PAGANS AND GNOSTICSalthough some of the bowls may have been produced after the con-
quest. Although the bowl texts from Nippur are rather weak in the
gnostic content of the Mandaean religion, those from Khuabir are
more Mandaean.los Nevertheless the Mandaean scripture, the Ginza
Rba (the "great treasure"), which contains accounts of creation, leg-
ends, and prayers, was written down in this dialect and script based
on older materials soon after the conquest.^106
Many of the Mandaic incantation texts seem to have been written
by people for themselves, and sorcerers are not very prominent in
them. Occasional pictures of a magician with his arms raised in in-
vocation or exorcism appear on some bowls.IO? These texts contain
the usual contemporary magic in which the exorcist is a "physician"
who heals his clients by casting out the demons of disease or by
releasing the patient from curses. The exorcism in the Mandaic texts
is directed against the evil eye and the "bewitching female Liliths which
cause hateful dreams ... to appear to the sons of man, dirtying them
and soiling them."lo8 It is also directed against Abugdana, the king of
devils and the ruler of the Liliths, and against the demon Buznai who
separates-men and women in a family.lo9 Male and female Liliths are
bound with the seal-ring of Solomon.lIo Ishtar is called "the queen"
but is associated with the Liliths. Women make curses in her name;
she has three hundred and sixty amulet-spirits (days of the year, degrees
of the zodiac, or both); and there are eighty Ishtars and sixty male
temple spirits among the demons.1l1
The planetary gods sometimes appear in these texts as demons, such
as Nergal of the wasp. They also appear in a Mandaean version of
the defeat of the planets, in which Shamish is called the Blind One
who is in charge of the spheres. However, all seven planets-Shamish
"in his brilliance" (the sun), Bel (Jupiter), Nergal (Mars), Kewan (Sat-
urn), Sin (the moon), Dlibat (Venus), and Nebo (Mercury)-are in-
voked on one bowl as friendly deities to strengthen the protective
105 Montgomery, Incantation Texts, pp. 26, 39; Yamauchi, Incantation Texts, pp.
2-4. Kuabir is on the right bank of the Euphrates about thirty miles above Musayyib.
106 M. Lidzbarski, Ginzii derSchatz oder das grosse Buch der Mandiier (Gottingen,
1925), p. 407. The claim that Kanlr suppressed Mandaeans in the late third century
depends on identifying them as Nasoraeans (Boyce, Zoroastrians, p. 111; Lidzbarski,
Ginzii, pp. ix-xi; Zaehner, Dawn and Twilight, p. 186).
107 Yamauchi, Incantation Texts, pp. 5, 15.
lOB Ibid., pp. 16-18, 20, 175, 179, 213, 269.
109 Ibid., p. 321; idem, "Yale Bowl," pp. 62-63.
110 Yamauchi, Incantation Texts, pp. 233, 261.
111 Ibid., pp. 165, 169, 229, 275, 277.