May 30 2013

Maqlu Tablet 4 Transliteration/Translation

Greetings! I would like to welcome everyone to the Covenant of Babylon blog page. If this is your first time here, please feel free to review some of our previous articles and share your insights and comments. Stay Blessed. This is the 4th Tablet of a 9 part series.

Maqlu Tablet IV

Incantation. Cook, cook, burn, burn!
ÉN biš-li biš-li qi-di-e qi-di-e
Meanness and evil, do not come in: go away!
rag-gu u si-e-nu e te-ru-ub at-lak
Who are you, whose son? Who are you, whose daughter?
at-ta man-nu mâr man-ni at-ti man-nu mârat man-ni
You who sit here and command your sorcery, your plots,
šá áš-ba-tu-nu-ma ip-še-ku-nu up-šá-še-ku-nu
5. That you have done against me!
5. te-te-ni-ip-pu-šá-ni ia-a-ši
May Ea the magician undo,
lip-šur dé-a mašmašu
And nullify your sorceries!
lis-bal-kit kiš-pi-ku-nu
Asarluhi, the magician of the gods, son of Ea the wise!
dasari-lú-du10 mašmaš ilimeš mâr dé-a apqallu
I bind you, I tie you up, I give you over,
a-kas-si-ku-nu-ši a-kam-mi-ku-nu-ši a-nam-din-ku-nu-ši
10. To Girra, who burns, incinerates, binds,
10. a-na dgira qa-mi-e qa-li-i ka-si-i
Overpowers and seizes the sorceress!
ka-ši-du šá fkaššapâtimeš
May incinerating Girra strengthen my arms!
dgira qa-mu-ú li-tal-lal i-da-ai
The magic, revolt, malediction, love, hate,
ip-šú bar-tu a-mat limuttim râmu zêru
Injustice, murder, paralysis of the mouth,
dipalâa zitarrutâa kadibbidâ KUŠ.HUNGA
15. Tearing of the insides, glowing of the face and insanity,
15. šabalbalâa su-ud pa-ni u šá-ni-e tè-e-mu
You have done, you have made others do, you have done, may Girra undo!
te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You marked me for a corpse, you have done, may Girra undo!
a-na lúpagri ta-hi-ra-in-ni te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You turned me over to the skulls, you have done, may Girra undo!
a-na gul-gul-la-ti tap-qí-da-in-ni te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You turned me over to a ghost of my family, you have done, may Girra undo!
a-na etim kim-ti-ia tap-qí-da-in-ni te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
20. You turned me over to the ghost of a stranger, you have done, may Girra undo!
20. a-na etim a-hi-i tap-qí-da-in-ni te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You turned me over to a wandering ghost who has no caretaker, you have done, may Girra undo!
a-na etimmi mur-tappi-du šá pa-qí-da la i-šu-u te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You turned me over to a ghost inhabiting ruins, you have done, may Girra undo!
a-na etim har-bi na-du-ti tap-qí-da-in-ni te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You turned me over to the steppes, the open country, the desert, you have done, may Girra undo!
a-na sêri ki-di u na-me-e tap-qí-da-in-ni te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You turned me over to the inner wall and the outer wall, you have done, may Girra undo!
a-na dûri ù sa-me-ti tap-qí-da-in-ni te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
25. You turned me over to the mistress of the steppe and high ground, you have done, may Girra undo!
25. a-na dbe-lit sêri u ba-ma-a-ti tap-qí-da-in-ni te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You turned me over to the bread oven, the stove, the pail of coals and the bellows, you have done, may Girra undo!
a-na utûn la-ab-ti tinûri kinûni KI.UT.BA ù nap-pa-ha-ti tap-qí-da-in-ni te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have given images of me to a corpse, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia a-na lúpagri tap-qí-da te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have given images of me for a corpse, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia a-na lúpagri ta-hi-ra te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have laid down images of me next to a corpse, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia it-ti lúpagri tuš-ni-il-la te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
30. You have put down images of me in a corpse’s lap, you have done, may Girra undo!
30. salmânimeš-ia ina sûn lúpagri tuš-ni-il-la te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have buried images of me in the grave of a corpse, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia ina qimah lúpagri taq-bi-ra te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have turned images of me over to skulls, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia a-na gul-gul-la-ti tap-qí-da te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have locked images of me in the wall, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia ina igâri tap-ha-a te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have put down images of me on the threshold, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia ina asquppati tuš-ni-il-la te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
35. You have locked images of me in the entrance to the wall, you have done, may Girra undo!
35. salmânimeš-ia ina bi-‘ šá dûri tap-ha-a te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have buried images of me on the bridge so that people stepped over them, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia ina ti-tur-ri taq-bi-ra-ma um-ma-nu ú-kab-bí-su te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have dug a hole in the basin of the wash-house and buried images of me there, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia ina bu-ri iqi šá lúašlaki bûra tap-ta-a taq-bi-ra te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have dug a hole in a gardener’s ditch and buried images of me there, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia ina iqi šá lúlâkuribbi bûra tap-ta-a taq-bi-ra te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
Images of me out of tamarisk, out of cedar, out of tallow,
salmânimeš-ia lu-u šá isbîni lu-u šá iserini lu-u šá lipî
40. Out of wax, out of sesame,
40. lu-u šá iškûri lu-u šá kuspi
Out of asphalt, out of clay, out of dough;
lu-u šá itti lu-u šá titi lu-u šá liši
Images, likenesses of my face and my figure you have modelled,
salmânimeš sir-ri-ia pa-ni-ia u la-ni-ia te-pu-šâ-ma
And given them to a dog, to a pig, to eat,
kalba tu-šá-ki-la šahâ tu-šá-ki-la
To the birds of the sky; have thrown them in the river;
issuru tu-šá-ki-la ana nâri taddâa
45. Images of me to Lamaštu, Anu’s daughter,
45. salmânimeš-ia a-na la-maš-ti mârat da-nim
You have given, you have done, you have made others do, may Girra undo!
tap-qí-da te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
Images of me you have given to Girra, you have done, may Girra undo!
salmânimeš-ia a-na dgira tap-qí-da te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have put down my water next to a corpse, you have done, may Girra undo!
mêmeš-ia it-ti lúpagri tuš-ni-il-la te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have put my water in a corpse’s lap, you have done, may Girra undo!
mêmeš-ia ina sûn lúpagri tuš-ni-il-la te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
50. You have buried my water in a corpse’s grave, you have done, may Girra undo!
50. mêmeš-ia ina qimah l;úpagri taq-bi-ra te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have buried my water in a corpse’s … you have done, may Girra undo!
ina ….. -tim mêmeš-ia taq-bi-ra te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have buried my water in a corpse’s … you have done, may Girra undo!
ina ….. -tim mêmeš-ia taq-bi-ra te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have scooped out my water in … you have done, may Girra undo!
ina ….. -me mêmeš-ia tah-ba-a te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have given my water to Gilgameš, you have done, may Girra undo!
mêmeš-ia ana dgilgameš ta-ad-di-na te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
55. You have picked me for … of the ditch, you have done, may Girra undo!
55. ana …. -li-e ta-hi-ra-in-ni te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have cut the throat before Sin, you have done, may Girra undo!
zikurudâa a-na pa-ni dsin te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have cut the throat before Šulpaea, you have done, may Girra undo!
zikurudâa a-na pa-ni dšul-

pa-è-a te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have cut the throat before the constellations Cygnus and Lacerta, you have done, may Girra undo!
zikurudâa a-na pa-ni MULU4-KA-DU8-A
You have cut the throat…… you have done, may Girra undo!
58a. zikurudâa…………………………… te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have cut the throat…… you have done, may Girra undo!
58b. zikurudâa…………………………… te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have cut the throat…… you have done, may Girra undo!
58c. zikurudâa…………………………… te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have cut the throat…… you have done, may Girra undo!
58d. zikurudâa…………………………… te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur
You have cut the throat…… you have done, may Girra undo!
58e. zikurudâa…………………………… te-pu-šá-ni tu-še-pi-šá-ni dgira lip-šur

(break of about 6 lines)

… …
59. ………….. GAB TIN taš-……..
60. … …
60. …………….meš u uhuli tu-ram-me-ki-in-ni
… …
………………… tap-qi-da……………
… …
……………. -a-ti tu-še-bi-la………..
… …
……………. bîtu tu-šá-áš-qi ai……….
In front of … … and the gate of the house,
ina pân………………….. -zi u bâb bîti ma-………..
65. In front of comrades, companions, and servants of the same,
65. ina pân ib-ri tap-pi u ki-na-at-ti KI.MINA
In front of the father and mother, brother and sister, son and daughter of the same,
ina pân abi u ummi ahi u ahati mâri u mârti KI.MINA
In front of the house and the gate, slave and maid, small and large, of the same,
ina pân bîti u bâbi ardi u amti sih-ri u ra-bi šá bîti KI.MINA
You made me … to whomever looks at me.
elî a-me-ri-ia tu-šam-ri-si-in-ni….
I have bound you, I have tied you up, I have surrendered you,
ak-ta-mi-ku-nu-ši ak-ta-si-ku-nu-ši at-ta-din-ku-nu-ši
70. To Girra who burns, incinerates, binds,
70. ana dgira qa-mi-i qa-li-i ka-si-i
And seizes the sorceresses.
ka-ši-du šá fkaššapâtimeš
May the burning Girra untie your knots,
dgira qa-mu-ú li-pat-tir rik-si-ku-nu
Undo your enchantments, remove your ropes,
li-pa-áš-šir kiš-pi-ku-nu li-na-as si-ir-qi-ku-nu
Upon the order of Marduk, son of Ea the wise,
ina qí-bit dmarduk mâr dé-a apqalli
75. And of Girra the praising, the wise, the son of Anu, the hero! Incantation formula.
75. u dgira a-ri-ru ap-qal mâr da-nim qar-du TU6.ÉN

Incantation. Who are you, sorceress, who committed murder?
ÉN at-ti man-nu fkaššaptu šá zitarrutâa êpušaša
Whether comrade or companion,
lu-u ib-ru lu-u tap-pu-u
Whether brother or friend,
lu-u ahu lu-u it-ba-ru
Whether stranger or fellow-citizen,
lu-u ú-ba-ra lu-u mâr âli
80. Whether known or unknown,
80. lu-u mu-du-u lu-u la mûdû
Whether sorcerer or sorceress,
lu-u lúkaššapu lu-u fkaššaptu
Whether man or woman, whether murderer or murderess,
lu-u zikaru lu-u sinništu lu-ú hab-lu lu-ú ha-bil-ti
Whether kurgarru-priest or sahhiru,
lu-u lúkur-gar-ru-u lu-u sah-hi-ru
Whether one … or a naršindu or a snake-charmer,
lu-u … lu-u nar-šin-du-u lu-u muš-lahhêe
85. Whether an agugilu or a foreigner who happens to be in the country,
85. lu-u a-gu-gi-lu-u lišanu nukur-tum šá ina mâti ibašši
… the weapon … to the land,
…….-tu giškak-ku-šu li-še-bir-ma
… … do not come close! Incantation formula.
………………. -mid-su-nu-te TU6.ÉN

Incantation. My murderess, my sorceress, my enchantress,
ÉN nir-ti-ià fkaššapti-ia5 u ku-šá-pa-ti-ia5
(10 lines missing)
(10 lines missing)
… …
is ……………….
90. … …
90. ma-……………
… …
a-……..-si-šú-nu-ti……
I grab you, … …

a-ta-am-ma-ak-šú-nu-ti ki-……….
I put you in the fire which burns,
a-šak-kan-šú-nu-ti ana pi-i dgira qa-mi-i
Burns, binds, seizes,
qa-li-i ka-si-i ka-ši-du
95. The sorceresses! Incantation formula.
95. šá fkaššapatimeš TU6.ÉN

Incantation. Who is the father of the sun, who his mother,
ÉN šá dšamšiši man-nu abu-šú man-nu ummu-šu
Who his sister and brother his judge,
man-nu a-hat-su-ma šu-ú da-a-a-nu
Of Marduk, Sin … …
šá dmarduk dsin d……………….
The perfect god … …
ilu git-ma-lu…………………
100. Šamaš … …
100. dšamaš ……………………….
And she, the goddess his judge,
ù ši-i diš-tar a-hat-su-ma šu-u da-a-a-nu
I destroy the sorcery,
kiš-pi ú-hal-laq…………..
Witchcraft, revolt, malediction,
ep-šu bar-tum âmat lemut-tim
Upon the order of … Incantation formula.
ú-pa-šar ………………………….TU6.ÉN

105. Incantation. It hexes, and it hexes all the time.
105. ÉN i-pu-šá-ni i-te-ni-ip-pu-šá-ni
The Cuthites, the Elamites,
gu-ti-e-ti e-la-ma-a-ti
The daughters of the Hanigalbatians.
ma-rat ha-ni-gal-bat-a-ti
Six on the land tie knots.
6 ina mâti i-rak-ka-sa-a-ni rik-si
Six are their knots; seven are my loosenings.
6 riksi-ši-na 7 pit-ru-ú-a
110. What they tie by night,
110. šá mûša ip-pu-sa-nim-ma
I untie by day.
šá kal u4-mu a-pa-áš-šar-ši-na-ti
What they tie by day,
šá kal u4-mu ip-pu-šá-nim-ma
I untie by night.
šá mûša a-pa-áš-šar-ši-na-ti
I put them in the fire which burns,
a-šak-kan-ši-na-a-ti ana pi-i dgira qa-mi-i
115. Incinerates, binds and seizes,
115. qa-li-i ka-si-i ka-ši-du
The sorceresses! Incantation formula.
šá fkaššapatimeš TU6.ÉN

Incantation. My danger is a witch, I am released.
ÉN ru-‘ú-a kaš-šá-pat ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
The witch is a witch, I am released.
fkaššaptu kas-šá-pat ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
The witch is an Elamite, I am released.
fkaššaptu e-la-ma-a-ti ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
120. The witch is a Cuthite, I am released.
120. fkaššaptu qu-ta-a-ti ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
The witch is a Sutian, I am released.
fkaššaptu su-ta-a-ti ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
The witch is a Lullubian, I am released.
fkaššaptu lul-lu-ba-a-ti ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
The witch is a Hanigalbatian, I am released.
fkaššaptu ha-bi-gal-ba-at ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
The witch is an agugiltu, I am released.
fkaššaptu a-gu-gi-lat ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
125. The witch is a naršindatu, I am released.
125. fkaššaptu nar-šin-da-at ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
The witch is snake-charmer, I am released.
fkaššaptu mušlahhat ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
The witch is a magic priestess, I am released.
fkaššaptu eš-še-ba-a-ti ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
The witch is a metal-worker, I am released.
fkaššaptu qur-qur-ra-a-ti ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
The witch is a bump on my gate, I am released.
fkaššaptu ši-i râbis bâbi-ia ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
130. The witch is a fellow-citizen of mine, I am released!
130. fkaššaptu mârat âli-ia ana-ku pa-ši-ra-ak
I have gathered her images, and I have sent them to the west.
áš-pur a-na e-rib dšamši salmânimeš-si-na il-qu-tu-ú-ni
The figures of the seven and seven witches,
šá 7 u 7 fkaššapâtimeš salmânimeš-ši-na
I have given over to Girra.
ana dgira ap-qid
In a portable oven I have burned them.
ana ú-tu-ni a-lik-ti a-šar-rap-ši-na-ti
135. Gibil, burn my warlock and my witch!
135. dgibil qu-mi lúkaššapi u fkaššapti
Gibil, incinerate my warlock and my witch!
dgibil qu-li lúkaššapi u fkaššapti
Gibil, burn them utterly!
dgibil qu-mi-ši-na-a-ti
Gibil, incinerate them utterly!
dgibil qu-li-ši-na-a-ti
Gibil, seize them!
dgibil kušus-si-na-a-ti
140. Gibil, devour them!
140. dgibil a-ru-uh-ši-na-a-ti
Gibil, take them away!
dgibil šu-ta-bil-si-na-a-ti
May the raging Gibil calm down!
ez-zu dgibil li-ni-ih-ka-na-ši
Gibil, … …
dgibil lu-li-mu li-…-ki-na-ši
The sorcerer and the sorceress, the enchanter and the enchantress,
lúkaššapu u fkaššaptu e-piš u e-piš-tum
145. May they truly … …
145. šu-nu lu-u …………… -kam-ma
But I, I let the water of the flood,
ana-ku mêmeš mîli-ma
come upon them! Incantation formula.
lu-u-ba-‘-ši-na-a-ti TU6.ÉN

Incantation. My enchanter and my enchantress.
ÉN e-piš-tum ù muš-te-piš-tum

Tablet IV of Maqlu.
tuppu IVkam ma-aq-lu-ú

May 30 2013

Maqlu Tablet 3 Transliteration/Translation

Maqlu Tablet III

Incantation. The witch, who goes on the roads,
ÉN fkaššaptu mut-tal-lik-tú šá sûqâtimeš
Who invades the houses,
mu-tir-rib-tum šá bîtâtimeš
Who walks in the alleys,
da-ai-li-tum šá bi-ri-e-ti
Who hunts over the square;
sa-ai-di-tum šá ri-ba-a-ti
5. She turns around, front and back,
5. a-na pani-šá ù arki-šá is-sa-na-ah-hur
She stays standing in the street, and turns her feet,
izzazaz ina sûqi-ma ú-sah-har šêpêII
In the square she blocks the way.
i-na ri-bi-ti ip-ta-ra-as a-lak-tú
She took away the strength of the beautiful man,
šá etli damqi du-us-su i-kim
She took away the fruit of the beautiful girl,
šá ardatu damiqtumtum i-ni-ib-šá it-bal
10. With one look she took away her attractiveness,
10. i-na ni-kil-mi-šá ku-zu-ub-šá il-qi
She saw the man and took away his strength,
etla ip-pa-lis-ma dûta-šu i-kim
She saw the girl and took away her step.
ardata ip-pa-lis-ma i-ni-ib-šá it-bal
The witch saw me, she followed me,
i-mu-ra-an-ni-ma fkaššaptu il-li-ka arki-ia
With her venom she blocked my way,
i-na im-ti-šá ip-ta-ra-as a-lak-tú
15. With her magic she hindered my gait.
15. i-na ru-hi-šá iš-di-hi ip-ru-us
She pushed my body away from my god and my goddess.
ú-šá-as-si ili-ia5 u dištar-ia5 ina zumri-ia5
For the witch I plucked clay from the potter’s wheel,
šá fkaššapti ina kul-la-ti aq-ta-ri-is tîta-šá
I made a figurine of my sorceress.
šá e-piš-ti-ia ab-ta-ni salam-šá
In your body I lay some tallow, the destroyer.
áš-kun i-na lìb-bi-ki lipû ha-bil-ki
20. In your kidney I put some eru-wood, that burns you,
20. ú-sa-an-niš ina kalatimeš-ki e-ra qa-ma-ki
Eru-wood, that burns you, to inhibit your venom!
e-ra qa-ma-ki a-mat-ki lip-ru-us
Above the city, I light up a fire;
e-li âli at-ta-pah i-šá-ti
Underneath the city I throw a potion.
ina šaplan âli at-ta-di lik-ti
Where you go in I light up a fire.
a-na bît ter-ru-ba at-ta-di i-šá-ti
25. When you arise, may Gibil devour you!
25. te-pu-šim-ma dgibil li-kul-ki
When you settle, may Gibil seize you!
tu-še-pi-šim-ma dgibil lik-šu-ud-ki
When you carry, may Gibil kill you!
tak-pu-di-ma dgibil li-duk-ki
When you draw, may Gibil burn you!
tu-šak-pi-di-ma dgibil lik-me-ki
To the land of no return may Gibil, your tormentor, let you go!
har-ra-an la ta-ri li-šá-as-bit-ki dgibil ha-bil-ki
30. May the furious Gibil burn your body! Incantation formula.
30. dgibil ez-zu zumur-ki li-ih-mut TU6.ÉN

Incantation. Two are the daughters of the sky-god Anu,
ÉN 2-ta ši-na mârâtimeš da-nim šá šamêe
Three are the daughters of the sky-god Anu!
3 ši-na mârâtimeš da-nim šá šamêe
They find a rope-ladder and descend from the sky!
tur-ri ul-ta-nim-ma ul-tu šamêe ur-ra-da-ni
When do you rise? Where do you go?
e-ka-a-ma te-ba-ti-na e-ki-a-am tal-la-ka
35. The sorcerer and the sorceress of N., son of N.?
35. a-na e-pi-ši u e-piš-ti šá annanna apil annanna
We went to cast a spell,
ana sahari ni-il-li-ka
We went to gather their branches of fruit,
a-na lu-uq-qu-ti šá hu-sa-bi-ši-na
We went to pick up their refuse,
a-na hu-um-mu-mi šá hu-ma-ma-ti-ši-na
We went in the evening to set fire to the huluppu-vessel!
šá li-la-a-ti hu-lu-pa-qa a-na ša-ra-pi ni-il-li-ka
40. Incantation. Sorceress, murderess,
40. ÉN fkaššaptu nir-ta-ni-tum
Nightmare, naršindatu,
e-li-ni-tum nar-šin-da-tum
Ašiputu, magic priestess,
a-ši-ip-tum eš-še-pu-ti
Snake-charmers, agugiltu,
mušlahhatumtum a-gu-gi-il-tum
Prostitute, hierodule,
fqadištu fnaditu
45. Ištar devotee, zermašitu,
45. dištar-i-tum zêr-ma-ši-tum
Who catches in the night,
ba-ai-r-tum šá mu-ši
Who hunts the whole day,
mu-la-‘-i-tum šá šamêe

Dirties the sky,
sa-ayyu-di-tum šá kal u-mi
Touches the earth,
mu-lap-pit-tum šá irsitimtim
50. Gags the mouths of the gods,
50. ka-mi-tum šá pî ilimeš
Who binds the knees of the goddesses together,
ka-si-tum šá bir-ki dištarâtimeš
Who kills the men,
da-ai-ik-tum šá etlêmeš
Who doesn’t spare the women.
la pa-di-tum šá dsinnišâtimeš
Destructor, evil woman,
šá-ah-hu-ti-tum sab-bu-ri-tu
55. Against your sorcery and witchcraft nobody can fight!
55. šá ana ip-ši-šá u ru-hi-šá la u-šar-ru man-ma
Now they saw you, now they grabbed you,
e-nin-na-ma e-tam-ru-ki is-sab-tu-ki
They changed you, they brought you imbalance,
uš-te-nu-ki uš-ta-bal-ki-tu-ki
They mixed up your magic word,
uš-ta-pi-lu a-mat ip-ši-ki
Ea and Marduk have surrendered you to Girra the hero!
dé-a u dmarduk id-di-nu-ki ana dgira qu-ra-di
60. Girra the hero! May he break your knot,
60. dgira qu-ra-du ri-kis-ki li-ih-pi
And all of your sorcery, may it fall back on you!
ù mimma ma-la te-pu-ši li-šam-hir-ki ka-a-ši

Incantation. I am the light, shining pure river.
ÉN dit el-lu nam-ru qud-du-šu ana-ku
My sorcerer is the wise one of the Apsu.
e-pi-šu-u-a apqallu šá apsî
My sorceresses are the daughters of the sky-god Anu.
e-pi-še-tu-ú-a mârâtimeš da-nim šá šamêe
65. They have cursed me, they have continuously and constantly cursed,
65. e-pu-šu-u-ni e-te-ni-ip-pu-šu-u-ni
They have cursed, they have spared my body nothing;
e-pu-šu-nim-ma ul ip-du-u zu-um-ri
They have continuously cursed, but they could not seize me!
e-te-ni-pu-šu-nim-ma ul i-li-‘-ú sa-ba-ti-ia
I have magic, and I grabbed their mouth.
a-na-ku e-pu-uš-ma ….. pi-šu-nu as-bat
I became shining like the river in my country.
e-te-bi-ib kima dit ina šadi-ia
70. I became pure like the shining one for my court appearance.
70. e-te-lil ki-ma nam-ru ana bît purussî-ia
My warlock and my witch,
šá lúkaššapi-ia5 u fkaššapti-ia5
The river … may they … do them!
dit……….. -ru na-bal-kat-ta-šú-nu lis-ku-nu-ma
May their tricks fall back on them,
kiš-pu-šu-nu elî-šu-nu li-bal-ki-tu-ma
And fall on their head and image!
a-na muh-hi-šu-nu u la-ni-šu-nu lil-li-ku
75. May their face become black as with ashes!
75. ki-ma di-iq-me-en-ni li-is-li-mu pa-ni-šú-nu
May they drip, melt, and dissolve,
li-hu-lu li-zu-bu u lit-ta-at-tu-ku
But I, like the river in my country, be pure! Incantation.
u ana-ku ki-ma dit ina šadî-ia lû ellêkuku ÉN

Incantation. There surrounds me the Sutite, the Elamite chases me!
ÉN la-man-ni su-tu-ú e-la-mu-ú ri-da-an-ni
I am surrounded by flood, furious storm flood!
kat-man-ni a-gu-ú e-du-ú sah-panan-ni
80. The witch is a Sutite whose attack is strong!
80. fkaššaptu su-ta-ta da-a-nu i-bit-su
The nightmare is an Elamite whose hit means death!
e-le-ni-tu e-la-ma-ta li-pit-sa mu-ú-tu
Gibil, companion of Šamaš, come closer!
dgibil tap-pi-e dšamaš i-ziz-za-am-ma
Like the mountain comes to rest through sulphur,
ki-ma šadi ina kibri-dit i-nu-uh-hu
So may the sorceresses and witches, the magic of my witches,
kiš-pi ru-hi-e ru-si-e šá fkaššapti-ia5
85. Of my nightmares, Gibil burn!
85. e-li-ni-ti-ia dgibil liq-mi
May the pure river break her heart!
dit ellu lib-ba-šá li-ih-pi
May the pure water dissolve her spell,
mêmeš ellûtimeš lip-šu-ra kiš-pi-šá
But I pure like the river in my country! Incantation.
u ana-ku ki-ma dit ina šadî-ia lu ellêkuku ÉN

Incantation. Who are you, witch,
ÉN at-ti nam-nu fkaššaptu šá bašûu
90. In whose heart lies the evil word against me,
90. a-mat limuttimtim-ia5 ina lib-bi-šá
On whose tongue the magic against me forms,
ina lišâni-šá ib-ba-nu-ú ru-hu-ú-a
On whose lip the spell against me starts?
ina šap-ti-šá ib-ba-nu-ú ru-su-ú-a
In the step you take stands death.
i-na ki-bi-is tak-bu-us izzazaz mu-ú-tum
Witch, I seize your mouth, I seize your tongue,
fkaššaptu as-bat pi-ki as-bat lišân-ki
95. I seize your seeing eyes,
95. as-bat ênêII-ki na-ti-la-a-ti
I seize your going feet,

as-bat šêpêII-ki al-la-ka-a-ti
I seize your walking knees,
as-bat bir-ki-ki e-bi-ri-e-ti
I seize your leading arms,
as-bat idêII-ki mut-tab-bi-la-a-ti
I tied your arms on your back!
ak-ta-si i-di-ki a-na ar-ki-ki
100. May Sin, the twin-shaped, destroy your body,
100. dsin el-lam-mi-e li-qat-ta-a pagar-ki
Throw you in a ditch of water and fire!
a-na mi-qit mêmeš u išâti lid-di-ki-ma
Witch, like the seal-cylinder warmer,
fkaššaptu ki-ma si-hir kunukki an-ni-e
May your face become burning and yellow!
li-su-du li-ri-qu pa-nu-ú-ki

Incantation. You there, who have bewitched me!
ÉN at-ti e šá te-pu-ši-in-ni
105. You there, who have charmed me!
105. at-ti e šá tu-še-pi-ši-in-ni
You there, who have cursed me!
at-ti e šá tu-kaš-ši-pi-in-ni
You there, who have oppressed me!
at-ti e šá tu-hap-pi-pi-in-ni
You there, who have seized me!
at-ti e šá tu-sab-bi-ti-in-ni
You there, who have squeezed me!
at-ti e šá tu-kan-ni-ki-in-ni
110. You there, who have destroyed me!
110. at-ti e šá tu-ab-bi-ti-in-ni
You there, who have tied me!
at-ti e šá tu-ub-bi-ri-in-ni
You there, who have bound me!
at-ti e šá tu-ka-si-in-ni
You there, who have besmirched me!
at-ti e šá tu-la-‘-in-ni
Who alienated my god and my goddess from me,
tap-ru-si itti-ia ili-ia5 u dištar-ia5
115. Who alienated my male friend, female friend, brother, sister, comrades, companions and servants!
115. tap-ru-si itti-ia še-‘ še-‘-tu ahu ahattu ib-ru tap-pu u ki-na-at-tu
I take flakes of ashes from the oven, soot from the pot,
a-liq-qa-kim-ma ha-ha-a šá utuni um-mi-nu šá diqâri
I mix them with water and I drip it on the head of your evil figurine.
a-mah-ha-ah a-tab-bak ana qaqqad rag-ga-ti šim-ti-ki

Incantation. Who bewitched me, cursed me?
ÉN šá e-pu-šá-ni uš-te-pi-šá-an-ni
Who bewitched me by high water in the river?
i-na mi-li nâri e-pu-šá-an-ni
120. Who bewitched me by low water in the river?
120. i-na mi-ti nari e-pu-šá-an-ni
Who said to the sorceress, “use sorcery!”?
a-na e-piš-ti ip-ši-ma iq-bu-ú
Who said to the inspiress of insanity, “make insane!”?
a-na sa-hir-ti suh-ri-ma iq-bu-ú
This is her barque.
an-ni-tu lu-u maqurru-šá
Like this barque crosses,
kima maqurru an-ni-tu ib-ba-lak-ki-tu
125. So may her spells cross and come back on her head,
125. kis-pu-šá lib-bal-ki-tu-ma ina muh-hi-šá
And her figure! Come!
u la-ni-šá lil-li-ku
May her right be defeated and my right prevail! Incantation.
di-in-šá lis-sa-hi-ip-ma di-e-ni li-šir ÉN

Incantation. Sin has built my barque,
ÉN maqurri-ia5 a-na dsin ú-še-piš
Between her horns stands the potion, as freight;
ina bi-rit qârnemeš-šá na-šat pi-šir-tum
130. Within it the warlock and the witch sit;
130. áš-bu ina lìb-bi-šá lúkaššapu u fkaššaptu
Within it the sorcerer and sorceress sit;
áš-bu ina lìb-bi-šá e-piš u e-piš-tú
Within it the inspirer of insanity and the inspiress of insanity sit.
áš-bu ina lib-bi-šá sa-hi-ru u sa-hir-tú
Let the mooring-rope be cut!
šá maqurri-ši-na lib-ba-ti-iq a-šá-al-šá
Let the moor be let go!
mar-kas-sa-ši-na lip-pa-tir-ma tar-kul-la-šá
135. May it go astray in the middle of the sea!
135. a-na qabal tam-ti liq-qil-pu ….. LU ….
May a strong tide push it out into the ocean!
e-du-u dan-nu a-na tam-tim li-še-si-šú-nu-ti
May powerful waves batter it!
šam-ru-ti a-gu-u e-li-šú-nu li-tel-lu4-u …
May a favourable wind not blow, may they not be found!
šar-šú-nu a-a i-zi-qa-am-ma a-a i-hi-ta-a-ni…
By the order of Nusku and Girra, the gods of their trial! Incantation.
ina qi-bit dnusku u dgirru ilimeš dini-šú-nu ÉN

140. Incantation. Latu of the streets, why do you press me constantly?
140. ÉN LA-tú šá su-qa-ti am-me-ni tug-da-nar-ri-ÉN-ni
Why your messages?
am-me-ni na-áš-pa-tu-ki it-ta-na-lak-a-ni
Witch, inhibited is the word!
fkaššaptu SAG.DUmeš a-ma-ti-ki
Why … …
am-me-ni it-ta-nak-šá-da a-na lu-…
I climb on the roof, I see you!
el-li a-na ú-ri ab-ta-ki a-….
145. I climb down to the ground, and I see you!
145. ú-rad a-na qaq-qa-ri-im-ma ú-sab-bi-tu
On your path I set the stool,
ina kib-si-ki râbisa ú-še-šab
I set the death-spirit of persecution on your path.
etim ri-da-a-ti harran-ki ú-šá-as-bit
I strike your skull, I confuse your mind,
a-mah-ha-as muh-ha-ki ú-šá-an-na tè-en-ki
I bring your insides into disarray so that you forget the flesh,
a-dal-lah lìb-ba-ki ta-maš-ši-i šêrêmeš-ki
150. Sorceress and deep sorceress!
150. e-piš-tum u muš-te-piš-tum
I am the sky; you cannot touch me.
šamûu a-na-ku ul tu-lap-pa-tin-ni
I am the earth, you cannot confuse me.
irsitumtum a-na-ku ul tu-ra-hi-in-ni
I am the point of the thorn, you cannot crush me.
si-hi-il isbal-ti a-na-ku ul tu-kab-ba-si-in-ni
I am the sting of the scorpion, you cannot touch me!
zi-qit aqrabi a-na-ku ul tu-lap-pa-tin-ni
155. I am a peaked mountain; your sorcery, your chanting,
155. šadúu zaq-ru a-na-ku kiš-pi-ki ru-hi-ki
You spell, your evil machinations,
ru-su-ú-ki up-šá-šu-ki limnûtimeš
Do not come close to me, do not approach me. Incantation.
la itehûmeš-ni la i-qar-ri-bu-u-ni ai-ši ÉN

Incantation. Hand, hand,
ÉN rit-tu-ma rit-tu
Powerful hand of man,
rit-tu dan-na-tu šá a-me-lu-ti
160. Which like a lion grabs the man,
160. šá kîma nêši is-ba-tu a-me-lu
Like a slingshot threw the man to the ground,
kima hu-ha-ri is-hu-pu it-lu
Like a net covered the strong one,
kima še-e-ti ú-kat-ti-mu qar-ra-du
Like a snare caught the leader,
kima šu-uš-kal-li a-šá-rid-du i-bar-ru
Like a trap covered the powerful!
kima giš-par-ri ik-tu-mu dan-na
165. So the warlock and the witch, may Girra burn your hand,
165. lúkaššapu u fkaššaptu rit-ta-ku-nu dgira liq-mi
So may Girra devour, may Girra drink, may Girra remove!
dgira li-kul dgira liš-ti dgira liš-ta-bil
May Girra scream against your powerful hand!
dgira lil-sa-a elî dan-na-ti rit-te-ku-nu
Because your hand has performed sorcery, may it burn your body!
šá rit-ta-ku-nu e-pu-šu zu-mur-ku-nu li-ih-mut
May the son of Ea, the magician, destroy your power!
li-is-pu-uh illat-ku-nu mâr dé-a mašmašu
170. May the breath of Girra envelop your face!
170. qut-ri dgira li-ri-ma pa-ni-ku-nu
Like an oven through its defective places,
ki-ma ti-nu-ri ina hi-ta-ti-ku-nu
Like the pots through their soot,
ki-ma di-qa-ri ina lu-hu-um-me-ku-nu
May the furious Girra destroy you!
li-is-pu-uh-ku-nu-ši dgira iz-zu
So your witchcraft, your evil spell, may not come close to me!
ai ithumeš-ni kiš-pi-ku-nu ru-hi-ku-nu lim-nu-ti
175. Climb like the fish in my water,
175. e-til-la-a kima nûnêhi.a ina mêmeš-e-a
Like the pig in my mud,
kîma šahi ina ru-šum-ti-ia
Like the maštakal-plant from the meadow,
kîma šammaštakal ina ú-sal-li
Like the grass on the bank of the canal,
kîma šamsassati ina a-hi a-tap-pi
Like the seed of the ebony tree on the shore!
kîma zêr isuši ina a-hi tam-tim
180. Shining Ištar, who lightens the evening,
180. el-lit dištar mu-nam-me-rat šim-ti
Over to fate I am given,
ú-su-rat balati us-su-ra-ku ana-ku
By the order which the powerful Girra has spoken,
ina qi-bit iq-bu-ú dgira ra-šub-bu
And the burning Girra, son of Anu, the hero!
ù dgira a-ri-ru mâr da-nim qar-du

Incantation. Hand, hand,
ÉN rit-tum-ma rit-tum
185. Powerful hand of man!
185. rit-tum dan-na-tum šá a-me-lu-ti
Witch, because of your slanderous mouth,
fkaššaptu áš-šú pi-i-ki da-ab-bi-bu
Because of your powerful hand,
áš-šú dan-na-ti rit-ta-ki
I brought you the word from the city,
álu a-ma-tum áš-šak-ki
From the house I look for the word for you.
bitu a-ma-tum ú-ba-a-ki
190. Warlock and witch, sorcerer and sorceress,
190. lúkaššapu u fkaššaptu e-piš u e-piš-tú
I lay down your hand, I will throw it in the fire. Incantation.
bi-il rit-ta-ku-nu-ma ana išâti lud-di ÉN

Incantation. Cook, cook, burn, burn!
ÉN biš-li biš-li qi-di-e qi-di-e

Tablet III of Maqlu.
tuppu IIIkam ma-aq-lu-ú

May 30 2013

Maqlu Tablet 2 Transliteration/Translation

Maqlu Tablet II

Incantation. Mighty Nusku, counsellor of the great gods!
ÉN dnusku šur-bu-ú ma-lik ilîmeš rabû-timeš
Overseer of the sacrifices of all Igigi,
pa-qid nindabêmeš šá ka-la digigê
Who founds cities, who reviews the seats of the gods!
mu-kin ma-ha-zi mu-ud-di-šu parakkêmeš
Brilliant day, the promise of which is sublime,
u4-mu nam-ru šá qi-bit-su si-rat
5. Messenger of Anu, who is obedient to the secret of Enlil,
5. sukkal da-nim še-mu-ú pi-ris-ti den-lil
Obedient to Enlil, counsellor of the Igigi,
še-mu-ú den-lil ma-li-ku ša-du-ú digigê
Powerful in the fight, and whose rising is powerful,
gaš-ru ta-ha-zu šá ti-bu-šú dan-nu
Brilliant Nusku, who blinds his enemies to the Earth,
dnusku a-ri-ru mu-šab-riq za-ai-ri
Without you there is no meal in Ekur,
ina ba-li-ka ul iš-šak-kan nap-ta-na ina é-kur
10. Without you, the great gods do not smell incense,
10. ina ba-li-ka ilîmeš rabûtimeš ul is-si-nu qut-rin-nu
Without you, the judge Šamaš does not hold his court.
ina ba-li-ka dšamaš daiânu ul i-da-a-ni di-i-nu
Whoever remembers your name, you save him from difficulty, you spare him from distress.
ha-sis šu-me-ka te-it-tir ina i-dir-ti ta-ga-mil ina pušqi
I, your servant N., son of N., whose god is N., whose goddess is N.,
ana-ku ardu-ka annanna apil annanna šá ilu-šú annanna dištar-šú annannitumtum
I have turned to you, I have sought you out, my hands are raised, and at your feet throw myself;
as-hur-ka eš-e-ka na-šá-a qâtâ-ai šá-pal-ka ak-mis
15. Burn the warlock and the witch,
15. qu-mi kaš-šá-pi ù kaš-šap-ti
Away my warlock and my witch, lose their life fast and swiftly,
šá lúkaššapi-ia5 u fkaššapti-ia5 ár-hiš ha-an-tiš napišta-šú-nu lib-li-ma
Spare my life so I will be indebted, so I can praise your greatness!
ia-a-ši bul-lit-an-ni-ma nar-bi-ka lu-šá-pi dà-li-li-ka lud-lul

Incantation. To dissolve a spell with the help of an image made of tallow.
INIM-INIM-MA ÚH-BÚR-RU-DA sa-lam lipî-KÉ

Incantation. Girra, perfect master; “you are powerful” is the meaning of your name.
ÉN dgira bêlu git-ma-lu gaš-ra-a-ta na-bi šum-ka
20. Nanna, you see everything.
20. dnanna-ra-ta na-bi šùm-ka
You lighten the dark house, eternally renewed light of the countries.
tuš-nam-mar bitatimeš ka-la-ma
You light up everything; I stand in front of you,
tuš-nam-mar gi-im-ra ka-liš ma-ta-a-ti
Because you restore justice.
áš-šu at-ta ta-az-za-zu-ma
Like Sin and Šamaš you make right,
ki-ma dsin ù dšamaš ta-din-nu di-i-nu
25. So restore my right, make my decision!
25. di-e-ni di-ni purussâ-a-a purusus
To your brilliant light I come,
a-na nûri-ka nam-ri az-ziz
To the shining torch, I come,
a-na elle-ti ti-pa-ri-ka az-ziz
Master, I am grabbing the hem of your coat,
bêlu sissiktu-ka as-bat
The hem of your divine coat I am grabbing.
sissikat ilu-ti-ka rabi-ti as-bat
30. She has packed the heart,
30. ………. -si il-ta-si eli-ia
the head, the neck and the face;
is-bat lìb-bi qaqqadi kišâdi-ia5 u muh-hi
She packed my looking eyes,
is-bat ênê-ia5 na-ti-la-a-ti
Packed my going feet,
is-bat sêpê-ia5 al-la-ka-a-ti
Packed my walking knees,
is-bat bir-ki-ia5 ib-bi-ri-e-ti
35. Packed my guiding arms.
35. is-bat idê-ia5 mut-tab-bil-a-ti
Now, in front of your great divinity,
e-nin-na ina ma-har ilu-ti-ka rabîtiti
The crossed copper images,
salmânimeš siparri it-gu-ru-ti
Of my warlock and my witch,
lúkaššapi-ia5 u fkaššapti-ia5
My sorcerer and my sorceress,
e-piš-ia5 u muš-te-piš-ti-ia5
40. My stupefier and my stupefyress,
40. sa-hir-ia5 u sa-hir-ti-ia5
My enchanter and my enchantress,
ra-hi-ia5 u ra-hi-ti-ia5
My lord opponent and my lady opponent,
bêl ik-ki-ia5 u bêlit ik-ki-ia5
My lord enemy and my lady enemy,
bêl sir-ri-ia5 u bêlit sir-ri-ia5
My lord persecutor and my lady persecutor,
bêl ri-di-ia5 u bêlit ri-di-ia5
45. My lord accuser and my lady accuser,
45. bêl di-ni-ia5 u bêlit di-ni-ia5
My lord slanderer and my lady slanderer,
bêl amâti-ia5 u bêlit amâti-ia5
My lord detractor and my lady detractor,
bêl dabâbi-ia5 u bêlit dabâbi-ia5
My lord nemesis and my lady nemesis,
bêl egirri-ia5 u bêlit egirri-ia5
My lord evil-doer and my lady evil-doer;
bêl limuttimtim-ia5 u bêlit limuttimtim-ia5
50. They gave me over to a corpse;
50. ana lúmiti pu-qu-du-in-ni
They subjected me to ridicule,
nam-ra-su kul-lu-mu-in-ni
To the evil Utukku or the evil Alu or the evil Etemmu,
utukku lim-nu lu-u alû lim-nu lu-u etim-mu lim-nu
The evil Gallu or the evil god or the evil Rabisu,
gallû lim-nu lu-u ilu lim-nu lu-u râbisu lim-nu
The Lamaštu or the Labasu or the Ahhazu,
dlamaštu lu-u dlabasu lu-u dahhazu
55. The Lilu or the Lilitu or the Ardat Lili,
55. lúlilu lu-u flilitu lu-u ardat lili
Or fever, the Sibit Šadi disease,
lu-u li-‘-bu si-bit šadi
Or epilepsy, the product of Šulpaea,
lu-u be-en-nu ri-hu-ut dšul-pa-è-a
Or Antašubba or evil god,
lu-u AN-TA-ŠUB-BA lu-u DINGIR-HUL
Or hand of god, or hand of goddess,
lu-u ŠU-DINGIR-RA lu-u ŠU-dIN-NIN-NA
60. Or hand of the Etemmu, or hand of the Utukki
60. lu-u ŠU-GIDIM-MA lu-u ŠU-UDUG
Or hand of the human, or Lamaštu, the young daughter of Anu,
lu-u ŠU-NAM-LÚ-LÍL-LU lu-u la-maš-tu sihirtutú marat da-nim
Or Saghulaza, the record-keeper of debts,
lu-u SAG-HUL-HA-ZA mu-kil rêš li-muttim
Or cooking of the flesh, paralysis, consumption,
lu-u di-kis šêrêmeš šim-ma-tú ri-mu-tú
Or everything bad that does not have a name,
lu mimma lim-nu šá šu-ma la na-bu-u
65. Or everything that does bad things among human beings,
65. lu mimma e-piš li-mut-ti šá a-me-lu-ti
Which holds me prisoner during the night, which chases me during the day,
šá sab-ta-ni-ma mu-ša u ur-ra iredú-nimeš-ni
Which destroys my flesh, which seizes me,
ú-hat-tu-ú šêrêmeš-ia kal u4-mi sab-ta-ni-ma
Which does not let me free for one night!
kal mu-si la ú-maš-šar-an-ni
Now, in front of your divine greatness,
e-nin-na ina ma-har ilu-ti-ka rabîtiti
70. I burn them, I incinerate them completely with pure sulphur.
70. ina kibri-dit ellititi a-qal-li-šú-nu-ti a-šar-rap-šú-nu-ti
Look at me, master, tear them out of my body,
nap-li-sa-an-ni-ma be-lum ú-suh-šú-nu-ti ina zumri-ia5
Dissolve their spell!
pu-šur kiš-pi-šú-nu lim-nu-ti
You, Girra, master who walks on my side:
at-ta dgira be-lum a-li-ki i-di-ia
If you keep me alive, I will praise you, I will adore and serve you!
bul-lit-an-ni-ma nar-bi-ka lu-šá-pi dà-li-li-ka lud-lul

75. Incantation to undo a spell with a copper figure and sulphur.
75. INIM-INIM-MA ÚH-BÚR-RU-DA sa-lam siparri kibri-dit-KÉ

Incantation. Burning Girra, first-born of Anu,
ÉN dgira a-ri-ru bu-kur da-nim
Who leads my hearing and speaks my decision, you are;
da-‘-in di-ni-ia at-me-e pi-ris-ti at-ta-ma
You lighten up the darkness,
ik-li-e-ti tu-uš-nam-mar
You bring order to what is disordered, destroyed;
e-šá-a-ti dal-ha-a-ti tu-uš-te-eš-šir
80. To the great gods you grant a resolution,
80. a-na ilimeš rabûtimeš purussâa ta-nam-din
While for you no god makes any decision.
šá la ka-a-ta ilu ma-am-man purussâa ul i-par-ra-as
It is you who give order and direction;
at-ta-ma na-din ur-ti ù te-e-me
You bind the evil-doer,
e-piš lum-ni at-ta-ma ar-hiš ta-kam-mu
You strike quickly the evil enemy.
lim-nu ai-bu ta-kaš-šad ar-hiš
85. I, N., son of his god, whose god is N., and whose goddess is N.,
85. a-na-ku annanna mar ili-šu šá ilu-šú an-nanna dištar-šu annannitum
With witchcraft I am bewitched: this is why I have come to you!
ina kiš-pi lu-up-pu-ta-ku-ma ma-har-ka az-ziz
In front of god and king I am encircled: that is why I have turned to you!
ina pân ili u šarri na- ..zu-ra-ku-ma du .. ana mah-ri-ka
To whomever sees me, I am an unpleasant sight: this is why I have thrown myself in front of you!
elî a-me-ri-ia mar-sa-ku-ma šá-pal-ka ak-mis
Great Girra, radiant god!
dgira šur-bu-ú ilu el-lu
90. Now, before your great divinity,
90. e-nin-na ina ma-har ilu-ti-ka rabîtiti
I have made two images of the warlock and the witch, in copper, by your hand;
2 salmanimeš lúkaššapi u fkaššapti šá siparri e-pu-uš qa-tuk-ka
Before you I have crossed them, I have given them to you.
ma-har-ka ú-gir-šú-nu-ti-ma ka-a-šá ap-kid-ka
They may die; but may I live!
šu-nu li-mu-tu-ma ana-ku lu-ub-lut

They may detour; but may I go straight!
šu-nu li-ti-ib-bi-ru-ma ana-ku lu-ši-ir
95. They may reach their limit; but may I grow!
95. šu-nu liq-tu-ú-ma ana-ku lu-um-id
They may become weak, but I strong!
šu-nu li-ni-šu-ma ana-ku lu-ud-nin
Powerful Girra, illustrious among the gods,
dgira šar-hu si-ru šá ilimeš
Who seizes the evil and the enemy: seize them while I do not perish,
ka-šid lim-ni u ai-bi kušus-su-nu-ti-ma a-na-ku la ah-hab-bil
That I, your servant, may stay alive, may be safe, may stay standing in front of you!
ana-ku ardu-ka lul-ub-lut lu-uš-lim-ma ma-har-ka lu-uz-ziz
100. You are my god, you are my master!
100. at-ta-ma ili-ia5 at-ta-ma be-li
You are my judge, you are my helper!
at-ta-ma da-ai-ni at-ta-ma ri-su-ú-a
You are my avenger! Incantation formula.
at-ta-ma mu-tir-ru šá gi-mil-li-ia TU6.ÉN

Incantation to undo the spell with a bronze figure.
INIM-INIM-MA ÚH-BÚR-RU-DA sa-lam siparri-KÉ

Incantation. Burning Girra, first-born son of Anu!
ÉN dgira a-ri-ru mar da-nim qar-du
105. You are the sternest among your brothers,
105. iz-zu ahemeš-šú at-ta
You who makes right like Sin and Šamaš.
šá ki-ma dsin u dšamaš ta-da-an-nu di-i-nu
Give me justice, make my decision!
di-i-ni di-ni purussâ-ai purusus
Burn the warlock and the witch!
qu-mi kaš-šá-pi ù kaš-šap-ti
Girra, burn the warlock and the witch!
dgira qu-mu lúkaššapi u fkaššapti
110. Girra, fry the warlock and the witch!
110. dgira qu-li lúkaššapi u fkaššapti
Girra, incinerate them!
dgira qu-mi-šú-nu-ti
Girra, fry them!
dgira qu-li-šú-nu-ti
Girra, get them!
dgira ku-šu-us-su-nu-ti
Girra, devour away!
dgira a-ru-uh-šú-nu-ti
115. Girra, take them away!
115. dgira su-ta-bil-šú-nu-ti
They who inflict the evil witchcraft and malevolent spell,
e-piš kiš-pi lim-nu-ti u ru-hi-e la tabûtimeš
Who thought of me with evil intention:
šá a-na li-mut-ti ik-pu-du-ni ia-a-ši
Let a criminal take their possessions!
dan-nu ma-ak-kur-šu-nu šu-ul-qi
Let a thief steal their property!
šu-bil bu-šá-šu-nu ik-ki-e-ma
120. Let a looter invade their residence!
120. elî ma-na-ha-te-šu-nu hab-ba-ta šur-bi-is
Furious Girra, perfect and all-powerful,
dgira iz-zu git-ma-lu ra-šub-bu
In Ekur where you go back, as fast as possible calm down!
ina é-kur a-šar tal-lak-ti-ka tu-šap-šah-šu-nu-ti a-di sur-riš
By the word of Ea, your procreator, and of Šamaš, I have become radiant;
ina a-mat dé-a ba-ni-ka ù dšamaš an-nam-ru
May the seven Aphkallu of Eridu think of them with evil intention! Incantation formula.
7 apqallê šuut eri-du10 lik-pi-du-šú-nu-ti ana limnuttimtim TU6.ÉN

125. Incantation to undo the spell with an image made of dough.
125. INIM-INIM-MA ÚH-BÚR-RU-DA sa-lam liši-KÉ

Incantation. Powerful Girra, terrible weather!
ÉN dgira gaš-ru u4-mu na-an-du-ru
You lead gods and princes right!
tuš-te-eš-šir ilimeš u ma-al-ki
You lead the trial of the oppressed man and the oppressed woman;
ta-da-a-ni di-ÉN hab-li u ha-bil-ti
Come to my trial! Like Šamaš the hero,
ina di-ni-ia i-ziz-za-am-ma ki-ma dšamaš qu-ra-du
130. Lead my trial, and make my decision.
130. di-i-ni di-ni purussâ-ai purusus
Burn the warlock and the witch!
qu-mi kaš-ša-pi u kaš-šap-ti
Eat my enemies! Devour those who wish evil!
a-kul ai-bi-ia a-ru-uh lim-nu-ti-ia
May they catch your ferocious weather! Incantation formula.
ûm-ka iz-zu lik-šu-us-su-nu-ti TU6.ÉN

Incantation to undo the spell with an image made of bronze.
INIM-INIM-MA ÚH-BÚR-RU-DA sa-lam titi-KÉ

135. Incantation. Majestic Girra, first-born of Anu!
135. ÉN dgira šar-hu bu-kur da-nim
Radiant offspring of the great Šalaš!
i-lit-ti ellitimtim šá-qu-tum dša-la-aš
Majestic, forever becoming, constant word of the gods,
šar-hu id-di-šu-u zik-ri ilimeš ka-ai-nu
Who distributes the offerings to the gods the Igigi,
na-din nin-da-bi-e ana ilimeš digigê
Who gives brilliance to the Anunnaki, the great gods!
šá-kin na-mir-ti a-na da-nun-na-ki ilimeš rabûtimeš
140. Furious Girra, who destroys the conduit,
140. iz-zu dgira muš-har-mit a-pi
Strong Girra, who destroys wood and stone,
dgira al-la-lu-ú mu-ab-bit isemeš u ab-nemeš
Who burns the evil offspring of the warlock and the witch,
qa-mu-ú lim-nu-ti zêr lúkaššapi u fkaš-šapti
Who destroys the wicked offspring of the warlock and the witch!
mu-hal-liq rag-gi zêr lúkaššapi u fkaš-šapti
Today come to my trial furiously,
ina u4-mi an-ni-i ina di-ni-ia i-ziz-za-am-ma
145. You, who makes submission … seize the evil!
145. e-piš bar-ti te-na-na-a ku-šu-ud lim-nu
As these figures drip, melt and dissolve,
kima salmânimeš an-nu-ti i-hu-lu i-zu-bu u it-ta-at-tu-ku
So may the warlock and the witch drip, melt, and dissolve!
lúkaššapu u fkaššaptu li-hu-lu li-zu-bu u lit-ta-at-tu-ku
Incantation to release witchcraft with a figure made of asphalt.
INIM-INIM-MA ÚH-BÚR-RU-DA sa-lam itti-KÉ

Incantation. Keš, Libeš, Kideš!
ÉN ki-e-eš li-bi-iš ki-di-eš
150. Arabbeš Nadreš!
150. a-ra-ab-bi-eš na-ad-ri-eš
Who carries the torch, rides the wind!
nâš ti-pa-a-ri ra-kib šá-a-ri
Lirun Hunti!
li-ru-un hu-un-ti-i
Kasayašu Izannun!
ka-sá-a-šu i-za-an-nun
Rain like Heaven on them!
ki-ma šá-ma-me el-ku-un
155. Like a snake may they come in, go hither!
155. ki-ma siri li-te-ru-ba-ma i-sá-a
May the furious great incantation of Ea the magician,
lik-tum-ku-nu-si siptu iz-zi-tú rabîtutú šá dé-a mašmaši
Fall on you of Ninahaquddu,
ù tu6-kug-ga-e šá dnin-a-ha-qud-du
May they destroy your appearance! Incantation formula.
li-la-ap-pit bu-un-na-an-ni-ku-nu TU6.ÉN

Incantation to undo the spell with a figure of kuspum.
INIM-INIM-MA ÚH-BÚR-RU-DA sa-lam kuspi-KÉ

160. Incantation. They did magic, they did ceaseless magic!
160. ÉN e-pu-šu-ni e-te-ni-ip-pu-šu-ni
They tried to roll me like a ball of wool!
ki-ma ki-i-ti ana ka-pa-li-ia
They tried to clap me to the ground like a bird-clapper!
ki-ma hu-ha-ri ana sa-ha-pi-ia
They tried to destroy me like a chip of rock!
ki-ma ka-a-pi ana a-ba-ti-ia
They tried to cover me like a net!
ki-ma še-e-ti ana ka-ta-me-ia
165. They tried to roll me like a wick!
165. ki-ma pi-til-ti ana pa-ta-li-ia
They tried to climb me like a wall of clay!
ki-ma pi-ti-iq-ti ana na-bal-ku-ti-ia
They tried to fill me with dirty water!
ki-ma mêmeš mu-sa-a-ti a-sur-ra-a ana mal-li-ia
They tried to sweep me out the door like household refuse!
ki-ma šu-šu-rat bîti ana bâbi ana na-sa-ki-ia
But I, by order of Marduk, the master of the holy evening,
ana-ku ina qi-bit dmarduk bêl nu-bat-ti
170. And Asarluhi, the master of magic,
170. u dasari-lú-du10 bêl a-ši-pu-ti
The sorcerer and sorceress,
e-pi-šu u e-piš-ti
Like a ball of wool I roll them!
ki-ma ki-i-ti a-kap-pil-šu-nu-ti
Like a bird-clapper I throw them to the ground!
ki-ma hu-ha-ri a-sa-hap-šu-nu-ti
Like a chip of rock I destroy them!
ki-ma ka-a-pi ab-ba-šu-nu-ti
175. Like a net I cover them!
175. ki-ma še-e-ti a-kat-tam-šu-nu-ti
Like a wick I roll them!
ki-ma pi-til-ti a-pat-til-šu-nu-ti
Like a wall of clay I climb them!
ki-ma pi-ti-iq-ti ab-ba-lak-kit-šu-nu-ti
Like dirty water I fill them!
ki-ma mêmeš mu-sa-a-ti a-sur-ra-a ú-ma-al-la-šú-nu-ti
Like household refuse I sweep them out the door!
ki-ma šu-šu-rat bîti ana bâbi a-na-as-sik-šú-nu-ti
180. May the image of the warlock and the witch become ashes! Incantation.
180. titalliš lil-li-ka salam lúkaššapi u fkaššapti ÉN

Incantation to undo a spell with a figure of asphalt covered with plaster.
INIM-INIM-MA ÚH-BÚR-RU-DA sa-lam ittî šá gassa bullulu-KÉ

Incantation. Who are you, witch, who took the clay from my river?
ÉN at-ti man-nu fkaššaptu šá ina nâri im-lu-‘ tita-ai
Who burned my figures in her dark house?
ina bîti e-ti-i ú-tam-me-ru salmanimeš-ia
Who spilled my water over a grave?
ina qab-rì it-mi-ru mu-ú-a
185. Who gathered sprigs of my fruit trees in the corners?
185. ina tub-qi-na-ti ú-laq-qí-tu hu-sa-bi-e-a
Who cut the seam of my robe in the house of the tanner?
ina bit lúašlaki ib-tu-qu sissikti-ia
Who gathered up the dust of my feet on the threshold?
ina askuppati iš-bu-šu epirhi.a šêpê-ia
I sent to the mouth of the harbour, where tallow was bought for you;
áš-pur ana bâb ka-a-ri i-šá-mu-ú-ni li-pa-a-ki
I sent to the moat, where clay was picked up for you;
áš-pur ana hi-rit ali iq-ri-su-ú-ni ti-i-ta-ki
190. I sent against you a portable furnace,
190. áš-ta-pa-rak-kim-ma a-li-ku ti-nu-ru
The fire already lit,
dgira mu-un-na-ah-zu
The forever becoming Girra, constant light of the gods;
dgira id-di-šu-u nur ilimeš ka-ai-nu
Sin in Ur, Šamaš in Larsa,
dsin ina uruki dšamaš ina larsaki
Nergal together with his people,
dnergal a-di um-ma-na-ti-šú
195. Ištar in Akkad at her house:
195. dištar a-ga-deki a-di ku-um-mi-šá
May they seize the offspring of the warlock and the witch,
a-na la-qa-at zêri lúkaššapi u fkaššapti
However numerous they are,
ma-la ba-šu-ú
May they kill the witch, but I stay alive!
fkaššapta li-du-ku-ma ana-ku lu-ub-lut
Because I did not bewitch her, she bewitched me!
áš-šu la e-pu-šá-áš-šim-ma i-pu-šá
200. Because I did not use sorcery on her, she used sorcery on me!
200. áš-šu la as-hu-ra-áš-šim-ma is-hu-ra
She trusts the spell that she designed,
ši-i tak-lat ana kiš-pi šá kit-pu-du-ú-ti
But I trust my judge Gibil!
ù a-na-ku a-na ez-zu dgibil da-a-a-nu
Girra, burn her! Girra, incinerate her!
dgira qu-mi-ši dgira qu-li-ši
Girra, strike her! Incantation formula.
dgira šu-ta-bil-ši TU6.ÉN

205. Incantation with a clay figure dipped in tallow.
205. INIM-INIM-MA ÚH-BÚR-RU-DA sa-lam titi šá lipâ bullulu-ké

Incantation. Who are you, witch, who visits me continuously?
ÉN at-ti man-nu kaššaptu šá tub-ta-na-in-ni
Who continuously looks for me with evil intentions?
a-na li-mut-ti taš-te-ni-‘-in-ni
Who continuously looks for me with unfavourable intentions?
a-na la ta-ab-ti ta-as-sa-na-ah-hur-in-ni
I do not know your city, I do not know your house, I do not know your name, I do not
know your residence.
al-ki ul i-di bit-ki ul i-di šum-ki ul i-di šu-bat-ki ul i-di
210. May the Šedu visit you,
210. dšêdêmeš li-ba-‘-ki
May the Utukku look for you,
utukkêmeš liš-te-‘-u-ki
May the Etemmu hover around you,
etimmêmeš lis-sah-ru-ú-ki
May a bad epilespy fall upon you!
be-en-nu la ta-a-bu eli-ki lim-qut
So may the evil stool “lift your head,”
rabisêmeš li-mut-ti li-kil-lu rêš-ki
215. May the god … and Šulpaea kill you!
215. d………….u dšul-pa-è-a li-na-ru-ki
May the god … … wash you out!
d…………. en ši ……… -ki li-ip-šit
May furious Gibil, who knows no pity, steal reason from you!
dgibil iz-zu la pa-du-u lìb-bi-ki lí-is-su-uh
May Gula, the great physician, strike your cheek!
dgu-la a-zu-gal-la-tu rabitutu li-it-ki li-im-has
May furious Gibil burn your body!
dgibil iz-zu zu-mur-ki li-ih-mut
220. Pure daughter of the sky-god Anu,
220. ….. ellitumtum mârat da-nim šá šamê
Who is spread in the vessel,
šá ina kar-pat na-an-hu-za-at [isatu]
… of the heart … Gibil the hero …
… libbi …. dgibil qar-du sa-ma-a …
… … which the sky,
……. ….. šá-ma-mi ik-šu-du
… … burn …
…………….. qu-li i kat-ta………
225. Incinerate as fast as possible! Of my warlock and my witch,
225. qu-mi ha-an-tiš šá lúkaššapi-ia5 u fkaššapti-ia5
Uproot their life!
na-piš-ta-šú-nu lib-li-ma
Let me live, so I can praise your greatness;
ia-a-ši bul-lit-an-ni-ma nar-bi-ka lu-šá-pi
So I can adore you!
dà-li-li-ka lud-lul TU6.ÉN

Incantation to undo the spell with a figure of tamarisk or cedar-wood.
INIM-INIM-MA ÚH-BÚR-RU-DA sa-lam isbini salam iserini-KÉ

230. Incantation. The witch, who goes on the roads.
230. ÉN kaššaptu mut-tal-lik-tum šá sûqâ-timeš
Tablet II of Maqlu.
tuppu IIkam ma-aq-lu-ú

May 30 2013

Maqlu Tablet 1 Transliteration/Translation

Maqlu Tablet I

Incantation. I have called upon you, gods of night,
ÉN al-si-ku-nu-ši ilimeš mu-ši-ti
With you I have called upon night, the veiled bride,
it-ti-ku-nu al-si mu-ši-tum kal-la-tum ku-túm-tum
I have called on twilight, midnight, and dawn,
al-si ba-ra-ri-tum qab-li-tum u na-ma-ri-tum
Because a sorceress has bewitched me,
áš-šú fkaššaptu ú-kaš-šip-an-ni
5. A cunning woman has accused me,
5. e-li-ni-tum ub-bi-ra-an-ni
Caused my god and my goddess to be estranged from me;
ili-ia5 ù distar-ia5 ú-šis-su-ú eli-ia5
I have become pathetic to those who see me,
elî a-me-ri-ia5 am-ru-u a-na-ku
I am unable to rest day or night,
im-di-ku la a-la-lu mûša ù ur-ra
And a gag continually filling my mouth,
qu-ú im-ta-na-al-lu-ú pî-ia
10. Has kept food far from my mouth,
10. ú-pu-un-ti pi-ia5 ip-ru-su
Has lessened the water passing through my throat;
mêmeš maš-ti-ti-ia5 ú-ma-u-ú
My praise has become lament, my rejoicing mourning:
e-li-li nu-bu-ú hi-du-ti si-ip-di
Stand by me great gods, give heed to my suit,
i-zi-za-nim-ma ilimeš rabutimeš ši-ma-a da-ba-bi
Judge my case, grant me a decision.
di-ni di-na a-lak-ti lim-da
15. I have formed a figure of my sorcerer and my sorceress,
15. e-pu-uš alam amelkaššapi-ia5 u fkaššapti-ia5
Of my enchanter and my enchantress;
šá e-piš-ia5 u muš-te-piš-ti-ia5
Have laid them in the fire for you to bring me a judgement;
áš-kun ina šap-li-ku-nu-ma a-dib-bu-ub di-ni
Because she did evil against me, false charges she conjured up against me:
áš-šú i-pu-šá lim-ni-e-ti iš-te-‘-a la ba-na-a-ti
May she die, but I live!
ši-i li-mut-ma a-na-ku lu-ub-lut
20. Her bewitchments, her magic, her spells must be undone!
20. kiš-pu-šá ru-hu-šá ru-sú-u-šá lip-pa-áš-ru
The tamarisk, tall at the crown, purifies me!
ibînu lil-lil-an-ni šá qim-ma-tú ša-ru-ú
The date-palm, which catches all the wind, frees me!
igišimmaru lip-šur-an-ni ma-hi-rat ka-lu-ú šáru
The maštakal-plant, which fills the Earth, cleanses me!
šammaštakal li-bi-ban-ni šá iritimtim ma-la-a-ta
The pine-cone, which is full of seeds, frees me!
terînatu lip-šur-an-ni šá še-am ma-la-a-ta
25. In front of you I became light, as light as grass;
25. ina mah-ri-ku-nu e-te-lil ki-ma šamsassati
I am clean and pure, like nard.
e-te-bi-ib az-za-ku ki-ma la-ar-di
The spell of the sorceress is hateful;
tu-ú-šá šá fkaššapti li-mut-te
Let her word come back in her mouth, let her tongue be tied!
tu-ur-rat amât-sa ana pî-šá lišân-šá qa-a-rat
Let the gods of the night overcome her spell!
in elî kiš-pi-šá lim-ha-u-ši ilimeš mu-ši ti
30. Let the three night-watches dissolve her evil spell!
30. 3 maarâtimeš šá mu-ši lip-šu-ru ru-hi-šá lim-nu-ti
Let her mouth be tallow, let her tongue be salt,
pú-šá lu-ú lipû lišân-šá lu-ú âbtu
Which spoke the baneful magic formula, let it disintegrate like tallow!
šá iq-bu-ú amât limuttimtim-ia5 ki-ma lipî lit-ta-tuk
The magic she has done, let it dissolve like salt!
šá i-pu-šú kiš-pi ki-ma âbti liš-har-mi
Her knots are undone, her machinations are destroyed,
qi-is-ru-šá pu-u-u-ru ip-še-tu-šá hul-lu-qú
35. All her words fill the steppe,
35. kal a-ma-tu-šá ma-la-a êra
Upon this command that the gods of the night have given! Incantation formula.
ina qi-bit iq-bu-ú ilimeš mu-ši-tum TU6 ÉN

Incantation. O Netherworld, Netherworld, yes Netherworld!
ÉN irsitumtum irsitumtum irsitumtum-ma
Gilgameš is the master of your curses!
dgilgameš bêl ma-mi-ti-ku-nu
What sorcery you have performed, I know it;
min-mu-ú at-tu-nu te-pu-šá ana-ku i-di
40. What sorcery I have performed, you do not know it.
40. min-mu-ú ana-ku ip-pu-šu at-tu-nu ul ti-da-a
What sorcery my sorceresses practiced is confused, and nobody can undo it, it has no
min-mu-ú fkaššapatimeš-ia5 ip-pu-šá e-ga-a pa-ti-ra pa-šir lâ
unbinder! Incantation formula.
irašši TU6.ÉN

Incantation. My city Zabban! My city Zabban!
ÉN ali-ia5 zab-ban ali-ia5 zab-ban
My city Zabban has two gates:
šá ali-ia5 zab-ban 2-ta abullatimeš-šú
One to its east, the second to its west.
1-it ana sit dšamši šá-ni-tu ana erib dšamši
45. One to its sunrise, one to its sunset.
45. 1-it ana si-it dšamšiši šá-ni-tu ana e-rib dšamšiši
I am lifting toward you the bloom of maštakal-plant;
a-na-ku e-ra ha-as-ba šammaštakal na-šá-ku
To the gods of the sky I bring water.
a-na ilimeš šá šamêe mêmeš a-nam-din
As I do cleanse you,
kîma ana-ku ana ka-a-šú-nu ul-la-lu-ku-nu-ši
So cleanse me! Incantation formula.
at-tu-nu ia-a-ši ul-li-la-in-ni TU6.ÉN

50. Incantation. I have barred the river-crossing, I have barred the harbour,
50. ÉN ak-la ni-bi-ru ak-ta-li ka-a-ru
I held back the magic spells of all countries;
ak-li ip-ši-ši-na šá ka-li-ši-na ma-ta-a-ti
Anu and Antu have sent me.
da-nim u an-tum iš-pu-ru-in-ni
Whom should I send to Belit-seri?
man-nu lu-uš-pur a-na dbe-lit sêri
In the mouth of my warlock and my witch stuff a gag!
ana pî lúkaššapi-ia5 u fkaššapti-ia5 i-di-i hur-gul-li
55. Through the incantation of the sage of the gods, Marduk!
55. i-di-i šipat-su šá apqal ilimeš dmarduk
They should call you, but do not answer them;
lil-sa-ki-ma la tap-pa-li-ši-na-a-ti
They should address you, but do not listen to them.
liq-ba-nik-ki-ma la ta-šim-me-ši-na-a-ti
Should I call you, answer me;
lu-ul-si-ki-ma a-pu-ul-in-ni
Should I address you, listen to me,
lu-qu-ba-ki-ma ši-min-ni ia-a-ti
60. To the order that Anu, Antu and Belet-seri have given! Incantation formula.
60. ina qí-bit iq-bu-u da-nim an-tum u dbe-lit sêri TU6.ÉN

Incantation. I am sent, I go; I am ordered, I speak;
ÉN šap-ra-ku al-lak ‘-ú-ra-ku a-dib-bu-ub
Against my warlock and witch Asarluhi, the master of the art of incantations, has sent me.
a-na li-it lúkaššapi-ia5 u fkaššapti-ia5 dasar-lú-du10 bêl a-ši-pu-ti iš-pur-an-ni
Be aware of what is in the sky! Take notice what is on the Earth!
šá šamê qu-la šá irsitimtim ši-ma-a
Be aware of what is in the river! Take notice of the word of what is on the land!
šá nâri qu-la-ni šá na-ba-li ši-ma-a amât-su
65. Wind that is the carrier of the stick and hammer, strike it!
65. šaru na-zi-qu tur-ru-uk e tal-lik
The image of the stick is broken, strike it!
šá gišhatti u gišmar-te-e tur-ru-uk e tal-lak
Let them stand on the way of the daughter of the great gods,
li-iz-zi-iz har-ra-an mârat ilimeš ra-butimeš
Until I speak the word of my warlock and my witch.
a-di a-mat lúkaššapi-ia5 u fkaššapti-ia5 a-qab-bu-ú
The lamb will free! The sheep will free!
šu’u i-pa-áš-šar immeru i-pa-áš-šar
70. Their word may be loosed, but my word will not be loosed.
70. a-mat-su-nu lip-pa-šir-ma a-ma-ti la ip-pa-áš-šar
The word that I speak, their word cannot impede it!
a-mat a-qab-bu-ú a-mat-su-nu ana pân amâti-ia5 lâ iparrik
Upon the order of Asarluhi, the master of the art of incantations! Incantation formula.
ina qi-bit dasari-lú-du10 bêl a-ši-pu-ti TU6.ÉN

Incantation. O Nusku, these images of my sorcerer,
ÉN dnusku an-nu-tum salmânimeš e-piš-ia5
These images of my sorceress;
an-nu-ti salmânimeš e-piš-ti-ia5
75. These images of my warlock and my witch,
75. salmânimeš lúkaššapi-ia5 u fkaššapti-ia5
These images of my enchanter and my enchantress,
salmânimeš e-piš-ia5 u muš-te-piš-ti-ia5
These images of my stupefier and my stupefyress,
salmânimeš sa-hir-ia5 u sa-hir-ti-ia5
These images of my bewitcher and my bewitchress,
salmânimeš ra-hi-ia5 u ra-hi-ti-ia5
These images of my lord opponent and my lady opponent,
salmânimeš bêl ik-ki-ia5 u bêlit ik-ki-ia5
80. These images of my lord enemy and my lady enemy,
80. salmânimeš bêl sir-ri-ia5 u bêlit sir-ri-ia5
These images of my lord persecutor and my lady persecutor,
salmânimeš bêl ri-di-ia5 u bêlit ri-di-ia5
These images of my lord accuser and my lady accuser,
salmânimeš bêl di-ni-ia5 u bêlit di-ni-ia5
These images of my lord slanderer and my lady slanderer,
salmânimeš bêl amâti-ia5 u bêlit amâti-ia5
These images of my lord detractor and my lady detractor,
salmânimeš bêl daba-bi-ia5 u bêlit daba-bi-ia5
85. These images of my lord nemesis and my lady nemesis,
85. salmânimeš bêl egirri-ia5 u bêlit egirri-ia5
These images of my lord evil-doer and my lady evil-doer,
salmânimeš bêl limutti-ia5 u bêlit limut-ti-ia5
Judge Nusku, you know them, I do not know them,
dnusku da-a-a-nu tidu-šú-nu-ti-ma ana-ku la i-du-šú-nu-ti
Their trick, magic, spell, evil plotting,
šá kiš-pu ru-hu-u ru-su-u up-šá-še-e lim-nu-ti
Sorcery, pressure, evil word, love, hate,
ip-šá bar-tum a-mat li-mut-ti râmu zêru
90. Fact-twisting, murder, paralysis of the mouth,
90. dipalaa zitarrutâa kadibbidâa kúš-hunga
Change of heart, glowing of face, folly,
šabalbalâa su-ud pa-ni ša-ni-e tè-mu
Everything that exists, everything they have drawn to them,
ma-la ibšu-u-ni is-hu-ru-ni u-šá-as-hi-ru-ni
These are they; these are their images,
an-nu-tum šú-nu an-nu-ti salmânimeš-šu-nu
Because they cannot stand for themselves, I lift them toward you.
kima šu-nu la iz-za-az-zu salmânimeš-šu-nu na-šá-ku
95. You, Nusku, judge, who catches the bad and the enemies, catch them before I am destroyed!
95. at-ta dnusku daiânu ka-šid lim-nu u a-a-bi kušus-su-nu-ti-ma ana-ku la ah-hab-bil
Those that made my images, have imitated my shape,
šá salmânimeš-ia5 ib-nu-u bu-un-na-an-ni-ia5 ú-maš-ši-lu4
They attack my face, they tied my neck,
pani-ia5 ú-sab-bi-tú kišâdi-ia5 ú-tar-ri-ru
They hit my breast, they bent my back,
irti-ia5 id-i-bu esemti-ia5 ik-pu-pu
They made my arms weak, they robbed my virility,
a-hi-ia5 un-ni-šu ni-iš lib-bi-ia5 is-ba-tu
100. They made the heart of god angry with me, they weakened my strength,
100. lib-bi ilimeš itti-ia5 ú-za-an-nu-ú emûqi-ia5 un-ni-šu
They shook the strength away from my arms, they bound my knees with paralysis,
li-it a-hi-ia5 iš-pu-ku bir-ki-ia5 ik-su-ú
They filled me with fainting,
man-ga lu-‘-tú ú-mal-lu-in-ni
They let me eat cursed food,
akâlemeš kaš-šá-pu-ti ú-šá-ki-lu-in-ni
They let me drink cursed water,
mêmeš kaš-šá-pu-ti iš-qu-in-ni
105. They washed me with dirty water,
105. rim-ki lu-‘-ti ú-ra-me-ku-in-ni
They smeared me with the juice of bad weeds,
nap-šal-ti šam-me lim-nu-ti ip-šu-šu-in-ni
They mocked me like a dead person,
ana lúmiti i-hi-ru-in-ni
They put my life-essence in the grave,
mêmeš napištimtim-ia5 ina qab-rì uš-ni-lu
They made god, king, master and prince angry with me;
ilu šarru bêlu u rubû it-ti-ia ú-za-an-nu-ú
110. You, O Girra who burns the warlock and witch,
110. at-ta dgira qa-mu-ú lúkaššapu u fkaššaptu
Who kills the bad offspring of warlock and witch,
mu-hal-liq rag-gi zêr lúkaššapi u fkaš-šapti
Who destroys the bad people; that is you!
mu-ab-bit lim-nu-ti at-ta-ma
I have called on you, like Šamaš the judge,
ana-ku al-si-ka ki-ma dšamaš daiânu
Right me, make my decision!
di-i-ni di-ni purussâ-ai purusus
115. Burn the warlock and witch,
115. qu-mu lúkaššapu u fkaššaptu
Eat my enemies, consume the ones who wish me evil!
a-kul ai-bi-ia a-ru-uh lim-nu-ti-ia
May they catch your tempest!
ûm-ka iz-zu lik-šu-šu-nu-ti
May they find their end like sewer water!
ki-ma mêmeš nâdi ina ti-qi liq-tu-ú
May their fingers like those of stonemasons be cut off!
ki-ma ti-rik abnêmeš ubânâtimeš-šú-nu liq-ta-as-si-sú
120. Upon your majestic command, which does not change,
120. ina qi-bi-ti-ka sir-ti šá lâ innakaruru
And your promise, which does not waver! Incantation formula.
ù an-ni-ka ki-nim šá lâ innennuú TU.ÉN

Incantation. Mighty Nusku, offspring of Anu,
ÉN dnusku šur-bu-ú i-lit-ti da-nim
True image of your father, first born of Enlil,
tam-šil abi bu-kur den-lil
Offspring of the Apsu, product of the lord of Heaven and Earth,
tar-bit apsî bi-nu-ut dbêl šamêe irsitim
125. I picked up the torch, I have illuminated you,
125. áš-ši tipâra ú-nam-mir-ka ka-a-šá
The warlock who has cursed me; now curse him with the spell that he used on me!
lúkaššapu ik-šip-an-ni kiš-pi ik-šip-an-ni ki-šip-šú
The witch who has cursed me; now curse her with the spell that she used on me!
fkaššaptu tak-šip-an-ni kiš-pi tak-šip-an-ni ki-šip-ši
The sorcerer who has used sorcery on me; now use sorcery on him with the spell that he used on me!
e-pi-šu i-pu-šá-an-ni ip-šú i-pu-šá-an-ni e-pu-su
The sorceress who has used sorcery on me; now use sorcery on her with the spell that she used on me!
e-piš-tu te-pu-šá-an-ni ip-šú te-pu-šá-an-ni e-pu-si
130. The enchantress who has enchanted me; now enchant her with the spell that she used on me!
130. muš-te-piš-tu te-pu-šá-an-ni ip-šú te-pu-šá-an-ni e-pu-si
Who made these images in my image; who reproduced my shape;
šá salmânimeš ana pi-i salmânimeš-ia5 ib-nu-ú bu-un-na-an-ni-ia5 ú-maš-ši-lu
They took my saliva, they ripped my hair,
ru’ti-ia5 il-qu-ú šârti-ia5 im-lu-su
They cut off the hem of my robe, and took the earth from where my feet fell.
sissikti-ia5 ib-tu-qu e-ti-qu epirhi.a šêpê-ia5 is-bu-su
O Girra, the hero, undo their incantation! Incantation formula.
dgira qar-du šipat-su-nu li-pa-áš-šir TU6.ÉN

135. Incantation. I raise up the torch and burn the figures,
135. ÉN anašiši ti-pa-ru salmânimeš-šú-nu a-qal-lu
Of the Utukku, the Šedu, the Rabisu, the Etemmu,
šá ú-tuk-ku še-e-du ra-bi-su e-tim-mu
The Lamaštu, the Labasu, the Ahhazu,
la-maš-ti la-ba-si ah-ha-zu
The Lilu, the Lilitu, the Ardat Lili,
lúlilu flilitu ardat lili
And any evil that seizes humanity;
ù mimma lim-nu mu-sab-bi-tu a-me-lu-ti
140. Dissolve, melt, drip ever away!
140. hu-la zu-ba u i-ta-at-tu-ka
May your smoke rise ever skyward,
qu-tur-ku-nu li-tel-li šamê
May the sun extinguish your embers!
la-‘-mi-ku-nu li-bal-li dšamši
May the son of Ea, the magus, extinguish your emanations! Incantation formula.
lip-ru-us ha-a-a-ta-ku-nu mâr dé-a maš-mašu TU6.ÉN

Incantation. Mighty Nusku, counsellor of the great gods!
ÉN dnusku šur-bu-ú ma-lik ilimeš rabû-timeš
145. Tablet I of Maqlu.
145. tuppu Ikam ma-aq-lu-ú

May 27 2013

Jinn Physics

Can the jinn be explained in terms of our current knowledge of basic physics? Twenty years ago, in an article called ‘Jinn from a Scientific (?) Viewpoint’, UFO writer Chris Line made a (for some, surprisingly level-headed) case that they can.

His theory is that the jinn are ‘beings which dwell on a parallel level to man, but due to their existing at a different vibratory rate, they are not normally visible to us or detectable by us.’ Despite the fact that jinn are usually invisible, when they materialize, an energy change results – one that scientists can theoretically measure in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Line’s starting point is Islamic tradition, in particular the Qur’an, which contains information of a metaphysical nature, some of which deals with the jinn. As we have seen, the jinn are described as having ‘bodies of essential flame’, ‘smokeless flame’, or ‘smokeless fire’.

Line proposes that jinn’s bodies radiate energy from the infrared part of the spectrum. Angels, meanwhile, are described in the Qur’an as having ‘bodies of light’. Since angels are generally presumed to be invisible to humans, Line suggests that angels’ bodies are made of an invisible energy from the opposite end of the spectrum – that is, the ultraviolet.

Microwave radiation is found just below infrared in the electromagnetic spectrum. Line’s theory suggests that man’s release of microwaves into the Earth’s atmosphere may well disrupt or disturb the bodies of the jinn and/or the medium in which they live.

Islamic tradition maintains that jinn can materialize or vanish at will. According to Line, this suggests one of three things:

1 The jinn are able to control the matter that we call ‘everyday reality’,
2. They possess control over certain aspects of the human psyche and can create in people’s minds the subjective experience of matter; or
3. They can create external and very realistic illusions in the same manner that our technology creates holograms. (This last suggestion may include the first.)

Various researchers on the cutting edge of quantum physics, such as the Australian physicist Paul Davies, and in borderline medicine, such as biologist and human aura scanner Harry Old field, have speculated about the possible existence of some kind of blueprint for physical beings and objects – perhaps an electromagnetic lattice or hologram that in effect instructs each atom or molecule what to do and where to go.

Such speculation arises quite naturally because man’s present scientific knowledge is inadequate to explain the high degree of specialization exhibited by many atoms, molecules and biological cells.

Chris Line hypothesises that the jinn are able to construct and destroy these electromagnetic blueprints. He also proposes that these lattices attract, from the surrounding environment, the minerals, gases and other substances required to make up physical forms. When the blueprint is removed or destroyed, the physical form disintegrates.

In ascribing intelligent behaviour to the jinn, Line believes that these beings function on at least two levels: (1) in a system of electromagnetic energy, and (2) as a finer, psychic energy. The first level might be the equivalent of the concept of the ‘etheric’ in the Western mystery tradition – the lowest level of the human energy field or ‘aura’. The second might be the same as what this same tradition calls ‘astral’ or higher-level energy, he says.

Line says he conducted an investigation of the Earth’s atmosphere and its practical structure, based on the hypothesis that there are various different planes in the unseen world surrounding the Earth and that these planes might be connected with electromagnetic energy.

High-energy radiation from the Sun and beyond, such as cosmic rays, penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere and get absorbed by the planet, to be re-emitted as infrared radiation, thus producing most of the warmth we experience. Reflected downward by clouds and by the ionosphere and ozone layer, the infrared radiation is restricted to the lower part of the atmosphere.

Lower-frequency infrared penetrates deep into the Earth. ‘Consequently,’ Line proposes, ‘if a being had a body of low-frequency infrared, it could live deep down inside the Earth, interpenetrating what we consider to be solid materiality.’

Considering that angels are believed to possess bodies of light – corresponding to the lighter or finer end of the spectrum, the ultraviolet – one may be able to explain the age-old tradition that angels live ‘in the clouds’, that is, up above the ozone layer where ultraviolet prevails.

Line concludes,

The tradition that unseen beings originate from diff erent areas within the etheric (i.e., dense etheric) may be explained by variations in frequency of infrared: i.e., dense etheric around 1012 Hz and finer etheric nearer 1014 Hz, which would seem to imply that there should be a corresponding frequency gradient through the lower part of the atmosphere, the frequency rising with the height above the Earth’s surface.

He concedes that this hypothesis remains unproven.

* * *
Another scientifi c perspective on the nature of jinn is provided by Professor Ibrahim B. Syed, an American Muslim born in India who teaches nuclear medicine at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. Syed, who also heads the Islamic Research Foundation of Louisville, earned his doctorate in radiological sciences from Johns Hopkins University.

Syed points to the incredibly hot temperatures inside stars such as our Sun, where we find the state of matter called plasma – free-moving electrons and ions, or atoms separated from their electrons. Here, Syed suggests, may be where jinn are born. ‘Plasma could be interpreted as the smokeless Fire described in the Quran,’ he says.

Scientists have long speculated about the existence of life forms in stellar plasma. Some have called such life forms ‘plasma beasts’. Syed contends, Plasma beasts can be construed as nothing but the Jinns. Life on Earth is called Chemical life, whereas the life in the Plasma of the Sun is based on Physical life. In the Plasma, the positively charged ions and the freely floating electrons (negative ions) are both acted on by intense magnetic forces present in the sun (star). The Jinns are interpreted to be composed of patterns of magnetic force, together with groups of moving charges in a kind of symbiosis.

Syed postulates a complex existence for the inhabitants of ‘plasma land’, or the jinn, involving both charges and magnetic forces. ‘The positive and negative ions interact and respond to the presence of magnetic forces,’ he says.

The stable structure and movement of the Jinns is influenced by the magnetic forces. In physics we know that the moving charges influence the motion of these electrical charges or ions. This situation is similar to the influence of proteins and nucleic acids in Earth life. Finally these processes result in a favored form. For this to take place supply of free energy is required which is obtained from the fl ow of radiation within the sun. Therefore the Jinn can be construed to use radiant energy in their vital processes.

The notion that jinn may be plasma life forms has also been advanced by writer-researcher Jay Alfred, author of Our Invisible Bodies: Scientific Evidence for Subtle Bodies and other books. Echoing Chris Line’s theory, Alfred says that as plasma creatures, jinn ‘exist at a different “vibratory rate” or “energy level” and, therefore, are not normally visible or detectable by us,’ he says. ‘In other words, they can be said to be living in a parallel world which interpenetrates our own.’

Alfred believes that most jinn have difficulty seeing humans clearly – that people appear to them as ‘blurred images’. Some jinn can see humans more clearly than others and are the equivalent of psychics in their parallel world. Most jinn would probably regard humans as ‘ghosts’ living as we do in a parallel Earth.

As seen previously, Alfred says that it is clear from descriptions in the Qur’an that jinn, like humans, must be organised into different religions – Muslims, Christians, Jews and others – and have their own mosques, churches and temples. ‘In other words,’ he adds, ‘jinns operate in societies, communities and within political systems and are startlingly similar to humans. Their plasma-based civilization has probably a longer history than ours.’

Plasma life forms would be electromagnetic, employing magnetic fields to form structures and electric fields as ‘agents of transport’ much as water serves as an agent of transport for carbon-based life forms. Alfred asserts that, similar to biological cells in the human body, complex plasma can exist in a liquid-crystal state. ‘Particles in a
liquid-crystal phase are free to move about in much the same way as in a liquid,’ he explains, ‘but as they do so they remain oriented in a certain direction. This feature may make it superior to water in its ability to support life in a higher energy location or universe.’

While the human carbon-based body has a brain composed of billions of neurons and neural networks that can encode vast quantities of information, the jinn’s bioplasma body may possess sophisticated holographic memory systems that employ plasma liquid crystal.

‘If we strip away the folklore and superstitions that have mired the study of the jinns through more than a millennium we will see that there is probably a kernel of truth that can be extracted from the literature to establish jinns as one category of plasma life forms,’ Alfred concludes.

The physics of the jinn phenomenon is a topic not just for fringe science publications. In 2006, The Economist sent a correspondent to Somalia and Afghanistan in search of information on the jinn phenomenon, including its possible scientific basis. Among other things, the reporter found the following:

A Parallel Universe

Islam teaches that jinn resemble men in many ways: they have free will, are mortal, face judgement and fill hell together. Jinn and men marry, have children, eat, play, sleep and husband their own animals. Islamic scholars are in disagreement over whether jinn are physical or insubstantial in their bodies. Some clerics have described jinn as bestial, giant, hideous, hairy, ursine. Supposed yeti sightings in Pakistan’s Chitral are believed by locals to be of jinn. These kinds of jinn can be killed with date or plum stones fired from a sling.

But to more scholarly clerics jinn are little more than an energy, a pulse form of quantum physics perhaps, alive at the margins of sleep or madness, and more often in the whispering of a single unwelcome thought. An extension of this electric description of jinn is that they are not beings at all but thoughts that were in the world before the existence of man. Jinn reflect the sensibilities of those imagining them, just as in Assyrian times they were taken to be the spirits responsible for manias, who melted into the light at dawn.

May 27 2013

On the Term and Concept of Jinn

In order to grasp the purport of the term jinn as used in the Qur’an, we must dissociate our minds from the meaning given to it in Arabian folklore, where it early came to denote all manner of ‘demons’ in the most popular sense of this word. This folkloristic image has somewhat obscured the original connotation of the term and its highly
significant – almost self-explanatory – verbal derivation. The root verb is janna, ‘he [or ‘it’] concealed’ or ‘covered with darkness’: cf. 6:76, which speaks of Abraham ‘when the night over shadowed him with its darkness (janna ‘alayhi)’. Since this verb is also used in the intransitive sense (‘he [or ‘it’] was [or ‘became’] concealed’, resp. ‘covered with darkness’), all classical philologists point out that al-jinn signifies ‘intense [or ‘confusing’] darkness’ and, in a more general sense, ‘that which is concealed from [man’s] senses’, i.e., things, beings, or forces which cannot normally be perceived by man but have, nevertheless, an objective reality, whether concrete or abstract, of their own.

In the usage of the Qur’an, which is certainly different from the usage of primitive folklore, the term jinn has several distinct meanings. The most commonly encountered is that of spiritual forces or beings which, precisely because they have no corporeal existence, are beyond the perception of our corporeal senses: a connotation which includes ‘satans’ and ‘satanic forces’ (shayatin) as well as ‘angels’ and ‘angelic forces’, since all of them are ‘concealed from our senses’ (Jawhari, Raghib). In order to make it quite evident that these invisible manifestations are not of a corporeal nature, the Qur’an states parabolically that the jinn were created out of ‘the fire of scorching winds’ (nar as-samum, in 15:27), or out of ‘a confusing flame of fire’ (marij min nar, in 55:15), or simply ‘out of fi re’ (7:12 and 38:76, in these last two instances referring to the Fallen Angel, Iblis). Parallel with this, we have authentic ahadith [recorded traditions] to the effect that the Prophet spoke of the angels as having been ‘created out of light’ (khuliqat min nur: Muslim, on the authority of ‘A’ishah) – light and fire being akin, and likely to manifest themselves within and through one another.

The term jinn is also applied to a wide range of phenomena which, according to most of the classical commentators, indicate certain sentient organisms of so fine a nature and of a physiological composition so different from our own that they are not normally accessible to our sense-perception. We know, of course, very little as to what can and what cannot play the role of a living organism; moreover, our inability to discern and observe such phenomena is by no means a sufficient justification for a denial of their existence. The Qur’an refers often to ‘the realm which is beyond the reach of human perception’ (al-ghayb), while God is frequently spoken of as ‘the Sustainer of all the worlds’ (rabb al-‘alamin): and the use of the plural clearly indicates that side by side with the ‘world’ open to our observation there are other ‘worlds’ as well – and, therefore, other forms of life, different from ours and presumably from one another, and yet subtly interacting and perhaps even permeating one another in a manner beyond our ken.

And if we assume, as we must, that there are living organisms whose biological premises are entirely different from our own, it is only logical to assume that our physical senses can establish contact with them only under very exceptional circumstances: hence the description of them as ‘invisible beings’. Now that occasional, very rare crossing of paths between their life-mode and ours may well give rise to strange – because unexplainable – manifestations, which man’s primitive fantasy has subsequently interpreted as ghosts, demons and other such ‘ supernatural’ apparitions.

Occasionally, the term jinn is used in the Qur’an to denote those elemental forces of nature – including human nature – which are ‘concealed from our senses’ inasmuch as they manifest themselves to us only in their eff ects but not in their intrinsic reality. Instances of this connotation are found, e.g., in 37:158 ff . (and possibly also in 6:100), as
well as in the earliest occurrence of this concept, namely, in 114:6.

Apart from this, it is quite probable that in many instances where the Qur’an refers to jinn in terms usually applied to organisms endowed with reason, this expression either implies a symbolic ‘personification’ of man’s relationship with ‘satanic forces’ (shayatin) – an implication evident, e.g., in 6:112, 7:38, 11:119, 32:13 – or, alternatively, is a
metonym for a person’s preoccupation with what is loosely described as ‘occult powers’, whether real or illusory, as well as for the resulting practices as such, like sorcery, necromancy, astrology, soothsaying, etc.: endeavours to which the Qur’an invariably refers in condemnatory terms (cf. 2:102; also 6:128 and 130, or 72:5–6).

In a few instances (e.g., in 46:29–32 and 72:1–15) the term jinn may conceivably denote beings not invisible in and by themselves but, rather, ‘hitherto unseen beings’.
Finally, references to jinn are sometimes meant to recall certain legends deeply embedded in the consciousness of the people to whom the Qur’an was addressed in the first instance (e.g., in 34:12–14) – the purpose being, in every instance, not the legend as such but the illustration of a moral or spiritual truth.

May 27 2013

On the Jinn, or Genii

The Muslims, in general, believe in three different species of created intelligent beings; namely, Angels, who are created of light; Genii, who are created of fi re; and Men, created of earth. The fi rst species are called ‘Meláïkeh’ (sing. ‘Melek’); the second, ‘Jinn’ or ‘Ginn’ (sing. ‘Jinnee’ or ‘Ginnee’); the third, ‘Ins’ (sing. ‘Insee’). Some hold that the
Devils (Sheytáns) are of a species distinct from Angels and Jinn; but the more prevailing opinion, and that which rests on the highest authority, is that they are rebellious Jinn … .

The species of Jinn is said to have been created some thousands of years before Adam. According to a tradition from the Prophet, this species consists of five orders or classes; namely, Jánn (who are the least powerful of all), Jinn, Sheytáns (or Devils), ‘Efreets, and Márids. The last, it is added, are the most powerful; and the Jánn are transformed Jinn; like as certain apes and swine were transformed men (Kur-án 5:65). It must however, be remarked here, that the terms Jinn and Jánn are generally used
indiscriminately, as names of the whole species (including the other orders above mentioned) whether good or bad; and that the former term is the more common. Also, that ‘Sheytán’ is commonly used to signify any evil Jinnee. An ‘Efreet is a powerful evil Jinnee: a Márid, an evil Jinnee of the most powerful class. The Jinn (but generally speaking, evil ones) are called by the Persians ‘Deevs’; the most powerful evil, ‘Narahs’ (which signifies ‘males’, though they are said to be males and females); the good Jinn, ‘Perees’; though this term more commonly applies to females.

In a tradition from the Prophet, it is said, ‘The Jánn were created of a smokeless fire.’ The word which signifies ‘a smokeless fire’ has been misunderstood by some as meaning ‘the flame of fire’: El-Jóharee (in the Seháh) renders it rightly; and says that of this fire was the Sheytán (Iblees) created. ‘El-Jánn’ is sometimes used as a name for Iblees; as in the following verse of the Kur-án: – ‘And the Jánn [the father of the Jinn, i.e. Iblees] we had created before [i.e. before the creation of Adam] of the fire of the samoom [i.e. of the fire without smoke].’ ‘Jánn’ also signifies ‘a serpent’; as in other passages of the Kur-án; and is used in the same book as synonymous with ‘Jinn’. In the last sense it is generally believed to be used in the tradition quoted in the commencement of this paragraph. There are several apparently contradictory traditions from the Prophet which
are reconciled by what has been above stated: in one, it is said, that Iblees was the father of all the Jánn and Sheytáns; Jánn being here synonymous with Jinn: in another, that Jánn was the father of all the Jinn; here, Jánn being used as the name of Iblees.

‘It is held,’ says El-Kazweenee, that the Jinn are aerial animals, with transparent bodies, which can assume various forms. People diff er in opinion respecting these beings: some consider the Jinn and Sheytáns as unruly men; but these persons are of the Moatezileh [a sect of Muslim freethinkers]: and some hold, that God, whose name be exalted, created the Angels of the light of fi re, and the Jinn of its fl ame [but this is at variance with the general opinion] and the Sheytáns of its smoke [which is also at variance with the common opinion]; and that [all] these kinds of beings are [usually] invisible to men, but that they assume what forms they please, and when their form becomes condensed they are visible.

– This last remark illustrates several descriptions of Jinnees in this work; where the form of the monster is at first undefined, or like an enormous pillar, and then gradually assumes a human shape and less gigantic size. The particular forms of brutes, reptiles, &c., in which the Jinn most frequently appear will be mentioned hereafter.

It is said that God created the Jánn [or Jinn] two thousand years before Adam [or, according to some writers, much earlier]; and that there are believers and infidels and every sect among them, as among men. Some say that a prophet, named Yoosuf, was sent to the Jinn: others, that they had only preachers, or admonishers: others, again, that seventy apostles were sent, before Mohammed, to Jinn and men conjointly.

It is commonly believed that preadamite Jinn were governed by forty (or, according to some, seventy-two) kings, to each of which the Arab writers give the name of Suleymán (or Solomon); and that they derive their appellation from the last of these, who was called Jánn Ibn- Jánn, and who, some say, built the pyramids of Egypt. The following account of the preadamite Jinn is given by El-Kazweenee.

It is related in histories, that a race of Jinn, in ancient times, before the creation of Adam, inhabited the earth and covered it, the land and the sea, and the plains and the mountains; and the favors of God were multiplied upon them, and they had government, and prophecy, and religion, and law; but they transgressed and offended, and opposed their prophets, and made wickedness to abound in the earth; whereupon, God, whose name be exalted, sent against them an army of Angels, who took possession of the earth, and drove away the Jinn to the regions of the islands, and made many of them prisoners; and of those who were made prisoners was ‘Azázeel [afterwards called Iblees, from his despair]; and a slaughter was made among them. At that time, ‘Azázeel was young: he grew up among the Angels [and probably for that reason was called one
of them], and became learned in their knowledge, and assumed the government of them; and his days were prolonged until he became their chief; and thus it continued for a long time, until the aff air between him and Adam happened, as God, whose name be exalted, hath said, ‘When we said unto the Angels, Worship ye Adam, and
[all] worshipped except Iblees, [who] was [one] of the Jinn.’

‘Iblees,’ we are told by another authority, ‘was sent as a governor upon the earth, and judged among the Jinn a thousand years, after which he ascended into heaven, and remained employed in worship until the creation of Adam.’ The name of Iblees was originally, according to some, ‘Azázeel (as before mentioned; and according to others, El-Hárith: his patronymic is Aboo-Murrah, or Abu-l-Ghimr. It is disputed whether he was of the Angels or of the Jinn. There are three opinions on this point.

1. That he was of the Angels, from a tradition from Ibn-‘Abbás.
2. That he was of the Sheytáns (or evil Jinn); as it is said in the Ku-rán, ‘except Iblees, [who] was [one] of the Jinn’: this was the opinion of El-Hasan El-Basree, and is that commonly held.
3. That he was neither of the Angels nor of the Jinn; but created alone, of fire.

Ibn-‘Abbás founds his opinion on the same text from which El-Hasan El-Basree derives his: ‘When we said unto the Angels, Worship ye Adam, and [all] worshipped except Iblees, [who] was [one] of the Jinn’ (before quoted: which he explains by saying, that the most noble and honourable among the Angels are called ‘the Jinn’, because they are
veiled from the eyes of the other Angels on account of their superiority; and that Iblees was one of these Jinn. He adds, that he had the government of the lowest heaven and of the earth, and was called the Táoos (literally, Peacock) of the Angels; and that there was not a spot in the lowest heaven but he had prostrated himself upon it: but when the Jinn rebelled upon the earth, God sent a troop of Angels who drove them to the islands and mountains; and Iblees being elated with pride, and refusing to prostrate himself before Adam, God transformed him into a Sheytán. – But this reasoning is opposed by other verses, in which Iblees is represented as saying, ‘Thou hast created me of fire, and hast created him [Adam] of earth.’ It is therefore argued, ‘If he were created originally of fi re, how was he created of light? For the Angels were [all] created of light.’

The former verse may be explained by the tradition, that Iblees, having been taken captive, was exalted among the Angels; or perhaps there is an ellipsis after the word ‘Angels’; for it might be inferred that the command given to the Angels was also (and à fortiori) to be obeyed by the Jinn.

According to a tradition, Iblees and all the Sheytáns are distinguished from the other Jinn by a longer existence. ‘The Sheytáns,’ it is added, ‘are the children of Iblees, and die not but with him: whereas the [other] Jinn die before him’; though they may live many centuries.

But this is not altogether accordant with the popular belief: Iblees and many other evil Jinn are to survive mankind; but they are to die before the general resurrection; as also even the Angels; the last of whom will be the Angel of Death, ‘Azraeel: yet not all the evil Jinn are to live thus long: many of them are killed by shooting stars, hurled at them from heaven; wherefore, the Arabs, when they see a shooting star (shiháb), often exclaim, ‘May God transfi x the enemy of the faith!’

Many also are killed by other Jinn; and some, even by men. The fire of which the Jinnee is created circulates in his veins, in place of blood: therefore, when he receives a mortal wound, this fi re, issuing from his veins, generally consumes him to ashes.

The Jinn, it has been already shown, are peccable. They also eat and drink, and propagate their species, sometimes in conjunction with human beings; in which latter case, the off spring partakes of the nature of both parents. In all these respects they diff er from the Angels. Among the evil Jinn are distinguished the five sons of their chief, Iblees; namely, Teer, who brings about calamities, losses, and injuries; El-Aawar, who encourages debauchery; Sót, who suggests lies, Dásim, who causes hatred between
man and wife; and Zelemboor, who presides over places of traffic.

The most common forms and habitations or places of resort of the Jinn must now be described.
The following traditions from the Prophet are the most to the purpose that I have seen.

• The Jinn are of various shapes; having the forms of serpents, scorpions, lions, wolves, jackals, &c.
• The Jinn are of three kinds; one on the land; one in the sea; and one in the air. The Jinn consist of forty troops; each troop consisting of six hundred thousand.
• The Jinn are of three kinds; one have wings, and fl y; another are snakes, and dogs; and the third move about from place to place like men. – Domestic snakes are asserted to be Jinn on the same authority.

The Prophet ordered his followers to kill serpents and scorpions if they intruded at prayers; but on other occasions, he seems to have required first to admonish them to depart, and then, if they remained, to kill them. The Doctors, however, diff er in opinion whether all kinds of snakes or serpents should be admonished first; or whether any should; for the Prophet, say they, took a covenant of the Jinn [probably after the above-mentioned command], that they should not enter the houses of the faithful: therefore, it is argued, if they enter, they break their covenant, and it becomes lawful to kill them without previous admonishment. Yet it is related that ‘Áïsheh, the Prophet’s wife, having killed a serpent in her chamber, was alarmed by a dream, and, fearing that it might have been a Muslim Jinnee, as it did not enter her chamber when she was undressed, gave in alms, as an expiation, twelve thousand dirhems (about £300), the price of the blood of a Muslim.

The Jinn are said to appear to mankind most commonly in the shapes of serpents, dogs, cats or human beings. In the last case, they are sometimes of the stature of men, and sometimes of a size enormously gigantic. If good, they are generally resplendently handsome: if evil, horribly hideous. They become invisible at pleasure (by a rapid extension or rarefaction of the particles which compose them), or suddenly disappear in the earth or air, or through a solid wall. Many Muslims in the present day profess to have seen and held intercourse with them.

The Zóba’ah, which is a whirlwind that raises the sand or dust in the form of a pillar of prodigious height, often seen sweeping across the deserts or fields, is believed to be caused by the flight of an evil Jinnee. To defend themselves from a Jinnee thus ‘riding in the whirlwind’, the Arabs often exclaim ‘Iron! Iron!’ (Hadeed! Hadeed!), or, ‘Iron! Thou unlucky! (Hadeed! yá mashoom!), as the Jinn are supposed to have a great dread of that metal: or they exclaim, ‘God is most great!’ (Alláhu akbar!), A similar superstition prevails with respect to the water-spout at sea, as the reader may have discovered from the first instance of the description of a Jinnee in the present work, which occasions this note to be here inserted.

It is believed that the chief mode of the Jinn is in the mountains of Káf, which are supposed (as mentioned on a former occasion) to encompass the whole of our earth. But they are also believed to pervade the solid body of our earth, and the firmament; and to choose, as their principal places of resort, or of occasional abode, baths, wells, the latrina, ovens, ruined houses, market-places, the junctures of the roads, the sea, and rivers. The Arabs, therefore, when they pour water, &c., on the ground, or enter a bath, or let down a bucket into a well, or visit the latrina, and on various other occasions, say, ‘Permission!’ or ‘Permission, ye blessed!’ (Destoor! Or, Destoor yá mubarakeen!). –

The evil spirits (or evil Jinn), it is said, had liberty to enter any of the seven heavens till the birth of Jesus, when they were excluded from three of them: on the birth of Mohammed, they were forbidden the other four. They continue, however, to ascend to the confines of the lowest heaven, and there listening to the conversation of the Angels respecting things decreed by God, obtain knowledge of futurity, which they sometimes impart to men, who, by means of talismans, or certain invocations, make them to serve the purposes of magical performances. To this particular subject it will be necessary to revert.

What the Prophet said of Iblees, in the following tradition, applies to the evil Jinn over whom he presides: – His chief abode [among men] is the bath; his chief places of resort are the markets, and the junctures of roads; his food is whatever is killed without the name of God being pronounced over it; his drink, whatever is intoxicating; his muëddin,
the mizmár (a musical pipe; i.e. any musical instrument); his kur-án, poetry; his written character, the marks made in geomancy; his speech, falsehood; his snares are women.

That particular Jinnees presided over particular places, was an opinion of the early Arabs. It is said in the Kur-án, ‘And there were certain men who sought refuge with certain of the Jinn.’ In the commentary of the Jeláleyn, I fi nd the following remark on these words: – ‘When they halted, on their journey, in a place of fear, each man said, “I seek refuge with the lord of this place, from the mischief of his foolish ones!” ’

In illustration of this, I may insert the following tradition, translated from El-Kazweenee: – ‘It is related by a certain narrator of traditions, that he descended into a valley, with his sheep, and a wolf carried off a ewe from among them; and he arose, and raised his voice, and cried, “O inhabitant of the valley!” whereupon he heard a voice saying,
“O wolf, restore to him his sheep!” and the wolf came with the ewe, and left her, and departed.’ – The same opinion is held by the modern Arabs, though probably they do not use such an invocation. – A similar superstition, a relic of ancient Egyptian credulity, still prevails among the people of Cairo. It is believed that each quarter of the city has its peculiar guardian-genius, or Agathodæmon, which has the form of a serpent.

It has already been mentioned that some of the Jinn are Muslims; and others, infidels. The good Jinn acquit themselves of imperative duties of religion; namely, prayers, alms-giving, fasting during the month of Ramadán, and pilgrimage to Mekkeh and Mount ‘Arafát: but in the performance of these duties they are generally invisible to human beings. Of the services and injuries done by Jinn to men, some account must be given.

It has been stated, that, by means of talismans, or certain invocations, men are said to obtain the services of Jinn; and the manner in which the latter are enabled to assist magicians, by imparting to them the knowledge of future events, has been explained. No man ever attained such absolute power over the Jinn as Suleymán Ibn-Dáood (Solomon, the Son of David). This he did by virtue of a most wonderful talisman, which is said to have come down to him from heaven. It was a seal-ring, upon which was engraved ‘the most great name’ of God; and was partly composed of brass, and partly of iron. With the brass he stamped his written commands to the good Jinn; with the iron (for a reason before mentioned), those to the evil Jinn, or Devils. Over both orders, he had unlimited power; as well as over the birds and the winds, and, as is generally said, the wild beasts. His Wezeer, Ásaf the son of Barkhiya, is also said to have been acquainted with ‘the most great name’, by uttering which, the greatest miracles may be performed; even that of raising the dead.

By virtue of this name, engraved in his ring, Suleymán compelled the Jinn to assist in building the Temple of Jerusalem, and in various other works. Many of the evil Jinn he converted to the true faith; and many others of this class, who remained obstinate in infidelity, he confined in prisons. He is said to have been monarch of the whole earth. Hence, perhaps, the name of Suleymán is given to the universal monarch of the preadamite Jinn; unless the story of his own universal dominion originated from confounding him with those kings of the Jinn.

The injuries related to have been inflicted upon human beings by evil Jinn are of various kinds. Jinnees are said to have often carried off beautiful women, whom they have forcibly kept as their wives or concubines. I have mentioned in a former work, that malicious or disturbed Jinnees are asserted often to station themselves on the roofs,
or at the windows, of houses, and to throw down bricks and stones on persons passing by. When they take possession of an uninhabited house, they seldom fail to persecute terribly any person who goes to reside in it. They are also very apt to pilfer provisions, &c. Many learned and devout persons, to secure their property from such depredations, repeat the words ‘In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful!’ on locking the doors of their houses, rooms, or closets, and on covering the bread-basket, or anything containing food. During the month of Ramadán, the evil Jinn are believed to be confined in prison; and therefore, on the last night of that month, with the same view, women sometimes repeat the words above mentioned, and sprinkle salt upon the floors of the apartments of their houses. To complete this sketch of Arabian mythology, an account must be added of several creatures believed to be of inferior orders of the Jinn.

One of these is the Ghool, which is commonly regarded as a kind of Sheytán, or evil Jinnee, that eats men; and is described by some as a Jinnee or an enchanter who assumes various forms. The ghools are said to appear in the forms of various animals, and of human beings, and in many monstrous shapes; to haunt burial-grounds and other sequestered spots; to feed upon dead human bodies; and to kill and devour any human creature who has the misfortune to fall in their way: whence the term ‘Ghool’ is applied to any cannibal. An opinion quoted by a celebrated author, respecting the Ghool, is, that it is a demoniacal animal, which passes a solitary existence in the deserts, resembling both man and brute; that it appears to a person travelling alone in the night and in solitary places, and, being supposed by him to be itself a traveller, lures him out of his way. Another opinions stated by him is this: that, when the Sheytáns attempt to hear words by stealth [from the confines of the lowest heaven], they are struck by shooting stars; and some are burnt; some, falling into the sea, or rather a large river (bahr), become converted into crocodiles; and some, falling upon the land, become Ghools.

The same author adds the following tradition: – ‘The Ghool is any Jinnee that is opposed to travels, assuming various forms and appearances’; and affirms that several of the Companions of the Prophet saw Ghools in their travels; and that ‘Omar, among them, saw a Ghool while on a journey to Syria, before El-Islám, and struck it with his sword. – It appears that ‘Ghool’ is, properly speaking, a name only given to a female demon of the kind above described: the male is called ‘Kutrub’. It is said that these beings, and the Gheddár, or Gharrár, and other similar creatures which will presently be mentioned, are the off spring of Iblees and of a wife whom God created for him of the fi re of the Samoon (which here signifies, as an instance before mentioned, ‘a smokeless fire’); and that they sprang from an egg. The female Ghool, it is added, appears to men in the deserts, in various forms, converses with them, and sometimes prostitutes herself to them.

The Sealáh, or Saaláh, is another demoniacal creature, described by some [or rather, by most authors] as of the Jinn. It is said that it is mostly found in forests; and that when it captures a man, it makes him dance, and plays with him as the cat plays with the mouse. A man of Isfahán asserted that many beings of this kind abounded in his country;
that sometimes the wolf would hunt one of them by night, and devour it, and that, when it had seized it, the Sealáh would cry out, ‘Who will liberate me? I have a hundred deenárs, and he shall receive them!’ but the people knowing that it was the cry of the Sealáh, no one would liberate it; and so the wolf would eat it. – An island in the sea of Es-Seen (or China) is called ‘the Island of the Sealáh’, by Arab geographers, from its being said to be inhabited by the demons so named: they are described as creatures of hideous forms, supposed to be Sheytáns, the off spring of human beings and Jinn, who eat men.

The Ghaddár, or Gharrár (for its name is written differently in two different MSS. In my possession), is another creature of a similar nature, described as being found in the borders of El-Yemen, and sometimes in Tihámeh, and in the upper parts of Egypt. It is said that it entices a man to it, and either tortures him in a manner not to be described, or merely terrifies him, and leaves him.

The Delhán is also a demoniacal being, inhabiting the islands of the seas, having the form of a man, and riding on an ostrich. It eats the flesh of men whom the sea casts on the shore from wrecks. Some say that a Dalhán once attacked a ship in the sea, and desired to take the crew; but they contended with it; whereupon it uttered a cry which caused them to fall upon their faces, and it took them. – In my MS. Of Ibn-El-Wardee, I fi nd the name ‘Dahlán’. He mentions an island called by this name, in the Sea of ‘Omán; and describes its inhabitants as cannibal Sheytáns, like men in form, and riding on birds resembling ostriches.

The Shikk is another demoniacal creature, having the form of half a human being (like a man divided longitudinally); and it is believed that the Nesnás is the off spring of a Shikk and of a human being. The Shikk appears to travellers; and it was a demon of this kind who killed, and was killed by, ‘Alkameh, the son of Safwán, the son of Umeiyeh; of whom it is well known that he was killed by a Jinnee. So says El-Kazweenee.

The Nesnás (above mentioned) is described as resembling half a human being; having half a head, half a body, one arm, and one leg, with which it hops with much agility; as being found in the woods of El-Yemen; and that one was brought alive to El-Mutawekkil: it resembled a man in form, excepting that it had but half a face, which was in its breast, and a tail like that of a sheep. The people of Hadramót, it is added, eat it; and its flesh is sweet. It is only generated in their country. A man who went there asserted that he saw a captured Nesnás, which cried out for mercy, conjuring him by God and by himself. A race of people whose head is in the breast is described as inhabiting an island called Jábeh (supposed to be Java), in the Sea of El-Hind, or India. A kind of Nesnás is also described as inhabiting the Island of Ráïj, in the Sea of Es-Seen, or China, and having wings like those of the bat.

The Hátif is a being that is heard, but not seen; and is often mentioned by Arab writers. It is generally the communicator of some intelligence in the way of advice, or direction, or warning.

Apr 28 2013

Mesopotamian Star Lists and Star Names

Having in the past months posted many things on astrology, I have been asked to make up a course on astrology. So far a great deal of work has been put into this endeavor. I have outlined a 3 part beginner course of 26 lessons and a 2 part advanced course. I am currently writing 2 books to go with these lessons as well. I will be using the Mesopotamian names of the stars and constellations within the course work and am today gracing our community with a nice listing of the known stars through a 900 year period of the Babylonians.

Chronology:

(1) The Late Assyrian Period (circa 900-600 BCE)

(2) The Neo-Babylonian (Chaldean) Period (626-539 BCE)

(3) The Persian (Achaemenid) Period (539-331 BCE)

(4) Macedonian Period (331-circa 275 BCE)

(5) Seleucid (Hellenistic) Period (275 BCE – 116 CE)

=========================================

Some Late 2nd-Millennium Stars

Example: Star List/Star Catalogue (Select Mul.Apin Stars/Constellations).

Example: The Circumpolar Stars And Constellations.

Source: Mul Apin by Hermann Hunger and David Pingree (1989).

In MUL.APIN six circumpolar stars are counted in the Path of Enlil. Since the Paths of Enlil, Anu, and Ea are defined by the arcs on the eastern horizon over which the stars, Sun, Moon, and planets rise, the circumpolar stars ought not to be counted among the stars of Enlil.

1. (15) The Wagon. Ursa Major.

2. (16) The Fox. 80-86 Ursae Maioris?

3. (17) The Ewe. Northeastern part of Bootes?

4. (18) The Hitched Yoke. a Draconis?

5. (19) The Wagon of Heaven. Ursa Minor.

6. (20) The Heir of the Sublime Temple. a Ursae Minoris?

Example: Stars in the Path of the Moon.

Source: Science Awakening II: The Birth of Astronomy by Bartel van der Waerden (1974).

The Stars and Constellations in the Path of the Moon.

1. MUL.MUL

2. ^mulGUD.AN.NA

3. ^mulSIBA.ZI.AN.NA

4. ^mulSHU.GI

5. ^mulGAM

6. ^mulMASH.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL

7. ^mulAL.LUL

8. ^mulUR.GU.LA

9. ^mulAB.SIN

10. ^mulzi.ba.ni.tum

11. ^mulGIR.TAB

12. ^mulPA.BIL.SAG

13. ^mulSUHUR.MASH

14. ^mulGU.LA

15. zibbati^mesh

16. ^mulSIM.MAH

17. ^mulA-nu-ti-tum

18. ^mulLU.HUN.GA

The number 18 is not quite certain because the “tails” zibbati^mesh are probably to be taken together with both the following names (“tails of SHIM.MAH and Anunitum).

If we omit the six names GUD.AN.NA (Taurus), SIBA.ZI.AN.NA (Orion), SHU.GI (Perseus + and northern part of Taurus?), GAM (Auriga or Capella), SHIM.MAH (south-west part of Pisces) and Anunitum (north-east part of Pisces), those remaining are exactly the Babylonian names of the later signs of the zodiac, beginning with Taurus (MUL.MUL, actually Pleiades), and continuing in sequence to Aries (LU.HUN.GA).

In later times the zodiacal signs were named after the constellations they contained. In the beginning there were certain variations: the sign of Taurus could be denoted equally well by the names MUL.MUL (Pleiades), GUD.AN.NA (Taurus), or is li-e (Hyades – Aldebaran); it was only later that the names became standardized.

Example: Ziqpu Star List.

Source: Science Awakening II: The Birth of Astronomy by Bartel van der Waerden (1974).

The ziqpu stars lie in the path of Enlil. (Some) Ziqpu stars listed in Mul.Apin.

SHU.PA

BAL.UR.A

AN.GUB.BA^mesh

UR.KU.UZA

UD.KA.DUH.A

LU.LIM

SHU.GI

GAM

MASH.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL

AL.LUL

UR.GU.LA

ERU

HE.GAL.A.A

Example: The 36 Morning Risings (Mul.Apin).

Source: Science Awakening II: The Birth of Astronomy by Bartel van der Waerden (1974).

Month 1 day 1 LU.HUNGA rises.

day 20 GAM rises.

Month 2 day 1 MUL.MUL rises.

day 20 is li-e rises.

Month 3 day 10 SIBA.ZI.AN.NA and MASH.TAR.BA.GAL.GAL rise.

Month 4 day 5 MASH.TAB.BA.TUR.TUR and AL.LUL rise

day 15 KAK.SI.DI, MUSH and UR.GU.LA rise

Month 5 day 5 BAN and LUGAL rise.

Month 6 day 10 NUN^ki and UGA rise.

day 15 SHU.PA rises.

day 25 AB.SIN rises.

Month 7 day 15 zibanitu, UR.IDIM, EN.TE.NA.MASH.LUM and UR.KU rise.

Month 8 day 5 GIR.TAB rises.

day 15 UZA and GAB.GIR.TAB rise.

Month 9 day 15 UD.KA.DUH.A, A^mushen and PA.BIL.SAG rise.

Month 10 day 15 SHIM.MA, shi-nu-nu-tum and IM.SIS. rise.

Month 11 day 5 GU.LA, IKU and LU.LIM rise.

day 25 Anunitu rises.

Month 12 day 15 KUA and SHU.GI rise.

The best fit is obtained for Babylon between 1300 and 1000 BCE.

Example: Planet Names (Mul.Apin Series).

Source: Mul Apin by Hermann Hunger and David Pingree (1989).

Planet Name(s)

Sun ^dUTU (Samas)

Moon ^dSin

Saturn UDU.IDIM.SAG.US (the stable planet

zibanitu (Scales)

MUL ^dUTU (Star of the Sun)

Jupiter Sagmegar

^dSulpaea

^dAMAR.UTU (Marduk)

Mars Salbatanu

Venus Dilibat

Mercury UDU.IDIM.GU₄.UD

sa Ninurta sumsu (the jumping planet whose name is Ninurta)

Example: Particular Star Uses.

Source: Mul Apin by Hermann Hunger and David Pingree (1989)?

The stars associated with directions.

North Wagon (the first circumpolar star)

South Fish (the first star of Ea)

West Scorpion (sets when Stars rise)

East Old Man and Stars (Stars rise when Scorpion sets; Old Man rises with Fish)

(1) The Late Assyrian Period (circa 900-600 BCE)

Example: Star Names and Constellations mentioned in Astrological Reports to the Kings.

Source 1: Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars by Simo Parpola (1993).

1. Agru (Aries): MUL.HUN.GA

2. Alluttu (Cancer): MUL.AL.LUL

3. Bibbu (“The Planet”, a name of Mercury): UDU.IDIM

4. Dilibat (Venus): dil.bat

5. Enzu (“Goat”, Lyra): MUL.UZ

6. Epinnu (“Plough”, a star): MUL.APIN

7. Kaiamanu (Saturn): ^dUDU.IDIM.SAG.US

8. Kumaru (“Shoulder (of the Panther)”, d Cygni): MUL.ku-ma-ru

9. Lisi (Antares): li-si [MUL.LI₉.SI₄]

10. Masu (Gemini): ^dma-a-si

11. Narkabtu (“Chariot”, a constellation): MUL.GIS.GIGIR

12. Neberu (a name of Jupiter): MUL.ne-bi-ru

13. Nesu (Leo): MUL.UR.MAH

14. Nimru (“Panther”, Cygnus): MUL.UD.KA.DU₈.A

15. Pabilsag (Sagittarius): MUL.PA.BIL.SAG

16. Sagmegar (Jupiter, reading uncertain): SAG.ME.GAR

17. Sebetti (“The Seven”, a name of the Pleiades): ^d7.BI

18. Sin (moon): ^d30

19. Salbatanu (Mars): ^dsal-bat-a-nu

20. Samas (sun, god of justice): ^dsa-mas

21. Sanumma (a name of Mars): MUL.MIN-ma

22. Sarru (Regulus): MUL.LUGAL

23. Sibu (Perseus): MUL.SU.GI

24. Sihtu (Mercury): ^dGUD.UD

25. Siru (Virgo): MUL.AB.SIN

26. Sitaddaru (Orion): MUL.SIPA.ZI.AN.NA

27. Sukudu (Sirius): MUL.GAG.SI.SA

28. Urgulu (Leo): MUL.UR.GU.LA

29. Zappu (“Bristle”, Pleiades): MUL.MUL

30. Zibanitu (Scales): MUL.ZI.BA.AN.NA

31. Zibbati (“Tails”, Pisces): KUN.MES

32. Zuqaqipu (Scorpius): MUL.GIR.TAB

Source 2: Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings by Hermann Hunger (1992).

1. Agru (“Hired Man”, Aries) MUL.LU.HUN.GA

2. Alluttu (“Crab”, Cancer): MUL.AL.LUL

3. Alu (Taurus, Aldebaran): MUL.GUD.AN.NA

4. Anunitu (part of Pisces): MUL.an-nu-ni-tum

5. Anu agu (“Anu-Crown”, Hyades): MUL.a-nu-AGA

6. Anzu (a star): MUL.IM.DUGUD

7. Aribu (“Raven”, Corvus): u-ga [MUL.UGA]

8. Barbaru (“Wolf”, a star): MUL.UR.BAR.RA

9. Bibbu (“planet”, most probably Saturn or Mercury): ^dUDU.IDIM

10. Dilibat (Venus): ^ddil-bat [MUL.dil-bat]

11. Engisgalanna (a name of Jupiter, reading uncertain): MUL.EN.GISGAL.AN.NA

12. Enmesarra (a part of Perseus): MUL.EN.ME.SAR

13. Enzu (“Goat”, Lyra): u-za [MUL.UZ]

14. Epinnu (“Plough”, a star): MUL.APIN

15. Eru’a (“Frond”, a star): MUL.A.EDIN

16. Gamlu (Auriga): ^dGAM

17. Gilimma (a star, reading uncertain): MUL.GILIM.MA

18. Habasiranu (Centaurus): MUL.EN.TE.NA.BAR.GUZ

19. Idiglat (“Tigris”, a group of stars): MUL.ID.IDIG-NA

20. Iku (“Field”, Pegasus): MUL.AS.GAN

21. Indubanna (a part of Sagittaurius, reading uncertain): MUL.IN.DUB.AN.NA

22. Irat Zuqaqipi (a part of Scorpius): MUL.GABA-GIR.TAB

23. Is Le (“Jaw of the Bull”, Hyades): MUL.is-le-e

24. Kaiamanu (Saturn): ^dSAG.US

25. Kalitu (“Kidney”, Puppis): MUL.BIR

26. Lisi (Antares): MUL.LI₉.SI₄

27. Neberu (a name of Jupiter): ^dne-bi-ru [MUL.ne-bi-ru]

28. Nesu (“Lion”, Leo): MUL.UR.MAH

29. Nimru (“Panther”, Cygnus etc.): MUL.UD.KA.DU₈

30. Niru (“Yoke”, Bootes): su-du-un [MUL.SUDUN]

31. Nunu (“Fish”, Piscis austrinus): MUL.KU₆

32. Nun same (“Fish of the Sky”, Piscis austrinus): MUL.KU₆

33. Pabilsag (“Presbyter”, Sagittaurius): ^dPA.BIL.SAG [MUL.PA.BIL.SAG]

34. Pasittu (“Deleter”, a part of Andromeda): MUL.KA.MUS.I.KU.E

35. Qastu (“Bow” a part of Canis major): MUL.^dBAN [MUL.BAN]

36. Rappu (“Bridle”, a star): MUL.rap.pu

37. Sagmegar (Jupiter, reading uncertain): ^dSAG.ME.GAR [MUL.SAG.ME.GAR]

38. Sarru (“False”, a name of Mars): MUL.sa-ar-ri

39. Sebetti (“The Seven”, “Pleiades”): ^d7.BI

40. Sin (moon god): ^d30

41. Suhurmasu (Capricorn): MUL.SUHUR.MAS

42. Salbatanu (Mars): ^dsal-bat-an-nu [MUL.sal-bat-a-nu]

43. Sariru (a part of Sagittarius): MUL.AN.TA.SUR.RA

44. Surru (“Obsidian”, a star in Scorpius): MUL.sur-ru

45. Samas (sun-god): ^dsa-mas

46. Sanumma (“Strange”, a name of Mars): MUL.MIN-ma

47. Sargaz (a part of Scorpius): ^dSAR.GAZ [MUL.SAR.GAZ]

48. Sarru (“King”, Regulus): MUL.LUGAL

49. Sarur (a part of Scorpius): ^dSAR.UR [MUL.SAR.UR]

50. Selabu (“Fox”, a star): MUL.KA.A

51. Ser’u (“Furrow”, Virgo): MUL.AB.SIN

52. Sibu (“Old Man”, Perseus): MUL.SI.GI

53. Sihtu (Mercury): ^dGUD.UD [MUL.GUD.UD]

54. Sinunutu (“Swallow”, part of Pisces): si-im-ma-a [MUL.SIM.MAH]

55. Sukudu (“Arrow”, Sirius): MUL.GAG.SI.SA

56. Sulpae (a name of Jupiter): ^dSUL.PA.E [MUL.SUL.PA.E]

57. Tu’amu (“Twins”, Gemini): MUL.MAS.TAB.BA

58. Tu’amu rabutu (“Great Twins”, Gemini): MUL.MAS.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL.

59. Tultu (“Worm”, a star): MUL.tul-tum

60. Urgulu (“Lion”, Leo): MUL.UR.GU.LA

61. Usurtu (“Drawing”, a name of Gemini): MUL.u-sur-ti

62. Zappu (“Bristle”, Pleiades): MUL.MUL

63. Zibanitu (“Scales”, Libra): MUL.zi-ba-ni-tum

64. Zuqaqipu (“Scorpion”, Scorpius): MUL.GIR.TAB

Example: Star List/Star Catalogue.

Source: A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs edited by Erle Liechty, et al. (1988).

Star Names Listed In Star Catalogue BM 78161. Tablet BM 78161 comes from either Babylon or Sippar and dates from the 7th to 5th centuries BCE.

Stars	Classification	Identification
Sipa-zi-an-na	Anu 8	b Ori.
dar lugal	Anu 10	m Lep.
front feet and hands of mas-tab-ba-gal-gal	ziqpu 18	q Gem.

n Gem.right hand and rear heel of sipa-zi-an-naAnux Ori.

k Ori.middle of dar-lugalAnua Lep.rear foot of mas-tab-ba-tur-turziqpu 19x Gem.mas-tab-ba-tur-turEnlil 6z Gem.kak-si-saAnu 11b Can. Mai.al-lulziqpu 20e Canc.musAnu 13b Canc.banAnu 12h Can. Maileft foot of kak-si-saAnup Puppis5 us after al-lul–Jupiter’s position after al-lul and before ur-gu-la–LU of kak-si-saAnur Puppistwo stars of the head of ur-aziqpu 21m Leo

e Leomiddle of musAnuq Hydraelbow of kak-si-saAnua Pyxhands of nun-kiEag Vel.four stars of the chest of ur-aziqpu 22z Leo.

g Leo.

h Leo.

a Leo.right front foot of ur-aEnlilp Leo.middle of musAnuk Hydranun-kiEa 3l Vel.1 danna¹⁶ after the four of its chest–foot in the middle of ur-aEnlilr Leo.hand of nin-mahEa 4j Vel.two stars of the rump of ur-aziqpu 23d Leo.

q Leo.tail of ugaAnua Crat.bite of gis-gan-gurEam Vel.single star of the tail of ur-aziqpu 24b Leo.middle of ugaAnug Corv.hand of en-te-na-bar-humEad Cent.e₄-ru₆ziqpu 25g Com.ab-sinAnu 15a Virg.^dsullat and hanisEa 7e Cent.Mercury’s position between ab-sin and uga–1 danna after e₄-ru₆–dingir-ku-a-mesEnlil 22i Virg. (?)front pan of gis-rinAnul Virg.nu-mus-daEa 8h Cent.Saturn’s position before gis-rin–na-at-tul-lumziqpu 26u Boot.middle of zi-ba-nitAnub Libr.horn of gir-tabEag Scor. = Libraeye of ur-idimEag Lupisu-paziqpu 1a Boot.middle of zi-ba-nitAnug Libr.stars of head of gir-tabEad Scor.middle of ur-idimEah Lupina-at-tul-lum 2ziqpu 2x Boot.star of chest of gir-tabEaa Scor.tail of gir-tabEam¹ Scor.rear of foot of ur-idimEaz² Scor.kip-patziqpu 3a Cor. Bor.eye of za-ba₄-ba₄Anuh Oph.^dsar-ur^dsar-gazEa 12l Scor.

n Scor.sa-mas-a-tiziqpu 4b Her.

g Her.middle of za-ba₄-ba₄Anun Oph.left hand of pa-bil-sag which is on the bowEad Sag.mar-gur₈Ea 14e Sag.tak-sa-a-tuziqpu 5d Her.knee of za-ba₄-ba₄Anuh Serp.[right hand] of pa-bil-sag which is on the arrowEaj Sag.single star of the knee of uzziqpu 6m Her.foot of za-ba₄-ba₄Anul Aquil.pa-bil-sag- above ma-gur⁸Eai Lyr.crook of uzziqpu 7a Lyr.bright star of a-musen¹⁸Anua Aquil.

(2) The Neo-Babylonian (Chaldean) Period (626-539 BCE)

Example: Late Astrological Text.

Source: Mesopotamian Astrology by Ulla Koch-Westenholz (1995).

The “Great Star List”: “Among the several lists of stars, the most astrological is the so-called Great Star List …. This text is a motley of mythological and astrological data on planets and stars, mixed with other materials. Much of it seems to have been assembled from blocks excerpted from other texts. … Its composite character indicates that the text is not very old. Probably it was meant to serve as a vademecum for the astrologers.”

[Select reproduction of the contents appears below:]

[- – – -]	[^d]min	[- – – – – – – -]	ditto
[^dnin.gul.ti]	ana mas-si-e	Ningulti	is for a leader
[^ddil].bat	ana si.sa bu-lim	Venus	is for thriving cattle
[mu]l im.su.rin.na.nu.kus.u: ^ddil.bat		The Widow’s Oven	Venus
mul dil.bar	^dis-tar be-let kur.kur	Venus	Istar, queen of all lands
mul a-nu-ni-tum	^dis-tar min	Annunitu	Istar, ditto
mul a-ri-tum	^dis-tar min	The Shield-bearer	Istar, ditto
mul is-ha-ra	^dis-tar min	Ishara	Istar, ditto
mul gir.tab	^dis-ha-ra	The Scorpion	Ishara
mul gir.tab	^dmin ti-amat	The Scorpion	ditto Tiamat
mul gir.an.na	mul gir.tab	The Sword of Heaven	The Scorpion
mul nin.mah	mul min	Ninmah	ditto
mul nin.mah	dingir.mah du-at an u ki	Ninmah	Belet-ili, creator of Heaven and Earth
mul nin.girim	be-let te-lil-ti	Ningirim	Goddess of Purification
	^dis-ha-ra		Ishara

mul.ban	mul ab.sin	The Bow	The Furrow (Virgo)
mul gilim	mul min	The Reed-bundle	ditto
mul tir.an.na

mul minThe Rainbowdittomul a-ri-tummul minThe Shield(bearer)dittomul mar.gid.damul [- – – – -] xThe Wagon[- – – – -][- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -][- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -][- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -][- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – ditto]mu[l – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -][- – – – -]-star[ditto]mul pa [- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -]. . -star[ditto]mul udu [- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -][- – -]-planet[ditto]mul ka.mus.i.gu₇.[e – – – – – – – – – – – -]The Deleter[ditto]mul nun.me [- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -]The Sage[ditto][- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -][- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – -]24 lines missing[- – – – – – – – – – – – -]^[d]min[- – – – – – – -]dittomul x x [- – – – -] x^dmin[- – – – – – – -]dittomul x [- – – – -]^distaran. . . . . .Ishtaranmul i-li-ab-[rat]^dminIlabratdittomul dumu.[zi]^dminDumuziditto

AN AN NI x [x]	^dsal-bat-a-nu	. . . . . .	Mars
mul [- – – – – -]	^dmin	[- – – -]-star	ditto
mul ma-ak-ru-u	^dmin	The Fiery Red	ditto
mul sa₅	^dmin	The Red	ditto
mul sig₇	^dmin	The Yellow	ditto
[mu]l man-ma	^dmin	The Sinister	ditto
mul a-hu-u	^dmin	The Strange	ditto
mul [n]a-ka-ru	^dmin	The Hostile	ditto
mul s[ar₆]-ru	^dmin	The Liar	ditto
mul hul	^dmin	The Evil	ditto
mul ka₅.a	^dmin	The Fox	ditto
mul nim.ma	^dmin	The Star of Elam	ditto
mul lu.sa.gaz	^dmin	The Robber	ditto
mul ur.bar.ra	^dmin	The Wolf	ditto
mul ti₈^musen	^dmin	The Eagle	ditto
mul lu-um-nu	^dmin	The Evil	ditto
mul si-mu-ut	^dmin	Simut	ditto
mul la sid.mes	^dmin	The Incalculable	ditto
mul apin	^dmin	The Plough	ditto
mul sudun	^dmin	The Yoke	ditto
mul su.pa	^dmin	SU-PA	ditto
mul bal.tes.a	^dmin	The Star of Dignity	ditto
mul ug₅.ga	^dmin	The Raven	ditto
mul bir	^dmin	The Kidney	ditto
mul nun^ki	^dmin	The Star of Eridu	ditto
mul ud.ka.duh.a	^dmin	The Panther	ditto
[- – – – – – -] x	^dmin	[- – – – – – -]	ditto
[- – – – – -] ki gal	^dmin	[- – – – – – -]	ditto
[- – – – – -]	^dmin mu.bi	[- – – – -]	ditto, is its name
[- – – – – -]	^du.gur	[- – – – -]	Nergal
[- – – – – -]	[^d]min	[- – – – -]	ditto

[—-]	[^den.me].sar.ra	[—-]	Enmesarra
10 lines missing
mul nu.mus.da	[- – – – – -]	Numusda	[- – – – – – – – -]
mul min	^d[- – – – – – -]	ditto	[divine name]
mul min	^damar.utu	ditto	Marduk
mul li₉.si₄	^dx [- – -]	Lisi	. . . . . . .
mul min	^du.gur	ditto	Nergal
mul min	^dnin.urta	ditto	Ninrta
mul ra-ap-pu	mul ur.gu.la	The Bridle	The Lion
mul e-tu-ram-mi	mul min	Eturammi	ditto
mul sag ur.gi₇	mul min	The Dog’s Head	ditto
mul an.ta.sur.ra	^dsullat u hanis	The Flashing	Sullat and Hanis
mul an.ta.sur.ra	^dutu	The Flashing	Samas
mul an.ta.sur.ra	me-sih mul	The Flashing	A meteor(?)
mul an.ta.sur.ra	me-sih ^dpa.bil.sag	The Flashing	Flashing of Pabilsag
mul ur-um an.na	^dmin	. . . . .	ditto
mul bur-ru-um an.na	^dmin	. . . . .	ditto
mul al.lul	^ididigna	The Crab	Tigris
mul ^ididigna	^da-nu-ni-tum	Tigris	Annunitum
mul ^idburanun	mul sim.mah	Euphrates	The Swallow
mul.mes igi.mes sa mul al.lul: ^ididigna		The front stars of The Crab	Tigris
egir.mes-tum	^idburanun^ki	the rear ones	Euphrates
igi.mes kur₄.mes-ma sa₅.me-ma ididigna du-kam		The front stars shine brightly and are red: the Tigris will flow.
murub.mes sa₅.me-ma zi im		The middle stars are red: rising of wind.
egir.mes sa₅.me-ma ^idburanun^ki du-kam nim.mes si.sa.mes		The rear stars are red: the Euphrates will flow and the early (crop) will thrive.

mul.dingir.gub.ba.mes	^d30 u ^dutu	The Standing Gods	Sin and Shamash
kun mul ur.gi₇	mul im.su.rin.na.al.ma.nu.u	The tail of The Dog	The Widow’s Oven
mul kak.ban	mul kak.si.sa	The Arrow	The Arrow
mul ha-ba-si-ra-nu	^dnin.gir.su	The Mouse-like	Ningirsu
mul da-mu

^dgu.laDamuGulamul ^dim.dugud^musenmul anse.kur.raThe Anzu-birdThe Horsemul kamul lu.usThe MouthThe Corpsemul ag.an.bur ana bala til.lum nap-sur-tum gam-lum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .mul za-ru-uma-sad-duThe PoleThe Polemul sipa.zi.an.nasita.da.ru sa ina ^gistukul mah-suThe True Shepherd of Anu: Sitadaru, the one who was struck with the mace.mul tul-tum^da-nu-ni-tumThe MaggotAnunitumku₆.mes tu-la-a-tum u musen.mes hu-u₈-u“Sea-worms””Hoot-owls”tir.an.na ud nu-uh-su mu.bi mar-ra-tumRainbow, its name is “day of plenty”, the rainbow

ul babbar	^dsal-bat-a-nu	The White Star	Mars
ul gi₆	^dpap.sukkal	The Black Star	Papsukkal
ul sa₅	^dudu.idim	The Red Star	The Planet (Mars)
ul sig₇	^ddumu.zi	The Yellow Star	Dumuzi
ul sa₅	sub-tim izi	The Red Star	Falling of Fire
ul sig₇	an.mi	The Yellow Star	Eclipse

[mul dil.bat	mul.mul]	Venus	The Stars
[mul ur.gu.la	mul mas.tab.ba]	The Lion	The Twins
[mul ban	mul uga]	The Bow	The Raven
[mul en.te.na.bar.hum]	mul gir.tab	Entenabarhum	The Scorpion
mul ud.ka.duh.a]	mul gu.la	The Panther	The Great
mul n[u.mus.da	mul ku₆]	Numusda	The Fish

12 mul.mes	kur. nim.ma[^ki]	Twelve stars of Elam
mul apin	mul a-nu-ni-tum	The Plow	Annunitum
mul sipa.zi.an.na	mul ud.al.tar	The True Shepherd of Anu	Jupiter
mul mar.gid.da	mul su.pa	The Wagon	SU.PA
mul zi-ba-ni-tum	mul ur.idim	The Scales	The Mad Dog
mul uz	mul ti₈^musen	The Goat	The Eagle
mul da-mu	mul ne-be-rum	Damu	The Ford

12 mul.mes	kur uri^ki	Twelve stars of Akkad
mul as.gan	mul su.gi	The Field	The Old Man
mul mus	mul kak.si.sa	The Serpent	The Arrow
mul mas.tab.ba.gal.gal	mul bir	The Great Twins	The Kidney
mul nin.mah	mul lugal	Belet-ili	The King
mul sal-bat-a-nu	mul al.lul	Mars	The Crab
mul sim.mah	mul ka₅.a	The Swallow	The Fox

12 mul.mes	kur mar.tu^ki	Twelve stars of Amurru
mul gam	mul lugal	The Crook	The King
mul u₅.ri.in	mul ka.mus.i.nag.a	The Eagle	The Deleter
mul is li-e	mul mus mul li₉.si₄	The Jaw of the Bull	The Sepent Lisi

7 ti-ik-pi		Seven “Point” (tikpu) stars
mul su.gi	mul ud.ka.duh.a	The Old Man	The Panther
mul sipa.zi.an.na	mul kak.si.sa	The True Shepherd of Anu

The Arrowmul en.te.<na>.bar.

hummul ti₈^musenEntenabarhumThe Eaglemul pa.bil.sag Pabilsag

7 lu-ma-su		Seven lumasu
mul mas.tab.ba.gal.gal	mul mas.tab.ba.tur.tur	The Great Twins	The Small Twins
mul mas.tab.ba sa ina igi-it mul sipa.zi.an.na gub-zu		The Twins which stand in front of The True Shepherd of Anu
mul nin.mu	mul ir.ra.gal	Ninmu	Erragal
mul ^dsullat

mul hanismul sar.ur₄

mul sar.gazSullat HanisSarur Sargazmul zi.ba.an.naThe Scales

7 ma-a-su	Seven Twins
ul man-ma mul a-hu-u ul na-ka-ru	The Sinister The Strange

The Hostileul sar₆–ru ul hul ul ka₅.a

ul nim.ma.kiThe Liar The Evil The Fox

The Star of Elamul sal-bat-a-nuMars

7 zik-ru-su

Its seven names

^d30 u ^duru ^dsul.pa.e mul dil.batThe moon and the sun Jupiter

Venusmul udu.idim mul sag.us ^dudu.idim.gu₄.ud”Wild Sheep”: Saturn

Mercuryul sal-bat-a-nuMars

7 mul udu.idim.mes

Seven Planets

igi mus ^dban.ba.an.sur da-’-ik an.kiBefore The Serpent is Banbansur, killer of heaven and earthigi mus ^dla.ba.an.sur da-’-ik an.kiBefore The Serpent is Labansur, killer of heaven and earthigi nim-ri ^dka-mu-u da-’-ik [an.ki]Before The Panther is The Catcher, killer of heaven and earth[- – – – -] di da-’-ik [an.ki][- – – – – – – – – – – – -] killer of heaven and earth

Example: Planisphere.

Source: Koch, Johannes. (1989). Neue Untersuchungen zur Topographie des babylonischen Fixsternhimmels.

Star Name And Constellations Listed On Planisphere K 8538. Listed analysis by Koch.

Sektor (Sector)	Kurzbezeichnung (Short name)	Sternfigur (Star figure)	Babylonisches Sternbild (Babylonian Constellation)	Sternidentifizierung (Star identification)
0	Pfeilfigur (Arrow figure)		^mulgag-si-sá	Sirius + Betelgeuse
1	Figur zweier Dreiecke (Two triangular figures)	a	^mulĂS-iku (Field = Pegasus square)	Stars forming part of Pegasus
1	Figur zweier Dreiecke (Two triangular figures)	b	^mulapin (Plough)	Stars forming part of Andromeda
2	No constellation(s)/star name(s) preserved	–	–	–
3	Ellipse mit eingeschlossenen Dreiecken (Ellipse enclosing two triangles)		^mulmul	Pleiades
3			^mulgu₄-an-na	Stars forming part of Taurus
4	Figur mit Zeigerstab (Figure holding pointed staff)		^mulmaš-tab-ba-ga-gal/^mulmaš-tab-ba-tur-tur/[etc]/izzazu^meš-zu	Gemini
4	Figur mit Zeigerstab (Figure holding pointed staff)		^mulSipa-zi-an-na	Orion
5	Kleinfiguren (Small figures)	a	Schwanzende des ^mulmuš	Stars forming part of Crater
		b	^muluga^mušen	Stars forming part of Corvus
		c	^mulab-sín	Stars forming part of Virgo
6	Waage-Figur (Scale figure)		^mulGI-GI (^mulzi-ba-an-na)	Stars forming part of Libra + Centaurus
7	No constellation(s)/star name(s)	–	–	–

(3) The Persian (Achaemenid) Period (539-331 BCE)

Example: Particular Star Designations.

Source: Handbuch der Altorientalischen Geisteskultur by Alfred Jeremias (1929).

The Lumasi Stars [CT XXVI]:

SU.GI (d. i. Perseus und Sterne im Stier nördlich von den Hyaden = Perseus and stars in the bull north from the Hyaden)

UT.KA.DU.A (d. i. Cygnus and Lacerta)

SIB.ZI.AN.NA (d, i. Orion)

KAK.SI.DA (d. i. Sirius)

EN.TE.NA.MAS.SIG [habasiranu] (d. i. Sterne Südlich vom Krebs Nasru d. i. Adler = Stars south from the Crab [Cancer] Nasru d. i. Eagle)

PA.BIL.SAG (d. i. Schütze = Would protect [Sagittaurius])

The Masu Stars:

Tu’amu rabuti (d. s. die großen Zwillinge (a and b geminorum) = the large twins (a and b geminorum)).

Tu’amu sihruti (d. s. die kleinen Zwillinge = the little twins) [K 250 and VAT 9418]

Tu’amu sa ina mihrit SIB.ZI.AN.NA izzazu (d. s. die Zwillings-sterne, die gegenüber dem Orion stehen, wohl g und t geminorum = the twins-stars that stand vis-á-vis the Orion, probably g and t geminorum).

NIN.SAR (and IR.RA.GAL) (d. s. ?)

PA and LU.GAL (d. i. ?)

SAR.UR and SAR.GAZ (d. s. l and u Scorpion, s. S. 222 ff.)

Zibanitu (d. s. Wage = [Dares] The Scales [Libra])

The Tikpi Stars:

SU.GI (d. i. Perseus)

GU.AN.NA (d. i. Bull [Taurus])

SIB.ZI.AN.NA (d. i. Orion)

UR.GU.LA (d. i. Lion [Leo])

Siru (d. i. Hydra)

GIR.TAB (d. i. Scorpion)

LU.LIM (d. i. Andromeda)

Example: Particular Star Designations.

Source: Weidner, Ernst. (1957-1971). “Fixsterne.” In: Weidner, Ernst. and von Soden, Wolfram. (Editors). Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie. (Volume 3).

The lumasi Stars:

^msu-gi (Perseus)

^mu₄-ka-du-a (Cygnus + Cepheus)

^msipa-zi-an-na (Orion)

^mkak-si-sa (Sirius)

^men-te-na-bar-sig (Centaurus?)

^mnasru (Aquila)

^mpa-bil-sag (Sagittarius)

The tikpi Stars:

^msu-gi (Perseus)

^mgu₄-an-[na] (Taurus)

^msipa-zi-an-na (Orion)

^mur-gu-[la] (Leo)

^mmus (Hydra)

^mgir-tab (Scorpius)

^mlu-[lim(?)] (Cassiopeia)

^mgam (Auriga)

^mlugal (a Leonis)

^mu₅-ri-in (?)

^mka-mus-ni-ku-e (a Cassiopeia)

^mis li-e (Hyades)

^mmus (Hydra)

^mNE-gun (a Scorpii)

The masu Stars:

^mmas-tab-ba-gal-gal (a + b Geminorum)

^mmas-tab-ba-tur-tur (i + n or z + l Geminorum)

^mmas-tab-ba vis-à-vis the ^msipa-zi-an-na (Orion) (e + g Geminorum)

^mnin-sar ^mir-ra-gal (h + q Lyrae?)

^mhanis ^msullat (a + b Centauri)

^msar-ur₄ ^msar-gaz (l + n Scorpii)

^mzi-ba-an-na (Variation ^mku-an-na ^mku-ki-sikil-la) (a + b Librae)

Example: Particular Star Designations.

Source: Antike Beobachtungen farbiger Sterne by Franz Boll (1918) (Ancient Observations of Colored Stars).

Lists: K 250 and VAT 9418.

The Lumasi Stars [= Jupiter Stars]:

Su.gi = Perseus

Nimru = Cygnus + Cepheus + x

Sitaddulu = Orion

Sukudu = Sirius + Procyon

Habasiranu = Centaurus

Nasru = Eagle

Pa.bil.sag = Sagittarius

The Masu Stars:

Tu’amu rabuti = a + b Gemini

Tu’amu sihruti = l + z Gemini

Tu’amu sa ina mihrit Sitaddali izzazu = ? a + g Orionis

Nin.sar and Ur(?).ra.gal = ? Not yet identified

Pa and Lu.gal = Not yet identified

Sar.ur and Sar.gaz = l and u Scorpii

Zibanitu = Libra

The Tikpi Stars:

(a)

Su.gi = Perseus

Gu.an.na = Taurus

Sitaddalu = Orion

Urgu[lu] = Leo

Siru = Hydra + b Cancer

Zuqaqipu = Scorpius

Lu.[lim?] = Cassiopeia + Andromeda + x

(b)

Gumlu = Auriga

Sarru = Regulus

A-zu(?)-in = Not yet identified

Ka-mus.niku.a = Andromeda-fog(?)

Gisli = Taurus

Siru = Hydra + b Cancri

Us.si = Antares

Example: Zodiacal Text.

Source: Science Awakening II: The Birth of Astronomy by Bartel van der Waerden (1974) (for text from Uruk published by Thureau-Dangin).

Zodiacal Signs Listed In VAT 4956.

1. LU.HUN.GA =Aries

2. MUL = Taurus

3. MASH = Gemini

4. NANGAR = Cancer

5. UR.A = Leo

6. AB.SIN = Virgo

7. zi.ba-ni-tu = Libra

8. GIR.TAB = Scorpio

9. PA = Sagittaurius

10. SUHUR = Capricornus

11. GU = Aquarius

12. zib = Pisces

Example: Stars Names Listed In Normal-Star Almanacs.

Source: Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, Volume 1 by Hermann Hunger (and Abraham Sachs) (1988).

“In order to give the positions of the moon and the planets a number of stars close to the ecliptic are used for reference. These have been called “Normalsterne” [normal stars] by Epping and the term has remained in use ever since. [The Babylonian term is ‘counting stars.’] The following table lists the Babylonian names, their translations, the modern names ….”

(1) MUL KUR sa DUR nu-nu

The bright star of the Ribbon of the Fishes.

h Piscium

(2) MUL IGI sa SAG HUN

The bright star at the head of the Hired Man.

b Arietis

(3) MUL ar sa SAG HUN

The rear star of the head of the Hired Man.

a Arietis

(4) MUL-MUL

The Bristle.

h Tauri

(5) is le₁₀

The Jaw of the Bull.

a Tauri

(6) SUR GIGIR sa SI

The northern …. of the Chariot.

b Tauri

(7) SUR GIGIR sa ULU

The southern …. of the Chariot.

z Tauri

(8) MUL IGI sa se-pit MAS-MAS

The front star of the Twins’ feet.

h Geminorum

(9) MUL ar sa se-pit MAS-MAS

The rear star of the Twins’ feet.

m Geminorum

(10) MAS-MAS sa SIPA

The Twins’ star near the Shepherd.

g Geminorum

(11) MAS-MAS IGI

The front Twin star.

a Geminorum

(12) MAS-MAS ar

The rear Twin star.

b Geminorum

(13) MUL IGI sa ALLA sa SI

The front star of the Crab to the north.

h Cancri

(14) MUL IGI sa ALLA sa ULU

The front star of the Crab to the south.

q Cancri

[APOVET also lists e Cnc., a cluster, as a Babylonian normal star.]

(15) MUL ar sa ALLA sa SI

The rear star of the Crab to the north.

g Cancri

(16) MUL ar sa ALLA sa ULU

The rear star of the Crab to the south.

d Cancri

(17) SAG A

The Head of the Lion.

e Leonis

(18) LUGAL

The King.

a Leonis

(19) MUL TUR sa 4 KUS ar LUGAL

The small star which is 4 cubits behind the King.

r Leonis

(20) GIS KUN A

The Rump of the Lion.

q Leonis

(21) GIR ar sa A

The rear foot of the Lion.

b Virginis

(22) DELE sa IGI ABSIN

The Single star in front of the Furrow.

g Virginis

(23) SA₄ sa ABSIN

The bright star of the Furrow.

a Virginis

(24) RIN sa ULU

The southern part of the Scales.

a Librae [APOVET lists it as a² Lib.]

(25) RIN sa SI

The northern part of the Scales.

b Librae

(26) MUL MURUB₄ sa SAG GIR-TAB

The middle star of the Head of the Scorpion.

d Scorpii

(27) MUL e sa SAG GIR-TAB

The upper star of the Head of the Scorpion.

b Scorpii [APOVET lists it as b¹ Sco.]

(28) SI₄

(the god) Lisi

a Scorpii

(29) MUL KUR sa KIR₄ sil PA

The bright star on the tip of Pabilsag’s arrow.

q Ophiuchi

(30) SI MAS

The Horn of the Goat-fish.

b Capricorni [APOVET lists it as ab Cap., stating it denotes a combination of three stars that the Babylonians did not usually distinguish.]

[APOVET by Newton also lists y [?] Cap., as a Babylonian normal star.]

[APOVET by Newton also lists w Cap., as a Babylonian normal star.]

(31) MUL IGI sa SUHUR MAS

The front star of the Goat-fish.

g Capricorni

(32) MUL ar sa SUHUR MAS

The rear star of the Goat-fish.

d Capricorni

The stars contained in the above list are by far the most common normal stars.

Example: Counting Stars (= Normal Stars).

Source: Ancient Planetary Observations and the Validity of Ephemeris Time by Robert Newton (1976).

Babylonian Reference Stars other than Normal Stars.

m Cet.

q Tau. (A doublet that the observers did not separate into components.)

z Gem.

a C.Mi.

d Leo.

h Vir

b Cap.

f Agr.

Example: List Of Ziqpu Stars.

Source: Schaumberger, Johann. “Die Ziqpu-Gestirne nach neuen Keilschrifttexten.” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, Band 50 [= Neue Folge, 16], 1952, Pages 214-229.

Cuneiform Text AO 6478.

I ^mulSUDUN = 18 a Bootis = Arcturus

II ^mulSUDUN ANSU EGIR-ti (= arkiti) = 19 x Bootis (+ o, p oder z)

III ^mulGAM-ti (= kipparti) = 20 a Coronae = Gemma

IV ^mulsa mas-a-ti = 21 b Herculis

V ^mulsa tas-ka-a-ti = 22 a Herculis = Ras Algethi

VI ^mulDIL (= edu) = 23 m Herculis

VII ^mulGASAN.TIN (= belet balati) = 24 a Lyrae = Wega

VIII ^mulku-ma-ri sa PIRIG.KA.DU₈.A = 25 b Cygni = Albireo

IX ^mulni-bi-I sa irti-su = 1 a Cygni = Deneb

X ^mulkin-su = 2 15 Lacertae (Gruppe)

XI ^mula-si-di = 3 s Andromedae?

XII ^mulIV sa ^mulLU.LIM = 4 p, o, x, n Cassiopeiae

XIII ^mulum-mu-lu-ti = 5 h Persei (Gruppe)

XIV ^mulni-bi-i sa SU.GI = 6 a Persei = Algenib

XV ^mulna-as-ra-pi = 7 b, c, Persei (Gruppe)

XVI ^mulGAM (= gamli) = 8 a Aurigae

XVII ^mulritti GAM = 9 b Aurigae

XVIII ^mulMAS.TAB.BA a Geminorum = Castor

= 10

XIX ^mulMAS.TAB.BA EGIR-i (= arki) b Geminorum = Pollux

XX ^mulAL.LUL = 11 Praespe in Cancer (Gruppe)

XXI ^mulII mul^mes sa SAG.DU ^mulUR.GU.LA = 12 e Lionis

m Leonis

XXII ^mulIV sa GAB (= irti)-su = 13 a Leonis = Regulus

g Leonis

h Leonis

z Leonis

XXIII ^mulII sa ^gisKUN (= rapasti)-su = 14 d Leonis

q Leonis

XXIV ^mulDIL (= edu) sa KUN (= zibbati)-su = 15 b Leonis

XXV ^mulA.EDEN = 16 g Comae Berenices

XXVI ^mulSUDUN.ANSU = 17 u Bootis

I ^mulSUDUN h Bootis

naphar (= Summe)

(5) Seleucid (Hellenistic) Period (275 BCE – 116 CE)

Example: Zodiacal Text.

Source: Foxvog, Daniel. (1993). “Astral Dumuzi.” In: Cohen, Mark. et al. (Editors). The Tablet and the Scroll: Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo.

Tablet: SBTU II No 43 (W 22646) (circa 200 BCE?).

Month	Symbol	Zodiacal Sign	Modern Name
BARA₂	UDU.NIT[A₂] “ram”	LU₂	Aries
GU₄	al-pi 1-i[n?]

“single(?) bull”MUL₂Taurus (Pleiades)SIG₄a-me-lu “men”SIPA u MAS.MASOrion and GeminiSUA.MES “waters”NAGARCancerNEUR.MAH “lion”URLeoKINSE.BAR “grain”AB.SIN₂VirgoDU₆RIN₂“scales”ZILibraAPING[IR₂?[(.TAB)]GIR₂ScorpioGANDIR x x ?PASagittariusABu-ri-sa “goat”MAS₂CapricornZIZ₂sal-mu “figure”GUAquariusSESE IM ?KUNPisces

Appendix 1: Babylonian Star and Constellation Catalogue

Source: After the list compiled by the American academic Hope Anthony.

“The Sumerian transliteration is in all-caps, and then the Akkadian is in italics. The English translation of the name is in quotes, followed by the modern star or constellation to which it refers. Alternate spellings for any of the constellation names are not included, as this would lead to a maze of circular definitions. Also, this catalogue is alphabetized by the Sumerian. In the event that the Sumerian name is not known, the constellation is still included and alphabetized by its Akkadian name, but only in this event.”

1. AB.SÍN

“The Furrow”; The star Spica in Virgo

2. A.EDIN = Erua

gamma Comae Berenices (?) and possibly others

3. AGA dA-nim

“The Crown of Anu”

4. AL.LUL = alluttu

“The Crab”; Cancer

5. dAMAR.UD = dMarduk

Jupiter

6. Á.MUSHEN = erû

“The Eagle”; Aquila

7. ANSHE.KUR.RA = sisû

“The Horse”

8. AN.TA.SUR.RA = sariru

“Flashing”; Probably a meteor

9. AN.TA.SHUB.SHUB.BA

“Falling from Above”; Probably a meteorite

10. APIN = epinnu

“The Plow”; Triangulum Boreale with gamma Andromedae

11. ASH.GÁN = ikû

“The Field”; alpha, beta and gamma Pegasi with alpha Andromedae

12. BAL.TÉSH.A = kakkab balti

“Star of Dignity”; Corona Borealis (?)

13. BAN (GISH.BAN) = qashtu

“The Bow”; tao, delta, sigma, and epsilon Canis Maioris

14. BIR = kalitu

“The Kidney”; zeta Puppis

15. BURANUN = Purattu

“The Euphrates”

16. DAR.LUGAL

“The Rooster”; Canis Minor (?)

17. DINGIR.GUB.BA.MESH

“The Standing Gods”

18. DINGIR.KU.A.MESH

“The Sitting (?) Gods”

19. DUMU.USH.É.MAH

Polaris (?)

20. EN.GISHGAL.AN.NA

Jupiter

21. EN.ME.SHÁR.RA

zeta and omicron Persei with, perhaps, the northern stars of Taurus

22. EN.TE.NA.BAR.HUM = habasiranu

Centaurus

23. ESH4.DAR = Ishtar

Venus

24. É.TÙR = tarbasu

“The Cattle Pen”

25. GABA SHU.GI

“The Chest of the Old Man”; Probably delta Persei

26. GAL = rabbu, rabû

“The Great”

27. GÀM = gamlu

“The Crook”; Auriga

28. GÁN.ÙR(.RA) (GISH.GÁN.ÙR) = mashkakatu

“The Harrow”

29. GIGIR (GISH.GIGIR) = narkabtu

“The Chariot”

30. GÌR.MESH SHU.GI

“The Feet of the Old Man”; Probably beta Persei

31. GÍR.TAB = zuqaqipu

“The Scorpion”; Scorpius

32. GISH.KAK dEN.ME.SHÁR.RA

“The Cart Pole of EN.ME.SHÁR.RA”; Probably zeta Persei

33. GU4.AN.NA

“The Bull of Heaven”; Taurus

34. GU.LA

“Great”; Aquarius

35. GU4.UD = shihtu

“Jumping”; Mercury

36. HÉ.GÁL-a-a = kakkab nushi

“Star of Abundance”; Part of Coma Berenices (?)

37. IDIGNA = Idiglat

“The Tigris”

38. dIM.DUGUD.MUSHEN = Anzû

“The Anzû Bird”

39. dIMIN.BI = ilu sibitti

“The Seven Gods”; The deities of MUL.MUL (the Pleiades)

40. IM.SHU.RIN.NA = tinuru

“The Oven”

41. KA5.A = shelebu

“The Fox”; Ursae Maioris (?)

42. KAK.SI.SÁ = shukudu

“The Arrow”; alpha Canis Maioris

43. KA.MUSH.Ì.KÚ.E = Pashittu

beta Andromedae

44. KU6 = nunu

“The Fish”; Piscis Austrinus

45. dLAMMA

alpha Lyrae

46. LI.DUR SIPA.ZI.AN.NA

“The Navel of the True Shepherd of Anu”; Probably alpha Orionis

47. LI9.SI4

alpha Scorpii

48. LUGAL = sharru

“The King”; alpha Leonis

49. LÚ.HUN.GÁ = argu

“The Hired Man”; Aries

50. LU.LIM = lulimu

“The Stag”; Andromeda

51. LUL.LA = sarru

“False”; Probably not a real star

52. MAR.GÍD.DA = eriqqu

“The Wagon”; Ursa Major

53. MAR.GÍD.DA.AN.NA

“The Wagon of Heaven”; Ursa Minor

54. MASH.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL = tu’amu rabûtu

“The Great Twins”; alpha and beta Geminorum

55. MASH.TAB.BA.TUR.TUR

“The Little Twins”; zeta and lamda Geminorium

56. MUL.MUL = zappu

“The Stars” (Sum.) or “The Bristle” (Akk.); The Pleiades

57. MUSH

“The Snake”; Hydra

58. dNIN.KILIM = shikkû

“The Mongoose”

59. PA.BIL.SAG

Sagittarius

60. SIM.MAH = shinunutu

“The Swallow”; Western fish of Pisces

61. SIPA.ZI.AN.NA = shidallu

“The True Shepherd of Anu”; Orion

62. SUHUR.MÁSH = suhurmashû

“The Goat Fish”; Capricorn

63. SHAH

“The Pig”; Delphinus

64. SHAR.GAZ

lamda or upsilon Scorpii

65. SHAR.UR4

lamda or upsilon Scorpii

66. SHUDUN = niru

“The Yoke”; Boötes

67. SHU.GI = shibu

“The Old Man”; Perseus

68. SHU.PA

Boötes

69. TIR.AN.NA = manzât

“The Rainbow”

70. tultu

“The Worm”

71. UD.KA.DU8.A

“The Demon with the Gaping Mouth”; Cygnus and part of Cepheus

72. UGA(.MUSHEN) = aribu

“The Raven”; Corvus

73. UR.BAR.RA = barbaru

“The Wolf”; alpha Trianguli

74. UR.GU.LA

“The Lion”; Leo

75. UR.IDIM

“The Mad Dog”; Lupus

76. ÙZ = enzu

“The She-Goat”; Lyra

77. ZI.BA.AN.NA = zibanitu

“The Scales” (Akk.); Libra

78. ziqit GÍR.TAB

“The Sting of the Scorpion”; Identified with SHAR.GAZ and SHAR.UR4

Appendix 2: Astronomical Texts from Mesopotamia in the First Millennium BCE (After: “Celestial Measurement in Babylonian Astronomy.” by John Steele (Annals of Science, Volume 64, Number 3, 2007, Pages 293-325.)

These can be divided into four main groups:

1. Letters and reports sent by state-employed scholars to the Neo-Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal during the seventh century BCE. Much of this correspondence concerns observed astronomical phenomena and their interpretation as celestial omens. (The letters are edited in S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (1993) (earlier edition S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. Part 1: Texts (1970), with a detailed commentary in S. Parpola Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. Part 1: Commentaries and Appendices (1983). The reports are edited in H. Hunger, Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings (1992).)

2. Systematic reports of astronomical observations made in Babylon (and occasionally other cities in southern Mesopotamia) during the last seven and a half centuries BCE. These observations are recorded in texts known as ‘Astronomical Diaries,’ ‘Excerpt Texts,’ and ‘Goal-Year Texts,’ The Diaries contain night-by-night observations (and sometimes predictions) of astronomical phenomena such as passages of the Moon and planets by certain stars (known today as ‘Normal Stars’), first and last visibilities and stations of the planets, and eclipses of the Sun and Moon, and are presumed to be the source of the material in the Excerpt Texts and Goal-Year Texts. These latter two types of text contain collections of observations of particular planetary and lunar phenomena. They may be arranged either chronologically or into characteristic astronomical periods (e.g. 8 years for Venus, 46 years for Mercury, 18 years for the Moon) for the Excerpt Texts or by extracting reports for one planetary period earlier than a specific ‘goal’ year for the Goal-Year Texts. (All datable Astronomical Diaries are edited in A.Sachs and H. Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, Volumes 1-3 (1988, 1989, 1996), and the Excerpt Texts in H. Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, Volume 5 (2001). Publication of the Goal-Year Texts is forthcoming from H. Hunger.)

3. Astronomical phenomena for a particular year predicted by non-mathematical period schemes. These predicted phenomena were recorded on texts known as ‘Almanacs’ and ‘Normal Star Almanacs.’ Both types of text contain predictions of the dates and zodiacal signs of the first and last visibilities and stations of the planets, lunar and solar eclipses, and certain lunar phenomena. In addition, the Almanacs contain the dates of the entries of the planets into each sign of the zodiac, whereas the Normal Star Almanacs contain calculated planetary passages by the Normal Stars. The predicted data were obtained by applying the goal-year periods to the data contained in the Goal-Year Texts. (Goal-year texts contain collections of past astronomical records, believed to have been abstracted from the astronomical diaries, that are used to enable the prediction of of astronomical events for a particular (forth-coming) “goal year.” Surviving goal-year texts are dated within the period 236 BCE to 24 BCE.) Suitable corrections to the dates of phenomena were applied to the data as the goal-year periods are not fully accurate. A few texts describe the methods of making some of these predictions, most importantly TU 11, BM 45728, and BM 41004 (also known as ‘Atypical Text E’). (For the classification of astronomical texts from Babylon, see A. Sachs, “A Classification of the Babylonian Astronomical Tablets of the Seleucid Period.” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Volume 2 (1948), Pages 271-90, H. Hunger, “Non-Mathematical Astronomical Texts and Their Relationships.” In: Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination, edited by N. Swerdlow (1999) and H. Hunger and D. Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia (1999). Copies of many astronomical texts of all kinds are published in A. Sachs, Late Babylonian Astronomical and Related Texts (1955). For TU 11, see L. Brack-Bernsen and H. Hunger, “TU 11: A Collection of Rules for the Prediction of Lunar Phases and of Month Lengths.” SCIAMVS Volume 3, (2002), Pages 3-90; for BM 45728, see J. Britton, “Treatments of Annual Phenomena in Cuneiform Sources.” In: Under One Sky: Astronomy and Mathematics in the Ancient Near East, edited by J. Steele and A. Imhausen (2002), Pages 21-78; for Atypical Text E, see O. Neugebauer and A. Sachs, “Some Atypical Astronomical Cuneiform Texts I.” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Volume 21, (1967), Pages 183-218.)

4. Texts of mathematical astronomy including ‘Ephemerides,’ tables of calculated astronomical phenomena, and ‘Procedure Texts,’ explanatory texts detailing how to calculate Ephemerides. These texts employ abstract methods including for the lunar theories the separation of compound variability into lunar and solar components. In the Ephemerides, calculated positions of the Moon and planets are always given as a number of UŠ (‘degrees’) within one of twelve zodiacal signs, each of which is divided into 30 UŠ. Type (ii) and (iii) texts together are often referred to as ‘Non-Mathematical Astronomical Texts’ or ‘NMAT’ texts and those of type (iv) either as ‘ACT’ texts, after Neugebauer’s Astronomical Cuneiform Texts, or as ‘Mathematical Astronomical Texts’ or ‘MAT’ texts. The relationship between the NMAT and MAT texts is never discussed in Babylonian sources. (The primary publication of mathematical astronomical texts is O. Neugebauer, Astronomical Cuneiform Texts, Parts 1-3 (1955).)

The assyriologist Francesca Rochberg (Bablonian Horoscopes (1998, Page xi) would include “the horoscopes together with diaries, almanacs, goal-year texts, ephemerides and procedure texts as sources for our reconstruction of the repertoire of Babylonian astronomy in the late first millennium.”

Appendix 3: Mesopotamian Astronomical Sources

Mesopotamian Astronomical Sources
1) Iconography (containing astral symbols)
Example(s):	– Cylinder Seals (circa 3000 BCE)

– Kudurru (circa 1200 BCE)2) Inscriptions (containing astronomical information)Example(s):- Cylinders of Gudea (circa 2300 BCE)3) Religious-Mythological Texts (containing astronomical information)Example(s):- Prayer to the Gods of the Night (circa 1800 BCE)4) Omen Texts (containing astronomical information)Example(s):- The Venus Tablets (circa 1600 BCE)

– Enuma Anu Enlil (circa 1100 BCE)5) Astronomical Texts (nonmathematical and mathematical)Nonmathematical Example(s):- Star Calendars (“Astrolabes”; circa 1200 BCE)

– Star Catalogues (Mul.Apin; circa 700 BCE)

– Planisphere (diagrammatic sky chart; circa 600 BCE)

– Star Lists (ziqpu stars/normal stars; circa 600/300 BCE)Mathematical Example(s):- Astronomical Tables (Ephemerides; circa 500 BCE)

– Goal Year Texts (circa 300 BCE)

Apr 28 2013

The Assyrian Tree of Life

THE TREE OF LIFE

A stylized tree with religious significance occurs as an art motif in 4th-millennium Mesopotamia, and, by the 2nd millennium B.C., it is found everywhere within the ancient Near Eastern provinces, including Egypt, Greece, and the Indus civilization.’ The meaning of the motif is not clear, but its over-all composition strikingly recalls the Tree of Life of later Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist art. The question of whether the concept of the Tree of Life actually existed in ancient Mesopotamia has been debated.

About the middle of the 2nd millennium, a new development in the iconography of the Tree becomes noticeable leading to the emergence of the so-called Late Assyrian Tree under Tukulti-Ninurta I. With the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, this form of the Tree spread throughout the entire Near East and continues to be seen down to the end of the 1st millennium. Its importance for imperial ideology is borne out by its appearance on royal garments and jewelry, official seals, and the wall paintings and sculptures of royal palaces, as in the throne room of Ashurnasirpal II in Calah, where it is the central motif.

The hundreds of available specimens of the Late Assyrian Tree exhibit a great deal of individual variation show that the motif and most of its iconography were inherited from earlier periods. Nevertheless, its features stand out even in the crudest examples and make it easy to distinguish it from its predecessors.

Essentially, it consists of a trunk with a palmette crown standing on a stone base and surrounded by a network of horizontal or intersecting lines fringed with palmettes, pinecones, or pomegranates. In more elaborate renditions, the trunk regularly has joints or nodes at its top, middle, and base and a corresponding number of small circles to the right and left of the trunk. Animal, human, or supernatural figures usually flank the tree, while a winged disk hovers over the whole. Even the most schematic representations are executed with meticulous attention to overall symmetry and balance.

THE TREE: ITS SYMBOLISM AND STRUCTURE

What did this Tree stand for, and why was it chosen as an imperial symbol? There is considerable literature on this question, but despite the most painstaking iconographic evidence, on the whole, little has been explained. This is largely due to the almost total lack of relevant textual evidence. The symbolism of the Tree is not discussed in cuneiform sources, and the few references to sacred trees or plants in Mesopotamian literature have proved too vague or obscure to be productive.

Two fundamentally important points have nevertheless been established concerning the function of the Tree in the throne room of Ashurnasirpal’s palace in Calah. Firstly, Irene Winter has convincingly demonstrated that the famous relief showing the king flanking the Tree under the winged disk corresponds to the epithet “vice-regent of Assur” in the accompanying inscription. Clearly, the Tree here represents the divine world order maintained by the king as the representative of the god Assur, embodied in the winged disk hovering above the Tree.

Secondly, it was observed some time ago that in some reliefs the king takes the place of the Tree between the winged genies. Whatever the precise implications of this, it is evident that in such scenes the king is portrayed as the human personification of the Tree. Thus if the Tree symbolized the divine world order, then the king himself represented the realization of that order in man, in other words, a true image of God, the Perfect Man. If this reasoning is correct, it follows that the Tree had a dual function in Assyrian imperial art.

Basically, it symbolized the divine world order maintained by the Assyrian king, but inversely it could also be projected upon the king to portray him as the Perfect Man. This interpretation accounts for the prominence of the Tree as an imperial symbol because it not only provided a legitimation for Assyria’s rule over the world, but it also justified the king’s position as the absolute ruler of the empire.

The complete lack of references to such an important symbol in contemporary written sources can only mean that the doctrines relating to the Tree were never committed to writing by the scholarly elite who forged the imperial ideology but were circulated orally.

The nature of the matter further implies that only the basic symbolism of the Tree was common knowledge, while the more sophisticated details of its interpretation were accessible to a few select initiates only. The existence of an extensive esoteric lore in 1st and 2nd-millennium Mesopotamia is amply documented, and the few written specimens of such lore prove that mystical exegesis of religious symbolism played a prominent part in it.

THE SEPHIROTIC TREE

Mesopotamian esoteric lore has a remarkable parallel in Jewish Kabbalah, and, more importantly from the standpoint of the present topic, so does the Assyrian Tree. A schematic design known as the Tree of Life figures prominently, in both, practical and theoretical Kabbalah. In fact, it can be said that the entire structure of Kabbalah revolves around this diagram, a form which strikingly resembles the Assyrian Tree.

The Sephirotic Tree derives its name from elements called Sephiroth, literally “countings” or “numbers,” represented in the diagram by circles numbered from one to ten. They are defined as divine powers or attributes through which the transcendent God, not shown in the diagram, manifests Himself.

Each has a name associated with its number. The Tree has a central trunk and horizontal branches spreading to the right and left on which the Sephiroth are arranged in the symmetrical fashion: three to the left, four on the trunk, and three to the right. The vertical alignments of the Sephiroth on the right and left represent the polar opposites of masculine and feminine, positive and negative, active and passive, dark and light, etc. The balance of the Tree is maintained by the trunk, also called the Pillar of Equilibrium.

Like the Assyrian Tree, the Sephirotic Tree has a dual function. On the one hand, it is a picture of the macrocosm. It gives an account of the creation of the world, accompanied in three successive stages by the Sephiroth emanating from the transcendent God. It also charts the cosmic harmony of the universe upheld by the Sephiroth under the influence of the polar system of opposites. In short, it is a model of the divine world order, and in manifesting the invisible God through His attributes, it is also, in a way, an image of God.

On the other hand, the Sephirotic Tree, like the Assyrian, can also refer to man as a microcosm, the ideal man created in the image of God. Interpreted in this way, it becomes a way of salvation for the mystic seeking deliverance from the bonds of flesh through the soul’s union with God. The arrangement of the Sephiroth from the bottom to the top of the diagram marks the path which he has to follow in order to attain the ultimate goal, the crown of heaven represented by the Sephirah number one, Kether.

Tradition has it that the doctrines about the Tree were originally revealed to the patriarch Abraham, who transmitted them orally to his son. In actual fact, the earliest surviving Kabbalistic manuscripts date from the 10th century A.D. It is generally agreed, however, that the “foundation stone” of Kabbalism, the Sepher Yetzirah, was composed sometime between the 3rd and 6th centuries, and the emergence of Kabbalah as a doctrinal structure can now be reliably traced to the 1st century A.D.

The renowned rabbinical schools of Babylonia were the major centers from which the Kabbalistic doctrines spread to Europe during the high Middle Ages. Altogether, the Sephirotic Tree displays a remarkable similarity to the Assyrian Tree in both its symbolic content and external appearance. In addition, given the fact that it seems to have originated on Babylonian soil, the likelihood that it is based on a Mesopotamian model appears considerable. As a matter of fact, a number of central Kabbalistic doctrines, such as the location of the Throne of God in the Middle Heaven, are explicitly attested in Mesopotamian esoteric texts. The crucial question, however, is how the existence of the hypothetical Mesopotamian model can be proven, given the lack of directly relevant textual evidence.

THE ASSYRIAN TREE DIAGRAM

For the above reasons, I had for years considered the identity of the Assyrian and Sephirotic Trees an attractive but probably unprovable, until it finally occurred to me that there is a way of proving or rejecting it. For if the Sephirotic Tree really is but an adaptation of a Mesopotamian model, the adaptation process should be reversible, that is, it should be possible to reconstruct the original model without difficulty.

The basic elements of the Tree, the Sephiroth, are crucial in this respect. Their names and definitions strongly recall the attributes and symbols of Mesopotamian gods, and their prominent association with numbers calls to mind the mystic numbers of the Mesopotamian gods. They are, in fact, represented as angelic beings in some Sephirotic schemes, which is consistent with their definition as divine powers. Accordingly, in the Mesopotamian model they would have been gods, with functions and attributes coinciding with those of the Sephiroth.

Thus, I replaced the Sephiroth with the Mesopotamian gods sharing their functions and/or attributes. Most gods fell into their place immediately. We need no justification for associating Ea with Wisdom, Sin with Understanding, Marduk with Mercy, Samas with Judgment, Ishtar with Beauty, and Nabu and Ninurta with Victory (Netzach). Crown (Kether) was the emblem of both Anu and Enlil, but since in the 1st millennium Enlil was commonly equated with Marduk (just as his son Ninurta was equated with Nabu), the top most Sephirah naturally corresponds to Anu, the god of Heaven. Foundation (Yesod) corresponds to Nergal, lord of the underworld, whose primary characteristic, strength, is in Akkadian homonymous with a word for foundation, dunnu. For the identification of Daath with Mummu (Consciousness) and the number zero.

I had to resort to Tallqvist’s Akkadische Gotterepitheta to find that the only gods with epithets fitting the Sephirah of Hod (Splendor or Majesty) was the storm god Adad, the fire god Girru, and Marduk, Nabui, and Ninurta, the last three of whom already had their place in the diagram. Accordingly, this Sephirah corresponds to Adad and Girru, who share the same mystic number, and it is noteworthy that in the Bible the word hod refers to Jahweh as a thundering and flashing storm.

The last Sephirah, Kingdom (Malkuth), is defined as “the receptive potency which distributes the Divine stream to the lower worlds,” which in Mesopotamia can only apply to the king as the link between God and Man. The motif of the king as distributor of the Divine stream is repeatedly encountered on Assyrian seals, where he holds a streamer emanating from the winged disk above the sacred Tree. I have excluded this Sephirah from the reconstructed model because it breaks the compositional harmony of the Tree and because the king, though impersonating the Tree, clearly does not form part of it in Assyrian art.

Once the gods had been placed in the diagram, which did not take longer than half an hour, I filled in their mystic numbers using as a guide W. Rollig’s article “Gotterzahlen” in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie. For the most part, this was a purely mechanical operation; in some cases, however, I had to choose between two or three alternative numbers. The numbers shown are those used in the spelling of divine names in the Middle and Neo-Assyrian standard orthography, and all of them are securely attested. I should point out that the number for Anu, 1, is erroneously given as 60 in Rollig’s article. Of course, the vertical wedge can also be read 60, but in the case of Anu, “the first god,” the only reading that makes sense is 1, as we shall see presently. The ease with which the gods and their numbers fit into the diagram was almost too good to be true, and the insights obtained in the process were more than encouraging. Suddenly, not only the diagram itself but the Mesopotamian religion as well started to make more sense.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF GODS AND NUMBERS

Looking at the reconstructed diagram more closely, one observes that practically all the great gods of the Assyro-Babylonian pantheon figure in it, some occupying the same place because they were theologically equivalent. Only one major god is missing, Assur, for whom no mystic number is attested. This strongly suggests that this important god has to be identified with the winged disk over the Assyrian Tree from which the Divine stream emanates and, accordingly, is identical with the transcendent God of Kabbalah, Ain Soph.

As a matter of fact, the various spellings of Assur’s name can, without difficulty, be interpreted as expressing the idea of the One, Only, or Universal God, as well as the various qualities of Ain Soph. The solar disk through which he was primarily represented implies that his essential nature was light, as in Kabbalah. Of the gods found in the diagram, Anu, king of Heaven, occupies the crown; Ishtar, representing all female deities, occupies the middle; and Nergal, the lord of the underworld, the base of the trunk. The remaining gods are arranged to the right and left sides of the trunk in a corresponding way, with sons lined under their fathers. In other words, the tree is composed of three successive generations of gods appearing horizontally as interrelated trinities, to be compared with the triadic configuration of nodes, volutes, and circles of the Assyrian Tree. The lines connecting the gods exactly render the divine genealogies known from late 2nd and early 1st millennium texts. But that is not all.

The distribution of the mystic numbers in the diagram adds to it a dimension unknown in the Sephirotic Tree. Six of the numbers are full tens, all neatly arranged, in descending order, on the branches of the Tree: those higher than 30 to the right, the rest to the left side. The numbers on the trunk are not tens, and their arrangement is different: they begin with 1, as in the Sephirotic Tree, but the following two are not in numerical order. Does this distribution make any sense? Initially, we note that the numbers on the trunk, when added together, yield 30, the median number of the sexagesimal system. From the standpoint of number harmony, this tallies beautifully with the medium position of the trunk and recalls its Kabbalistic designation, the Pillar of Equilibrium. The position of the number 15 in the center of the diagram is justifiable from the same point of view.

On the surface, the numbers on the right and left of the trunk seem to upset the balance of the Tree because the numbers on the left are consistently smaller than those on the right. Yet, when one adds the numbers together, one obtains for each branch the same total (30) as for the trunk, the Pillar of Equilibrium. This is so because the numbers on the left side, according to the polar system of oppositions governing the Tree, are negative and thus have to be subtracted from those on the right side. The sum total of the branches and the trunk (4 x 30 = 120) added to the sum total of the individual numbers (1 + 10 + 14 + 15 + … + 60 = 240) yields 360, the number of days in the Assyrian cultic year and the circumference of the universe expressed in degrees.

In all, it can be said that the distribution of the mystic numbers in the diagram displays an internal logic and, remarkably, contributes to the overall symmetry, balance, and harmony of the Tree. All this numerical beauty is lost with the decimal numbering of the Sephirotic Tree, which only reflects the genealogical order of the gods. The fact that the numerical balance of the Tree can be maintained only on the condition that the left-side numbers are negative, as required by Kabbalistic theory, amounts to mathematical proof of the correctness of the reconstruction.

Considering further the perfect match obtained with the placement of the gods, their grouping into meaningful triads and genealogies, and the identification of Assur with the winged disk, I feel very confident in concluding that the Sephirotic Tree did have a direct Mesopotamian model and that this model was perfected in the Assyrian Empire, most probably in the early 13th century B.C.

Being able to reconstruct this Tree, date it, and understand the doctrinal system underlying it, it has tremendous implications to the history of religion and philosophy which I will content myself with three concrete examples illustrating how the insights provided by the Tree are bound to revolutionize our understanding of Mesopotamian religion and philosophy.

THE TREE AND THE BIRTH OF THE GODS IN ENUMA ELISH

In Enuma elish, the narrator, having related the birth of Anu, mysteriously continues: “And Anu generated Nudimmud (= Ea), his likeness.” This can only be a reference to the fact that the mystic numbers of these two gods, 1 and 60, were written with the same sign, and indicates that the composer of the epic conceived the birth of the gods as a mathematical process. On the surface, of course, the theogony of Enuma elish is presented in terms of human reproduction. As the example just quoted shows, however, it did involve more than just one level of meaning.

In fact, the curious sequence of “births” presented in Tablet I 1-15 makes much better sense when it is rephrased “mathematically” as follows: “When the primordial state of undifferentiated unity (Apsu + Mummu + Tiamat, “0″), in which nothing existed, came to an end, nothingness was replaced by the binary system of oppositions (Lahmu and Lahamu)”‘ and the infinite universe (Anshar = Assur) with its negative counterpart (Kishar). Assur emanated Heaven (Anu) as his primary manifestation, to mirror his existence to the world.” Thus rephrased, the passage comes very close to Kabbalistic and Neoplatonic metaphysics.

Lines 21-24 of Tablet I of Enuma elish seem to describe the “birth” of the mystic number of Sin which can be derived from the number of Ea by simply dividing it by two. The irritation of Apsu caused by this play with numbers and the subsequent killing of Apsu and “leashing” of Mummu (lines 29-72) seem to be an etiology for the emanation of the third number and the establishment of the places of Ea and Mummu in the Tree diagram. The “birth” of Marduk, the next god in the diagram, is described in the following lines as expected. Marduk’s mystic number, like the numbers of all the remaining gods, can be derived from the preceding numbers by simple mathematical operations. The prominent part played by numbers both in Enuma elish and the Assyrian Tree of course immediately recalls the central role of mathematics and divine numbers in Pythagorean philosophy.

THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH

Looking at the Epic of Gilgamesh through Kabbalistic glasses, a new interpretation of the Epic can be proposed viewing it as a mystical path of spiritual growth culminating in the acquisition of superior esoteric knowledge (see fig. 12). The Path proceeds in stages through the Tree of Life, starting from its roots dominated by animal passions, the realm of Nergal (Tablet I); the names of the gods governing the individual stages are encoded in the contents of the tablets, and they follow the order in which they are found in the Tree, read from bottom to top. Tablet II, which has no counterpart in the Tree, deals with spiritual awakening; Tablet III outlines the Path; and Tablet IX describes the final breakthrough to the source of supernal knowledge.

Tablet IX also corresponds to the Sephirah Daath (Knowledge), which in the psychological Tree represents the gate to supernal knowledge, “the point where identity vanishes in the void of Cosmic consciousness before union with Kether”; passing through it is sometimes compared to spiritual death. The revelation of supernal knowledge, on the other hand, is described “in Jewish classical texts as a tremendous event, when the sun will shine with an overwhelming light. The act of acquiring supernal knowledge involves a change in both the known and the knower; it is presented as an active event, or penetration”. Compare this with the penetration of Gilgamesh through the dark passage of the cosmic mountain guarded by the Scorpion man and woman and his emergence to the dazzling sunlight on the other side. The beautiful jewel garden he finds there is the Garden of Knowledge; it corresponds to the “garden of God” of Ezek. 28:12 associated with wisdom, perfection, and blamelessness, and “adorned with gems of every kind: sardin and chrysolite and jade, topaz, carnelian and green jasper, sapphire, purple garnet and green felspar.”

The late version of the Epic consists of twelve tablets, the last of which is widely considered an “inorganic appendage breaking the formal completeness of the Epic, which had come full circle between the survey of Uruk in Tablet I and the same survey at the end of Tablet XI.” In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth. Without the twelfth tablet, the Epic would be a torso because, as we shall see, it contains the ultimate wisdom that Gilgamesh brought back from his arduous search for life.

That wisdom was not meant for the vulgar, and it is therefore hidden in the text. But the Epic is full of clues to help the serious reader to penetrate its secret. The refrain at the end of Tablet XI is one of these. Far from signaling the end of the Epic, it takes the reader back to square one, the Prologue, where he is advised to examine the structure of “the walls of Uruk” until he finds the “gate to the secret,” a lapis lazuli tablet locked inside a box.” “The walls of Uruk” is a metaphor for Tablets I-XI, ”the tablet box” is the surface story, and “the lapis lazuli tablet” is the secret structural framework of the Epic, the Tree diagram.

Once it is realized that the Epic is structured after the Tree, the paramount importance of Tablet XII becomes obvious, for it corresponds to the Crown of the Tree, Anu (Heaven), which would otherwise have no correspondence in the Epic. On the surface, there is no trace of Heaven in Tablet XII. On the contrary, it deals with death and the underworld, the word “heaven” (or the god Anu) not even being mentioned in it, and it seems to end on an utterly pessimistic and gloomy note.

When considered in the light of the psychological Tree and the spiritual development outlined in the previous tablets, however, the message of the tablet changes character. We see Gilgamesh achieving reunion with his dead friend Enkidu, being able to converse with him and thus to acquire precious knowledge from him about life after death; and what is more, he achieves this reunion in exactly the same way as he did in Tablet IX, by prolonged weeping and praying. In other words, the unique mystical experience recounted in Tablets IX-XI, there presented as something totally new and unusual, has in Tablet XII become a firmly established technique by which similar experiences can be sought at will.

In Jewish mysticism, such experiences are referred to as “ascent to heaven” or “entering Paradise” and regarded as tremendous events reserved only to perfectly ethical, perfectly stable men. The evolution of Gilgamesh into such a man is described in detail in Tablets I-VIII. In the Jewish mystical text Hekhalot Rabbati, the very concept of mystical “ascent to heaven” is revealed to the Jewish community as a revolutionary “secret of the world.” There can be no doubt whatsoever that this very secret, revealing the way to Heaven, was the precious secret that Gilgamesh brought back from his journey to Utnapishtim.

THE ETANA MYTH

The Mesopotamian myth of Etana is well known for its central motif, a man’s ascent to heaven on an eagle’s back. It has thus been classified as an “adventure story” or early “science fiction” containing the first known account of “space travel.” The eagle back ascent motif has been recognized to recur in Hellenistic, Jewish, and Islamic folk tales and legends and has also been connected with the Greek myth of Ganymede and the Alexander Romance. Much less attention has been paid to the tree inhabited by the eagle and the snake which figures so prominently in the second tablet of the myth.

Without going into unnecessary detail, it can be suggested here that the tree-eagle-serpent theme in Tablet II is an allegory for the fall of man and that the ascent to heaven described in Tablet III is to be understood as mystical ascent of the soul crowning an arduous program of spiritual restoration. Seen in this light, the myth becomes closely related to the Gilgamesh Epic in substance, and in presenting Etana as the first man to achieve the ascent, it forcefully contributes to the notion of the Mesopotamian king as the “Perfect Man.” The tree of Tablet II is Etana himself, whose birth its sprouting marks. The eagle and the serpent are conflicting aspects of man’s soul, the one capable of carrying him to heaven, the other pulling him down to sin and death.

In Christian symbolism, “The eagle holding a serpent in its talons or beak represents the triumph of Christ over the ‘dark forces’ of the world. In Indian mysticism, the bird Garuda likewise achieves its ascent to heaven in spite of the serpents coiling around its head, wings, and feet. In the Etana myth, the eagle plays two roles. At first, it is “an evil eagle, the criminal Anzu (var.: criminal and sinner), who wronged his comrade”; as such, it parallels the eagle inhabiting the huluppu tree in the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic, which is explicitly called Anzu. Later, however, having suffered and been rescued by Etana, it carries the latter to heaven. The evil aspect of the bird corresponds to the natural state of man’s soul, which, despite its divine origin, is contaminated with sin (see Enuma elish VI 1-33 and Lambert and Millard, Atrahasis, p. 59). The second aspect of the bird corresponds to the soul of a “purified” man. The “tree” itself is marked as sinful by its species (the poplar), associated with Nergal; Bel-sarbe “Lord of the Poplar”. This accords with Ebeling, Handerhebung, p. 114:9, which explicitly states that mankind is “entrusted to Nergal,” that is, under the power of sin.

The deal struck by the eagle with the serpent marks the beginning of Etana’s moral corruption as king. Ignoring the voice of his conscience, he becomes guilty of perfidy, greed, and murder; for this, he is punished. Etana’s voice of conscience is the “small, especially wise fledgling” of II 45 and 97. Note that the theme of bird’s nest with the young (taken over from the Sumerian Lugal-banda epic) also plays a role in Kabbalah, where it is explicitly associated with self-discipline and wisdom.

The serpent attacks the eagle, cuts off its wings, and throws it into a bottomless pit. This is an allegory for spiritual death; the same idea is expressed by the childlessness of Etana, to whom the narrative now returns.

Etana’s realization of his condition is the beginning of his salvation; from now on, he appears as a person referred to by his own name. Admitting his guilt and shame, he prays for a “plant of birth” (that is, a chance for spiritual rebirth) and is guided to the path that will take him there.

The spiritual meaning of the prayer (concealed under the “plant of birth” metaphor) is made clear by the preceding prayer of the eagle (II 121-23): “Am I to die in the pit? Who realizes that it is your punishment that I bear? Save my life, so that I may broadcast your fame for eternity!” In the late Turkish version of the myth, the bird rescues the hero from the netherworld.

The path leads him to the mountain where he finds the eagle lying in the pit with its wings cut, a metaphor for the imprisonment of the soul in the bonds of the material world. Complying with the wish of the eagle, his better self, he starts feeding it and teaching it to fly again, an allegory for spiritual training and self-discipline. It takes eight months to attempt the first ascent to heaven, which fails because Etana himself is not ready for it.

The second ascent, better prepared, is successful and takes Etana into a celestial palace where he, having passed through several gates, finds a beautiful girl sitting on a throne guarded by lions. All this is so reminiscent of the terminology and imagery relating to the ascent of the soul in Jewish mysticism that mere coincidence can be excluded. The several heavens and heavenly palaces through which Etana passes are commonplace in the Hekhalot texts and later mystical literature. The girl seen by Etana is the Shekhinah, the Presence or Beauty of God. Etana’s fall from the heavens has ample parallels in Kabbalistic literature, where the ascent is considered a dangerous practice and the return to a normal state referred to as being “thrown down like a stone.”

The heavenward ascent of Etana is already attested on seals from the Akkadian period (ca. 2300 B.C.) and thus antedates the earliest Hekhalot texts by more than two and a half millennia, and the mystical experiences of 19th century Kabbalists by more than four thousand years. In saying this, I do not want to stress the antiquity of the “ascent” phenomenon in Mesopotamia. The point I wish to make is that, against all appearances, Mesopotamian religion and philosophy are not dead but still very much alive in Jewish, Christian, and Oriental mysticism and philosophies. The Tree diagram provides the key which makes it possible to bridge these different traditions and to start recovering the forgotten summa sapientia of our cultural ancestors.

Aug 19 2012

Cover Art – Oracle of Enheduanna

Greetings! I would like to welcome everyone to the Covenant of Babylon blog page, your information source for insights into the mysteries of the Babylonian Tradition. If this is your first time here, please take the time to review some of our previous articles. Have a blessed day!

It is a great privilege—and for me a very moving one—to take part in a problem which Frankfort half solved in all essentials, but which can be carried a little further toward understanding by the use of materials that were not available to him when he made his identification of the figure in the Burney Relief.

As Frankfort correctly saw, the figure in the Burney Relief represents a supernatural being called Kilili in Akkadian, and he drew attention to Zimmern’s earlier suggestion of a relationship between Kilili and the Greek Aphrodite Parakyptousa. Following the consensus of Assyriological opinion as it was then, and still is, he considered Kilili to be a female demon, a kind of Lilith, and it is at that point that I believe we can now see a little more clearly.

Size

Looking then at the Burney Relief afresh, we may begin by considering its size. It measures 49.5 by 37 cms. and is 2.5–3 cms. thick. Thus, although it is made of clay its size sets it firmly apart from the run of small clay plaques and makes it almost certain, as Frankfort pointed out, that we are dealing with a cult relief. This however, does not fit well with the idea that the relief could represent a demon, for it is precisely the lack of a cult that sets Ancient Mesopotamian demons apart from the gods. The demons could have no cult, for they were completely alien to man and unreachable, no relationship of giving and taking could be established with them.

We are told that:

Neither male are they nor female,
they are ghosts ever sweeping along,
are ones who take not wives, to whom children are not born,
know not how to show mercy,
hear not prayer and supplications
they are such as know not food, know not drink,
eat not flour strewn (as offering),
drink not water poured as libations.

Horned Crown

Against identifying the figure as that of a demon we turn to the four-tiered horned crown it is wearing. The horned crown is an emblem of divinity and the multiple layers of horns indicate a deity of exceptional powers and high rank.

We should therefore abandon the idea that the figure represents a demon and assume rather that a goddess is meant. If that is so, however, the lions under her feet become significant, for there is, as far as I know, only one goddess who has lions as attribute, the goddess Inanna, who corresponds to the Akkadian Ishtar. She drives a team of seven lions, lions guard her throne and scare the eagle in the Etana Story, and she was herself originally envisaged in lion shape as shown by her name Labbatu which means ‘Lioness’. For our present purposes perhaps the most revealing reference is line 23 in the Sumerian hymn to her called Innin-šag-gurra which describes her as ‘seated on crossed lions’.

Mountains

Below the lions is, as you will notice, the conventional design by which the Ancient Mesopotamian artists represented mountains. The scene depicted is thus the mountain tops east of the Mesopotamian plain. This too fits Inanna, for there, on Kur-mùsh, that is to say, on the mountain crests, was her original home. kur means mountain and mùš means ‘crest’, ‘summit’. That she came from there we know from The Lugalbanda Epic, and the epic of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.

Wig

Returning, then, to consideration of the figure itself, there is underneath the horned crown her hair, which, predictably, can hardly be expected to contribute anything special in the way of identifying marks. Nevertheless, there are some points of interest for fitting the figure in with Inanna that may be worth mentioning.

First, what is rendered was most likely not her natural hair but rather a wig. It was customary for the Sumerians to shave the head and to wear a wig for festive occasions when they wanted to look their best. There is in the British Museum a wig of stone meant for the head of a statue of a goddess which is called in the inscription on it ‘her glory of womanhood’ recalling to the modern reader the English expression that ‘the hair is a woman’s crowning glory’ and meaning exactly that.

In this respect Inanna followed prevailing custom and we are told that when she set out to conquer the Netherworld she wore a ‘kefia’ (túg) and ‘aghal’ (šu-gur-ra) of the desert but carried in her hand ‘the wig of her brow’. Apparently she planned to put that on when she arrived and wanted to look her best.

The reason why the Sumerians shaved their heads and wore wigs was apparently the same that made wigs popular in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: to keep free of lice. The shaved head could be washed and anointed to clean it. Typical wearers of wigs were the priests, the gudu Akkadian pasisu the Sumerian term is not clear but it is written with two signs, one of which is the sign for ‘louse’, the other for ‘clean’, ‘free of’. That anointing was indeed used to get rid of lice is shown by an incantation which guards against ghosts who may have been nourishing a grudge. One such is of a man who, when alive had begged, ‘in my lousiness let me anoint myself with you’, and had been refused. Anointing thus reveals itself as a means of bodily cleanliness and thus as a necessity for cultic purity. The priest is the pasisu ‘the anointed’, and when the ruler is anointed that too prepares him for cultic function, just as the promised king and saviour will be a priest-king, a messiah.

Necklace

Returning from this to the figure before us we may skip for the moment her necklace which we shall come back to later, and consider instead the things she holds in her hands, known traditionally as ‘the Rod and the Ring’.

The Rod and Ring

What the rod and the ring actually picture is clear, fortunately, from the famous Stele of Urnammu from Ur, where the Moon god, the god of Ur, Nanna, is shown handing them to the ruler, Urnammu, who appears on the stele in the role of builder, carrying pick and other building tools. Here, in contrast to later representation, the execution is precise and detailed enough to show that the ring actually is no ring at all but a coil of rope, apparently a measuring-cord for measuring longer distances, while the accompanying ‘rod’ is a yardstick for details.

This interpretation is confirmed—as is also the identification of the figure with Inanna—by the myth of the Descent of Inanna, for there we are told that as she dressed for her descent she carried ‘the yardstick of one nindan (length)’ and ‘the pure (measuring) cord of the iku. nindan and iku are units of length and area corresponding roughly to our ‘yard’ and ‘acre’.

Why Inanna would carry the implements of the builder here, where she is hardly suitably dressed for building, or on her journey to the Netherworld where, likewise, there would seem to be no call for them, is, of course, at first glance puzzling. But here, again, the Stele of Urnammu furnishes the answer. It will be noted that Nanna holds in his hands both a weapon, a battle-axe, and the yardstick and coil, and that it is the latter, not the weapon, that he hands to Urnammu, thus entrusting him with works of peace rather than war; for the task of building temples could be done only in peacetime.

The manpower needed for building was provided by the army and it would, of course, be needed for fighting in times of war. Samsuiluna, for instance, had to postpone building the temple for Shamash in Sippar which the god had asked for because a rebellion broke out in the south of the country and had to be put down.

Thus the yardstick and measuring coil symbolize peace, and Inanna holds them because, as goddess of war she clearly controls also the absence of war, peace. They symbolize one aspect of her powers.

Wings and Talons

We come next to the wings and bird’s claws of the figure and here the fact that it is flanked by two owls as its attributes clearly indicates that the bird features are meant to suggest specifically owl character.

If we are right so far in assuming that the figure represents Inanna, we must ask therefore whether this goddess, besides her lion-form, also could be envisaged under the form of the owl. And that seems in fact to be the case.

The Akkadian word for owl, eššebu corresponds to Sumerian ninna ‘owl’ and also to dingir nin-ninna ‘Divine lady owl’, that is owl goddess. This owl goddess Nin-ninna, however, is Ishtar, the Akkadian name of Inanna.

Besides the translation eššebu ‘owl’ the ancient lexical texts give for Nin-ninna also kilili which likewise is known to be a name for Inanna/Ishtar as was shown first by Zimmern who many years ago pointed to an incantation reading ‘Exalted lady Kilili who has rushed at me, great Ishtar who has flung your limbs around me’.

The name Kilili makes it clear what Inanna’s owl-aspect stands for, for Kilili denotes the harlot who like the owl comes out at dusk. The Sumerian counterpart of Kilili is Abashushu, ‘harlot’, literally ‘the one who leans out of the window’, that is, the harlot who leans out of the window of the bordello soliciting custom from the men in the street below. The gesture was a characteristic one. It meets us also in the Hellenistic-Roman world where the goddess of harlots was Aphrodite parakýptousa ‘Aphrodite who leans out of the window, and it underlies the familiar pictorial motif of ‘the woman in the window’.

A description of Inanna in this aspect of her, as harlot and goddess or harlots, we have in the Sumerian hymn to her published by Langdon in Babylonian Expedition 31 no. 12. The section which interests us here addresses the goddess directly as follows:

Harlot, you go down to the alehouse,
Inanna, you are turning into one leaning out of the window lifting up your voice,
Inanna, you are mistress of myriad offices no god compares with you!
Nin-egalla, here is your home ground let me praise your greatness.
As the beasts are stirring up the dust, as oxen and sheep are returning to byre and fold,
you, my lady, have dressed like one of no repute in a single garment,
have fastened the harlot’s erimmātu (necklace) around your neck,
you are become one who snatches the man from the wife’s embrace,
you are the one who is hastening into the embrace of Dumuzi your bridegroom,
Inanna, your seven bridallers are bedding you.
Inanna, you are mistress of myriad offices, no god compares with you!

It is of interest that the text specifically calls Inanna ‘harlot’, kar-kid and ‘one who leans out of the window’, ab-ba-[šú]-šú, which in Akkadian would have been rendered as Kilili. It also mentions Inanna’s necklace, indicating that it identifies her as harlot. That necklace is also listed as part of her attire in Inanna’s Descent.

We may therefore, I think, quite reasonably identify it with the necklace the figure on the Burney Relief is wearing and which we delayed commenting on earlier.

We may thus sum up:

1. The size of the relief suggests a cult-relief. Since demons had no cult the figure depicted is unlikely to be a demon.
2. The horned crown with four tiers suggests a major deity.
3. The lions suggest Inanna, since she is the only goddess associated with lions.
4. The mountain pattern fits since Inanna’s home was the mountain crests in the east.
5. The yardstick and coil of rope in her hands accord with the description of her in the myth Inanna’s Descent.
6. So does the necklace she is wearing.
7. Finally, the owls and the wings and bird talons of the figure show that Inanna is pictured in her aspect of Owl-goddess and goddess of harlots, Ninnina, in Akkadian Kilili.

One may therefore hazard the opinion that the Burney Relief represents Inanna as goddess of harlots and served as a cult-relief at the house-altar of an ancient bordello. If so, that would explain also a last unusual feature of the relief, the nudity of the figure.

Nudity is practically never found in monumental art in Ancient Mesopotamia and seems to have been deliberately avoided for reasons of propriety. In a bordello, though, it would hardly have given offence.

Pictorial Language

Before we can leave the Burney Relief entirely, there remains the question of its revelance to pictorial language and here I would plead that it helps us to see concretely how the Ancients responded to certain terms which from an origin as straightforward descriptive words moved on to become in fact metaphors, mere pictorial language. I am thinking particularly of Sumerian divine names such as An which identifies the god as the sky or Enlil whose name identifies him as the wind, although in historical times both gods were undoubtedly thought of as having human form.

We may begin by defining what happens when pictorial language is used, and I follow here Ogden and Richards in their The Meaning of Meaning, who say that the metaphor calls to mind an image from which the hearer is expected to abstract and to concentrate only on such features as are relevant in the context. Thus if one speaks of ‘waves of pain’ only the rhythmic movement of actual waves is to be considered as relevant, while their wetness, dark green colour and so on are tacitly discounted.

Considering in this light a term, or name, for Inanna such as Nin-nina ‘Lady Owl’, one could well imagine that in historical times, when anthropomorphic forms of the gods had become dominant, the Ancients, on hearing it, would select from it only one feature, appearance at dusk when:

The beasts are stirring up the dust, as oxen and sheep are returning to byre and fold.

One could well imagine this; but a look at the Burney Relief will show that the Ancients were, in fact, less radical. ‘Lady Owl’ is essentially ‘lady’ and ‘human’, but not entirely.

She retains the owl’s wings and claws reinforcing the aspect of night prowler. In western culture we have a parallel in the imagining and representation of the Devil in human shape except for one foot which has the cloven hoof of the lustful satyr he is. Other cases like that of Lady Owl on the Burney Relief abound. Gudea, who saw the god Ningirsu in a dream, reports that the god had the wings of his original form, the Thunderbird, and ended below in a floodstorm, the snake-god Ningishzida has snakes heads protruding from his shoulders.

Vegetation goddesses sprout grain from their bodies and so on. As Frankfort once vividly summed it up, ‘it is as if their inner being was threatening to break and burst through the human form imposed on it’.

What we have then, in terms such as Nin-nina ‘Lady Owl’, is accordingly a metaphor which makes the listener accept rather more from the ‘image’ than will fit cleanly into the context’s demand for a deity in human form of nocturnal habits. It calls up in the mind also the external signs of those habits, the owl’s wings and talons much as the Devil’s cloven hoof is the external sign of inner lasciviousness. We might perhaps call such metaphors in which the image still vigorously resists the process of full abstraction halfmetaphors.

One more feature of the Burney Relief might be mentioned, the lions. Here too, as with Nin-nina, we have a pre-anthropomorphic form of the goddess, corresponding to her Akkadian name Labbatu ‘lioness’. Unlike the form of the owl, though, no lion features are observable in the figure, nor would they suit the harlot aspect of Inanna. The lions appear, it would seem, as pure ‘attributes’, having as their only function that of identifying the figure as Inanna. They are, so to speak, mere name-tags.

If we seek parallels for this on the linguistic plane I should suggest comparison with the so-called ‘dead metaphor’. In a sentence like ‘The heart of Chicago showed in the generous giving at Christmas’, ‘heart’ is a live metaphor for ‘compassion’, the seat of which is traditionally in the heart. In saying that a house is located in the heart of Chicago, however, ‘heart’ has become a dead metaphor. No image of a heart is called up in the mind, it serves as a simple variant of terms like ‘centre’, ‘midst’.

On the Burney Relief the lions are not intended to call up any lion-aspect of the goddess at all. That aspect goes back to her early role of roaring goddess of Thunder. They serve only as a variant of her name Inanna, and have, as here used, become a dead metaphor.

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, xiv (1955), 4–13.
‘The Burney Relief’, Archiv für Orientforschung, xii (1937–39), 128–35.
S.N.Kramer, ‘Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld. Continued and Revised’
The Treasures of Darkness, 136 and n. 228.
Babyloniaca xll pls. ix–x. 8–13
Ancient Near Eastern Texts(1950), 228 C-5, lines 8–13.
A Hymn to the goddess Inanna by the priestess Enheduanna’
C.Wilcke, Das Lugalbanda epos (1969), 244–296
S.N.Kramer, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (1952), 20 lines 230–232

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On the Term and Concept of Jinn

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The Assyrian Tree of Life

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