpirati and the comparison of *133 (kipper) with it, see Martin, Textes Religieux, 1903, xxii. From the parallelism of S. 747, r. 4 (Craig, Religious Texts, ii, 4), “May Ea puhila sa ukinnu . . . my puhu which he hath prepared N