applications of ceremonial/medical materials) as well as a statement describing the
circumstance and purpose of the activity. Two typical text forms are: the text of an
incantation followed by a rubric (an ancient classificatory label) and ritual instructions;
and a description of the patient’s symptoms followed by a diagnosis (e.g., “that man
suffers from bewitchment”), ritual or medical instructions (e.g., instructions to create
a sacred space such as a reed hut or altar, to prepare salves or potions, and/or to recite
an oral rite as well as the text of the oral rite itself), and finally, a prognosis (e.g.,
“the man will live”).
Introductory and concluding scribal statements (symptoms, diagnoses, purposes,
prognoses) and the oral and manual rites of the various anti-witchcraft compositions
may be classified, for example, as follows:
- descriptions of symptoms: physical, psychological, and/or social;
- diagnoses: etiological or descriptive;
- oral rites: prayers addressed to gods (especially the sun god, Shamash) or to ritual
objects; - oral rites: incantations: addressed to witches or to materials;
- rituals: introductory acts – preparation of a sacred space (e.g., the erection of reed
huts or altars); - rituals: central acts – destruction of the witch by burning, burying, or drowning
her representation; - rituals: acts that counteract witchcraft (through the elimination of forms of
miasma) by means of washing or wiping-off the patient; - rituals: the employment of apotropaic devices such as plants or amulets;
- medical preparations and treatments: the preparation and administration of salves,
potions, or lotions.
The basic textual unit prescribes the performance of a discrete ritual; these
independent rites are the fundamental units of scribal composition. In the course of
time, scribes attempted to organize the vast body of magical and medical literature,
generally, and the witchcraft materials, specifically, into coherent groups and collec-
tions. Scribes differed in the way they organized these materials. Tablets often contain
more than one ritual-unit; moreover, the same ritual-unit may appear in different
religious, literary, or scribal contexts. These larger literary-editorial constructs may
be either canonical or ad hoc compositions and may contain either a series of units
that share some commonality (e.g., the evil addressed) or the text of a complex ritual.
ANTI-WITCHCRAFT RITUALSIn almost all instances, the patients on whose behalf witchcraft rituals were performed
were members of the elite. The bewitched person, normally a man, is described in
the third person in the symptomologies and diagnoses, and addresses the gods or the
witch in the first person in the prayers and incantations. A few rituals serve the needs
of women: a woman who blames the estrangement of her husband on a witch, or a
woman who is pregnant and fears that bewitchment will cause her to miscarry.
Sometimes when the witch is said to disrupt public activities or places, the public
— Witchcraft literature in Mesopotamia —