Mesopotamian Civilizations
2 total works
Lamastu was one of the most important Mesopotamian demons, playing a dominant role in the magico-religious and magico-medical beliefs and practices of ancient Mesopotamia for nearly two millennia. Yet, she has never been the subject of a scholarly monograph dedicated to the textual and visual evidence for her, her activities, and the measures that ancient magical specialists took to counter her. This volume also falls short of this description, because it covers only one part of the material: it is an edition of the textual record only, which is, however, collected here as completely as seems possible today. Walter Farber, who has studied these materials for decades, presents a comprehensive collection of all of the known texts, the texts of the primary incantations in a "score" format, and transliteration and translation of a number of ancillary texts. This much-awaited volume will fill the void in the literature on this aspect of the life and thought of ancient Mesopotamian peoples regarding the character of this malevolent creature and the means of warding off the threat that she posed.
This study presents Mesopotamian incantations and rituals for calming infants and protecting them against disease. The book's work is thus of interest not only to Near Eastern specialists, but to anthropologists and historians of medicine as well. The author introduces, edits, and translates the texts, which include much hitherto unpublished material. He follows his edition with discussions of the words for infant and baby in Akkadian and an analysis of the rubrics, subscripts, and the incantations themselves. A final chapter is devoted to folkloristic and stylistic analyses of the material. Included as well are indexes, a glossary, ritual materials, and cuneiform copies.