Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals.

• Author: Scurlock, Joann

Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals. By T SVI ABUSCH, DANIEL SCHWEMER, MIKKO LUUKKO, and GRETA VAN BUYLAERE. Ancient Magic and Divination, vol. 8.3. Leiden: BRILL, 2020. Pp. xx + 507, 68 pls. $297.

Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals: Glossaries and Indices. By GRETA VAN BUYLAERE and MIKKO LUUKKO. Ancient Magic and Divination, vol. 8.4. Leiden: BRILL, 2020. Pp. viii + 163. $127.

The books under review complete the masterwork of several eminent scholars and represent an almost unimaginable amount of work. The first part (vol. 8.3) contains two new Old Babylon prescriptions (2.6) and eight new texts (3.9-16) aimed at treating specific medical symptoms produced by witchcraft (pp. 3-5, 6-30). It is exceedingly gratifying to see a few of the suggestions for diagnosis presented in my own work (JoAnn Scurlock and Burton R. Andersen, Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine [Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2005]) taken seriously by the authors. Only one slight quibble in this section: I have long argued that the enclitic -ma that appears frequently in Assyrian medical texts marks the opening clause of a conditional sentence. Moreover, the so-called present tense in Akkadian represents incomplete action and refers to something expected, or desired, not something that absolutely is going to happen come hell or high water, as we say. Therefore, isattima iballut, as, for example, in 2.6 1. 2, should be translated: "If he drinks (it), he should get well."

These are followed by three new texts (4.1-3) protecting sexual potency (pp. 31-49). Not surprisingly, two out of three appeal to Istar. Easily the most interesting is 4.2, which includes a full sacrifice and prayer to Istar of the Stars, some nicely nasty burning of figurines, and a mini-drama at the bed: A ram was tied at one end and a weaned (female! pace p. 35) sheep at the other, with their hair used to make a double-stranded belt for the patient's waist, and an appropriately fruity recitation was recited. Let us hope this was not rutting season, or there would not have been a lot left of the patient's bed! All this is to be performed, as the recitation would seem to indicate, at the rising of the goddess in Ullulu, the time of greatest effectiveness of goddesses, as Assurbanipal himself informs us. (See Jamie Novotny and Joshua Jeffers, The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668-631 BC), Assur-etel-ilani (630-627 BC). and Sin-sarra-iskun (626-612 BC). Kings of...