Mesopotamian Double-Jar Burials and Incantation Bowls.

AuthorSaar, Ortal-Paz
PositionEssay

INTRODUCTION

In an article from 2011, Dan Levene identified a distinct class of Babylonian incantation bowls. c It consisted of bowl pairs that originally, at the time of interment, had been fastened together. Their concave surfaces faced each other and they were attached at the rims using bitumen. Levene maintained that this physical configuration was often associated with a magical text of the qibla type, that is, a counter-charm aiming to return curses to an adversary. In what follows I suggest that such bowl pairs could also be linked to a specific burial practice common in ancient Mesopotamia: the double-jar burial. If so, this physical configuration of incantation bowls may have been motivated by analogical reasoning of the sort often encountered in ritual practices.

This article consists of four sections: First, I will describe the features of late-antique incantation bowls that pertain to the double-bowl configuration. The second section will discuss instances of earlier, uninscribed double-bowl sets that have been uncovered at ancient Mesopotamian sites. These sets were obviously ritual objects, but their relation to the late-antique sets of incantation bowls fastened with bitumen is unclear. They may or may not have been precursors of the bowls that are the focus of this article. I believe another antecedent can be suggested, as explained in the third section. Here, I propose linking the double-bowl sets with Mesopotamian double-jar burials. These burials, consisting of two wide-mouth jars attached at the rim, and sometimes fastened with bitumen, are closely similar in form to the sets of double incantation bowls. So close, in fact, that Robert Koldewey remarked in his excavation report of Babylon: "[When found] Undisturbed, two of them [i.e., the incantation bowls] are cemented with the hollow sides together, like a small, but empty double-jar grave." (2) Lastly, in the fourth section I argue that the formal similarity observed above derived from a desire on the part of late-antique ritual practitioners symbolically to bury human adversaries or supernatural malignant entities.

(1.) THE DOUBLE-BOWL CONFIGURATION IN LATE-ANTIQUE INCANTATION BOWLS

All the bowls pertinent to this discussion display bitumen traces on their rims and/or on their bases. As demonstrated beautifully in Levene's article, bowl pairs were occasionally tied together with a cord that was wrapped around them and was held in place with bitumen blobs. The cords had disintegrated over time, nonetheless leaving clear signs in the bitumen. In one instance small holes were drilled near the bowls' rims and strings were threaded through them, binding the bowls together, after which bitumen was applied to the holes. (3) In other cases, one or two holes to which bitumen was applied are found in the base of the bowl, possibly serving the same function as above, that is, for threading a cord. (4) Other bowls may simply have been glued together, without the use of cord (see Figures 1 and 2).

Although Levene's discussion about this class of double-bowls focuses exclusively on Jewish Aramaic texts, there are bowls with similar bitumen marks also in Mandaic, Syriac, and, interestingly, in pseudo-script. (5)1 am aware of the existence of ca. fifty bowls that show signs of having been joined together with bitumen. Some of them are easily identifiable as pairs. Their bitumen marks match when placed rim to rim, each pair is inscribed by the same hand, and displays the names of the same beneficiaries and sometimes targeted individuals. In some of these pairs the incantations are duplicates, (6) while others contain a different incantation on each bowl. (7)

Occasionally, bowls with bitumen marks contain an incantation that begins in medias res, for instance: [phrase omitted] ("And let them not restore sleep to her eyes"). (8) Such abrupt incipits indicate that the text was continued from another bowl that has not yet been identified or published. Lastly, there are bowls for which the only indication that they had once been part of a pair lies in the bitumen residue they display around the rim or base. These bowls are harder to identify, because one needs to look specifically for black marks on the clay surface and recognize them as traces of bitumen. Consequently, there are surely more than fifty bowls that originally presented this physical configuration, that is, being interred as a pair, facing each other. However, scholars either did not note the bitumen traces or did not consider these worthy of attention and thus omitted to mention them in the bowl editions. (9)

The following remarks concerning the textual contents of double-bowls must therefore be treated with caution, since they do not refer to a complete corpus of these ritual objects.

Levene notes the existence of bowls that comply with the qibla form but whose texts are not aggressive or seek to return curses to adversaries. (10) Indeed, there are quite a few such bowls. Their texts are apotropaic, exorcistic, and curative, and resemble the typical incantation bowls that have been published thus far. For example, one of the Nippur bowls published by James Montgomery seeks to drive out a murderous spirit and the angel of death from the household of a man named Ardoy, (11) and a bowl from the Vorderasiatisches Museum collection demands that evil entities depart from the household of a man named Shaboy. (12) It is important to note the existence of such texts in light of the following suggestion regarding the double-bowl form.

(2.) THE DOUBLE-BOWL CONFIGURATION: ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN EXAMPLES

It is interesting to note that sets consisting of one bowl inverted over the other have also been found in excavations of ancient Mesopotamian sites. They bear no cuneiform inscriptions nor do they display traces of bitumen or any other adhesive material. In a way, they bring to mind one of the Aramaic incantation bowls uncovered at Choche, which lay inverted over another, uninscribed bowl, with a third smaller bowl enclosed between them. (13) In an excavation report regarding an Old Babylonian house in Nippur, the authors note that "Sets consisting of two crude pottery bowls were found apparently purposely placed against the walls, with one bowl inverted over the other.... The...

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