The late stage during which the witch became a major force able to control the
personal god represents a resurgence of a late Mesopotamian urban world and an
imposition of that world upon a tribal one. Looking backward over the materials that
describe the evils that beset the individual, we note that they would seem to reflect
different social contexts (town/city and family) and/or evolutionary stages. Demonic
attacks on the individual and the ability of the demons to chase away the personal
god reflect the world of the general Mesopotamian urban (Sumerian) community of
the third millennium. The centrality and power of the personal god who punishes
the individual because of infractions that he has committed is a Semitic feature: it
reflects the life of the Semitic (Akkadian or Amorite) tribal/rural family or clan and
should probably be understood in the context of the patriarchal/tribal family culture
in Old Babylonian times; as such, it is a conceptual intrusion into the Mesopotamian
urban landscape. Finally, the emergence of the witch as a major force represented the
re-ascendancy of an urban world in which women had a public role over a tribal one
where the role of women was more circumscribed.
Let us pursue this analysis from an even more explicit gender point of view. We
notice, first, that the witch overpowered the personal god, a representation, specifically,
of maleness and, more generally, of male parenthood, and second, that she was able
to make the demons, the representatives of chaos and the destructive aspect of nature,
subservient to her and even took their place as the primary malevolent magical force
of destruction. The independent woman was a threat and may have been regarded as
uncontrollable and malicious. This female was, then, seen as the source of chaos,
destruction, and evil in the world. In the new urban world, where the individual had
fewer family and traditional supports, this woman – the female witch – overpowered
the male gods who represented the tribe and obedience to the family and replaced
demons as the power of destruction and chaos. She threatened and overpowered family
rule; and in place of natural violence, she set social violence, a violence that both
symbolized, and was symbolized by, her nature as a female who was both powerful
as well as isolated and marginal. Not unlike Tiamat in the Enuma Elishand biblical
təhôm, this female now came to represent and to create chaos and destruction.
WITCHCRAFT AND THE WITCH:
NORMATIVE DESCRIPTIONWitchcraft in Mesopotamian sources normally refers to malevolent destructive magic
performed usually, though not exclusively, by a witch, kasˇsˇa ̄ pu (m.)/kasˇsˇaptu (f.). In
the main, witches are illegitimate practitioners of magic. Normally, they are regarded
as antisocial and as motivated by malice and evil intent. Although lists of witches
include both male and female forms, the witch is usually depicted as a woman. She
is normally presented as one who uses forms of destructive magic to harm other human
beings and whose purpose is essentially malevolent. She is able to control or harm
her victim by means of indirect contact: she steals objects that have been in contact
with and represent her victim; she makes an image in the likeness of her victim and
then twists its limbs so that they suffer agony and debilitating disease; she prepares
figurines and buries them in holes in the wall or in the ground; she feeds statues to
animals. The witch may even open up a grave and place the representation of her
victim in the lap of a dead person, thus effecting a marriage of her victim and a
— Witchcraft literature in Mesopotamia —