Reading akkadian PRayeRs & Hymns An Introduction

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READING AKKADIAN PRAYERS AND HYMNS: AN INTRODUCTION
for this purpose. It should be emphasized that this incantation-prayer is not a
simple prayer in which a stable negative situation is described and a change
asked for. Rather, it is a speech that accompanies a ritual act and gives expression
to a dynamic situation. The text thus reflects the changes in state undergone
by the patient and the witch from the beginning of the ritual to its end.
It is possible that an earlier form of this text ended with line 20 and that lines
21–35 represent an innovation.
Structure: The incantation-prayer is in the form of a speech in the first person
made by the patient, who invokes the heavenly gods of Anu (lines 1–3). The
patient first presents his plaint in the form of a description of the acts that the
witch performed against him and of the resultant state (lines 4–12). On this basis,
the patient asks the gods to take up his case (lines 13–14). The patient proclaims
that he has caused the accused witch to be present in the judgment in the
form of figurines of male and female witches (lines 15–17) and asks that the
witch be punished for having sought—perhaps by means of accusations—
unmotivated evil against the patient and that the witch’s bewitchment be released
(lines 18–20). The patient asks to be cleared (of bewitchment and any
imputed guilt) by means of a standard set of plants—these plants usually serve
to purify, but here they function as (an oath and) a form of juridical ordeal
(lines 21–24). The patient, having proven his innocence and having been cleared
(lines 25–26), is now able to assert that since the witch’s utterance belongs to an
evil witch, her accusation has been refuted (lines 27–28), and to ask the gods of
the night to bring the witch to justice and indict her, and the night watches to
release the witchcraft (lines 29–30). By means of a magical identification and
act, the patient expresses the wish that the organs of speech of the witch be destroyed
(lines 31–33). Finally, he asserts that the witch’s actions and accusations
have been wholly nullified (lines 34–35) by the gods of the night (line 36).
ESSENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Gods of the Night. See page 73.
Text. Edition: K. L. Tallqvist. Die assyrisches Beschwörungsserie Maqlû. ASSF
20/6. Leipzig: A. Preis, 1895. G. Meier. Die assyrische Beschwörungssammlung
Maqlû. AfO Beiheft 2. Berlin: n.p., 1937, 7–8. Idem. “Studien zur Beschwörungssammlung
Maqlû.” AfO 21 (1966), 70–71. The edition presented here reproduces
the present author’s eclectic edition, which will be published in the series Ancient
Magic and Divination (forthcoming). Translations: I. T. Abusch. Babylonian
Witchcraft Literature: Case Studies. Brown Judaic Studies 132. Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1987, x–xii. Seux, 375–77. Foster, 666–67. T. Abusch and D. Schwemer.
“Das Abwehrzauber-Ritual Maqlû (“Verbrennung”).” TUAT n.F., IV: 136. Studies:
Abusch. Babylonian Witchcraft Literature, x–xii and 83–147. D. Schwemer. “Empowering
the Patient: The Opening Section of the Ritual Maqlû.” Pages 311–39
in Pax Hethitica: Studies on the Hittites and their Neighbours in Honour of Itamar
Singer. StBoT 51. Weisbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010.