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.

    275/362 (page 203)
    it, entice or drive it out of his patient’s body, to induce it to take up its abode in some other. The connection between the Hebrew and Assyrian ceremonies will be obvious to anyone who reads the following quotations from the cuneiform tablets. They are all exorcisms for persons suffering from some sickness. For instance, in the case of the tfStf/t&M-disease, Marduk is given the following advice by his father Ea, and the priest follows it in healing the sick man :— 1 “ Take a white kid of Tammuz,3 Lay it down facing 'the sick man, Take out its heart and Place it in the hand of that man ; . Perform the Incantation of Eridu ; The kid whose heart thou hast taken out Is unclean 3 food with which thou makest atonement for the man ; 1 Devils, ii, Tablet XI, 1. 73 ft‘. 2 Comparable with this is Xenocrates’ dictum that the blood of the kid was useful against epilepsy (Ibn el-Beithar, Notices des MSS., xxv, 93). 3 Lu’u, or lu, for which see my article, P.S.B.A., Feb. 1908. As the word is important, the reasons for adopting the meaning ‘ unclean1 or ‘ filthy5 are repeated here. It may also have the meaning of ^ 7 ‘ excrement,’ which is paralleled by the Syriac ppi stercus, ‘ dross.of iron.’ Lulu has the particular meaning of ‘ filthy ’ in regard to streets : ullila sulUsunu lu'uti,‘1 cleansed their filthy streets ’ (B.A., i, 10, quoted Muss-Arnolt, 464), and there is also a group har- tu-na = lu- -i gi-ri-ti (Brunnow, No. 8596). A classical text (Sennacherib, vi, 16) gives ‘ the deluge of my fighting kimci li-e sumursun ishup swept away their bodies like dung ’ (Delitzscb, II. W.B., 374, refers, possibly, to another hi). It has to be some plastic material, for little magical figures are made from it : e.g., Maklu ii, 113, inim-inim-ma, mussaprata nadi (?) salam U kan, ‘ Prayer of uttering a chant (?) over a figure of U (i.e. dung),’ parallel hymns to this being recited over figures of bitumen, bronze, etc., in the same tablet. Compare also iv, 41 (salmdni) lu 8a iddtl [frt] sa titu lu sa It, “ (figures) either of bitumen,