is described as comprising young men and young women. But overall, in our texts,
the bewitched is male, though I have no doubt that women, too, felt themselves to
be victims of witchcraft, but their cases usually did not enter the written record of
the exorcist.
Procedural texts prescribe the treatment of witchcraft-induced illness either by
means of various ritual or ceremonial therapies or by means of traditional herbal
therapy. The traditional scribal literature contains and occasionally juxtaposes both
forms of treatment.
In the witchcraft texts that preserve the lore of the herbalist (asû), descriptions of
symptoms are followed by instructions for preparing and administering medications.
For example:
If a man has repeated headaches, sleep... , his dreams are terrifying, he is repeat-
edly frightened in his sleep, his knees are bound, his chest... paralysis, he is
constantly sweating; that man is bewitched. You crush tamarisk, soapwort, and
leaves of the h
̆aluppu-tree together. You wash him with water, you rub him with
cedar oil. Afterwards you put tamarisk, soapwort and potash in... , you heat it
in the oven, you wash him with it; he will then recover.
(Thompson, AMT 86 / 1 )Turning to the ritual practitioner (a ̄sˇipu), we note that he used both oral and manual
rites in his attempt to combat witchcraft. Many different kinds of incantations were
recited by the a ̄sˇipu ; in the main, they address evil forces such as the witch as well
as beneficent forces that are meant to aid in the fight against evil forces. A subgroup
of these incantations are in the form of a prayer; more specifically, the prayers used
in rituals against witchcraft often take the form of Gebetsbeschwörungen, incantation-
prayers, (sˇuilla) and are designated by modern scholars as “special” Gebetsbeschwörungen,
for they have the form of a sˇuillabut do not carry that designation and are often
directed against a specific type of evil and are recited as part of a magical ritual.
The ritual of the a ̄sˇipumight range from a relatively simple one to an extensively
elaborated performance, and could last a few hours or continue for a day or more.
The ceremony often centered on an operation directed toward significant objects or
symbols (e.g., the destruction of figurines, the use of substitutes).
Ebeling, KAR, no. 80 and duplicates may serve as an example of a relatively short
ritual against witchcraft performed by the a ̄sˇipuand may be summarized as follows:
After a description of a patient’s symptoms, a diagnosis of witchcraft, and a
statement that the release of witchcraft is the purpose of the ritual, the ritual
instructions prescribe the setting out of offerings to Sˇamasˇ the sun god, the
preparation of statues of a warlock and witch, the raising up of these statues, and
the recitation of an incantation to Sˇamasˇ. In this incantation, the statues are
designated as representing the evildoers who have harmed the victim and their
destruction by fire is described. Subsequent to the threefold recitation of this
incantation, the statues are placed in a container, sprinkled with fish oil, and set
on fire. Then, a second incantation, “I lift up the torch, I burn your statues,”
invoking the aid of Ea, Asalluh
̆i, and Girra (gods of magic and burning) and
addressing the burning statues, is recited, and the burned statues are trampled— Tzvi Abusch —