Semitic magic : its origins and development

MONSTERS. 63
Medain Salih a great treasure lies, in the opinion of the
Moors in the Kella, sealed in a turret-like stone chamber
in the keeping of an Afrit.
The * horseleach ' of Pro v. xxx, 15, is nothing more
than a flesh-devouring ghoul; the Hebrew word is 'alukdh,
the equivalent of the Arabic ^aiilak, as was pointed out
by Wellhausen.^
To this class of beings we must add some peculiar forms
of deities, whose description is fully portrayed in the
cuneiform tablets. One, a sea-monster, a ' form ' of Ea, is
thus described: "The head is the head of a serpent; from
his nostrils mucus (?) trickles, his mouth being beslavered
with water ; the ears are like those of a basilisk, his horns
are twisted into three curls, he wears a veil in his headband;
the body is that of a Sah fi.sh, full of stars, the base of
his feet are claws, the sole of his foot having no heel." ^
More important, from an anthropological standpoint, is
the picture of Nin-tu, a * form ' of the goddess Mah. " The
head (has) a fillet and a horn . . . She
wears a head
ornament, she wears a fly (?).^ She wears a veil; the
fist of a man ; she is girt about the loins, her breast
being open. In her left arm she holds a babe sucking
her breast, inclining towards her right arm ; from her
1 Reste, 149.
2 Devils, ii, 149. The word translated ' form ' appears to be fairly
certain.
^ This word is lamsatu in the text, ordinarily a kind of fly, although
what it means here is doubtful. That it means a fly of some kind is
quite clear from the determination in its ideogram, and I think we
shall not be mistaken in seeing its cognate in the modern Arabic
^jgw4^l3, a mosquito, just as almattu in Assyrian == the Arabic ^i^#.l,
and lamattu — iii^j (see my note in P.S.B.A., 1906, 226).