Studies in Mesopotamian Demonology

Abstract

In ancient Mesopotamia, a wide range of misfortunes and illnesses were attributed to demons. If one wanted to rid oneself of one of these afflictions, one could draw on a vast corpus of ritual texts to effect a cure. These texts, and the rituals they described, were the domain of the incantation priest. The present dissertation presents three contributions to the understanding of the role of demons within this genre. Chapter II investigates the structure and textual history of a standardised sequence of demons that occurs in a variety of ritual series and incantations. Chapter III proposes a new understanding of the Ritual Tablet of the series Lama�tu. Chapter IV contains a new edition of the ritual series E�el Lil�, Ardat Lil�.