CHAPTER IINTRODUCTION
Aim of this book—Period covered—How to study the history of thought—Definition of magic—Magic of primitive man; does civilization originate in magic?—Divination in early China—Magic in ancient Egypt—Magic and Egyptian religion—Mortuary magic—Magic in daily life—Power of words, images, amulets—Magic in Egyptian medicine—Demons and disease—Magic and science—Magic and industry—Alchemy—Divination and astrology—The sources for Assyrian and Babylonian magic—Was astrology Sumerian or Chaldean?—The number seven in early Babylonia—Incantation texts older than astrological—Other divination than astrology—Incantations against sorcery and demons—A specimen incantation—Materials and devices of magic—Greek culture not free from magic—Magic in myth, literature, and history—Simultaneous increase of learning and occult science—Magic origin urged for Greek religion and drama—Magic in Greek philosophy—Plato’s attitude toward magic and astrology—Aristotle on stars and spirits—Folk-lore in theHistory of Animals—Differing modes of transmission of ancient oriental and Greek literature—More magical character of directly transmitted Greek remains—Progress of science among the Greeks—Archimedes and Aristotle—Exaggerated view of the scientific achievement of the Hellenistic age—Appendix I. Some works on Magic, Religion, and Astronomy in Babylonia and Assyria.
“Magic has existed among all peoples and at every period.”—Hegel.[3]
Aim of this book.
This book aims to treat the history of magic and experimental science and their relations to Christian thought during the first thirteen centuries of our era, with especial emphasis upon the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Noadequate survey of the history of either magic or experimental science exists for this period, and considerable use of manuscript material has been necessary for the medieval period. Magic is here understood in the broadest sense of the word, as including all occult arts and sciences, superstitions, and folk-lore. I shall endeavor to justify this use of the word from the sources as I proceed. My idea is that magic and experimental science have been connected in their development; that magicians were perhaps the first to experiment; and that the history of both magic and experimental science can be better understood by studying them together. I also desire to make clearer than it has been to most scholars the Latin learning of the medieval period, whose leading personalities even are generally inaccurately known, and on perhaps no one point is illumination more needed than on that covered by our investigation. The subject of laws against magic, popular practice of magic, the witchcraft delusion and persecution lie outside of the scope of this book.[4]
Period covered.
At first my plan was to limit this investigation to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the time of greatest medieval productivity, but I became convinced that this period could be best understood by viewing it in the setting of the Greek, Latin, and early Christian writers to whom it owed so much. If the student of the Byzantine Empire needs to know old Rome, the student of the medieval church to comprehend early Christianity, the student of Romance languages to understand Latin, still more must the reader of Constantinus Africanus, Vincent of Beauvais, Guido Bonatti, and Thomas Aquinas be familiar with the Pliny, Galen, and Ptolemy, the Origen and Augustine, the Alkindi and Albumasar from whom they drew. It would indeed be difficult to draw a line anywhere between them. The ancientauthors are generally extant only in their medieval form; in some cases there is reason to suspect that they have undergone alteration or addition; sometimes new works were fathered upon them. In any case they have been preserved to us because the middle ages studied and cherished them, and to a great extent made them their own. I begin with the first century of our era, because Christian thought begins then, and then appeared Pliny’sNatural Historywhich seems to me the best starting point of a survey of ancient science and magic.[5]I close with the thirteenth century, or, more strictly speaking, in the course of the fourteenth, because by then the medieval revival of learning had spent its force. Attention is centred on magic and experimental science in western Latin literature and learning, Greek and Arabic works being considered as they contributed thereto, and vernacular literature being omitted as either derived from Latin works or unlearned and unscientific.
How to study the history of thought.
Very probably I have tried to cover too much ground and have made serious omissions. It is probably true that for the history of thought as for the history of art the evidence and source material is more abundant than for political or economic history. But fortunately it is more reliable, since the pursuit of truth or beauty does not encourage deception and prejudice as does the pursuit of wealth or power. Also the history of thought is more unified and consistent, steadier and more regular, than the fluctuations and diversities of political history; and for this reason its general outlines can be discerned with reasonable sureness by the examination of even a limited number of examples, provided they are properly selected from a period of sufficient duration. Moreover, it seems to me that in the present stage of research into and knowledge of our subjectsounder conclusions and even more novel ones can be drawn by a wide comparative survey than by a minutely intensive and exhaustive study of one man or of a few years. The danger is of writing from too narrow a viewpoint, magnifying unduly the importance of some one man or theory, and failing to evaluate the facts in their full historical setting. No medieval writer whether on science or magic can be understood by himself, but must be measured in respect to his surroundings and antecedents.
Definition of magic.
Some may think it strange that I associate magic so closely with the history of thought, but the word comes from theMagior wise men of Persia or Babylon, to whose lore and practices the name was applied by the Greeks and Romans, or possibly we may trace its etymology a little farther back to the Sumerian or Turanian wordimgaorunga, meaning deep or profound. The exact meaning of the word, “magic,” was a matter of much uncertainty even in classical and medieval times, as we shall see. There can be no doubt, however, that it was then applied not merely to an operative art, but also to a mass of ideas or doctrine, and that it represented a way of looking at the world. This side of magic has sometimes been lost sight of in hasty or assumed modern definitions which seem to regard magic as merely a collection of rites and feats. In the case of primitive men and savages it is possible that little thought accompanies their actions. But until these acts are based upon or related to some imaginative, purposive, and rational thinking, the doings of early man cannot be distinguished as either religious or scientific or magical. Beavers build dams, birds build nests, ants excavate, but they have no magic just as they have no science or religion. Magic implies a mental state and so may be viewed from the standpoint of the history of thought. In process of time, as the learned and educated lost faith in magic, it was degraded to the low practices and beliefs of the ignorant and vulgar. It was this use of the term that was taken up by anthropologists and by them applied to analogous doings andnotions of primitive men and savages. But we may go too far in regarding magic as a purely social product of tribal society: magicians may be, in Sir James Frazer’s words,[6]“the only professional class” among the lowest savages, but note that they rank as a learned profession from the start. It will be chiefly through the writings of learned men that something of their later history and of the growth of interest in experimental science will be traced in this work. Let me add that in this investigation all arts of divination, including astrology, will be reckoned as magic; I have been quite unable to separate the two either in fact or logic, as I shall illustrate repeatedly by particular cases.[7]
Magic of primitive man: does civilization originate in magic?
Magic is very old, and it will perhaps be well in this introductory chapter to present it to the reader, if not in its infancy—for its origins are much disputed and perhaps antecede all record and escape all observation—at least some centuries before its Roman and medieval days. Sir J. G. Frazer, in a passage ofThe Golden Boughto which we have already referred, remarks that “sorcerers are found in every savage tribe known to us; and among the lowest savages ... they are the only professional class that exists.”[8]Lenormant affirmed in hisChaldean Magic and Sorcery[9]that “all magic rests upon a system of religious belief,” but recent sociologists and anthropologists haveinclined to regard magic as older than a belief in gods. At any rate some of the most primitive features of historical religions seem to have originated from magic. Moreover, religious cults, rites, and priesthoods are not the only things that have been declared inferior in antiquity to magic and largely indebted to it for their origins. Combarieu in hisMusic and Magic[10]asserts that the incantation is universally employed in all the circumstances of primitive life and that from it, by the medium it is true of religious poetry, all modern music has developed. The magic incantation is, in short, “the oldest fact in the history of civilization.” Although the magician chants without thought of æsthetic form or an artistically appreciative audience, yet his spell contains in embryo all that later constitutes the art of music.[11]M. Paul Huvelin, after asserting with similar confidence that poetry,[12]the plastic arts,[13]medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and chemistry “have easily discernable magic sources,” states that he will demonstrate that the same is true of law.[14]Very recently, however, there has been something of a reaction against this tendency to regard the life of primitive man as made up entirely of magic and to trace back every phase of civilization to a magical origin. But R. R. Marett still sees a higher standard of value in primitive man’s magic than in his warfare and brutal exploitation of his fellows and believes that the “higher plane of experience for whichmanastands is one in which spiritual enlargement is appreciated for its own sake.”[15]
Divination in early China.
Of the five classics included in the Confucian Canon,The Book of Changes(I ChingorYi-King), regarded bysome as the oldest work in Chinese literature and dated back as early as 3000 B.C., in its rudimentary form appears to have been a method of divination by means of eight possible combinations in triplets of a line and a broken line. Thus, ifabe a line andba broken line, we may haveaaa,bbb,aab,bba,abb,baa,aba, andbab. Possibly there is a connection with the use of knotted cords which, Chinese writers state, preceded written characters, like the method used in ancient Peru. More certain would seem the resemblance to the medieval method of divination known as geomancy, which we shall encounter later in our Latin authors. Magic and astrology might, of course, be traced all through Chinese history and literature. But, contenting ourselves with this single example of the antiquity of such arts in the civilization of the far east, let us turn to other ancient cultures which had a closer and more unmistakable influence upon the western world.
Magic in ancient Egypt.
Of the ancient Egyptians Budge writes, “The belief in magic influenced their minds ... from the earliest to the latest period of their history ... in a manner which, at this stage in the history of the world, is very difficult to understand.”[16]To the ordinary historical student the evidence for this assertion does not seem quite so overwhelming as the Egyptologists would have us think. It looks thinner when we begin to spread it out over a stretch of fourthousand years, and it scarcely seems scientific to adduce details from medieval Arabic tales or from the late Greek fiction of the Pseudo-Callisthenes or from papyri of the Christian era concerning the magic of early Egypt. And it may be questioned whether two stories preserved in the Westcar papyrus, written many centuries afterwards, are alone “sufficient to prove that already in the Fourth Dynasty the working of magic was a recognized art among the Egyptians.”[17]
Magic and Egyptian religion.
At any rate we are told that the belief in magic not only was predynastic and prehistoric, but was “older in Egypt than the belief in God.”[18]In the later religion of the Egyptians, along with more lofty and intellectual conceptions, magic was still a principal ingredient.[19]Their mythology was affected by it[20]and they not only combated demons with magical formulae but believed that they could terrify and coerce the very gods by the same method, compelling them to appear, to violate the course of nature by miracles, or to admit the human soul to an equality with themselves.[21]
Mortuary magic.
Magic was as essential in the future life as here on earth among the living. Many, if not most, of the observances and objects connected with embalming and burial had a magic purpose or mode of operation; for instance, the “magic eyes placed over the opening in the side of the body through which the embalmer removed the intestines,”[22]or the mannikins and models of houses buried with the dead. In the process of embalming the wrapping of each bandage was accompanied by the utterance of magic words.[23]In “the oldest chapter of human thought extant”—the PyramidTexts written in hieroglyphic at the tombs at Sakkara of Pharaohs of the fifth and sixth dynasties (c. 2625-2475 B.C.), magic is so manifest that some have averred “that the whole body of Pyramid Texts is simply a collection of magical charms.”[24]The scenes and objects painted on the walls of the tombs, such as those of nobles in the fifth and sixth dynasties, were employed with magic intent and were meant to be realized in the future life; and with the twelfth dynasty the Egyptians began to paint on the insides of the coffins the objects that were formerly actually placed within.[25]Under the Empire the famousBook of the Deadis a collection of magic pictures, charms, and incantations for the use of the deceased in the hereafter,[26]and while it is not of the early period, we hear that “a book with words of magic power” was buried with a pharaoh of the Old Kingdom. Budge has “no doubt that the object of every religious text ever written on tomb, stele, amulet, coffin, papyrus, etc., was to bring the gods under the power of the deceased, so that he might be able to compel them to do his will.”[27]Breasted, on the other hand, thinks that the amount and complexity of this mortuary magic increased greatly in the later period under popular and priestly influence.[28]
Magic in daily life.
Breasted nevertheless believes that magic had played a great part in daily life throughout the whole course of Egyptian history. He writes, “It is difficult for the modern mind to understand how completely the belief in magic penetrated the whole substance of life, dominating popular custom and constantly appearing in the simplest acts of the daily household routine, as much a matter of course assleep or the preparation of food. It constituted the very atmosphere in which the men of the early oriental world lived. Without the saving and salutary influence of such magical agencies constantly invoked, the life of an ancient household in the East was unthinkable.”[29]
Power of words, images, amulets.
Most of the main features and varieties of magic known to us at other times and places appear somewhere in the course of Egypt’s long history. For one thing we find the ascription of magic power to words and names. The power of words, says Budge, was thought to be practically unlimited, and “the Egyptians invoked their aid in the smallest as well as in the greatest events of their life.”[30]Words might be spoken, in which case they “must be uttered in a proper tone of voice by a duly qualified man,” or they might be written, in which case the material upon which they were written might be of importance.[31]In speaking of mortuary magic we have already noted the employment of pictures, models, mannikins, and other images, figures, and objects. Wax figures were also used in sorcery,[32]and amulets are found from the first, although their particular forms seem to have altered with different periods.[33]Scarabs are of course the most familiar example.
Magic in Egyptian medicine.
Egyptian medicine was full of magic and ritual and its therapeusis consisted mainly of “collections of incantations and weird random mixtures of roots and refuse.”[34]Already we find the recipe and the occult virtue conceptions, the elaborate polypharmacy and the accompanying hocus-pocus which we shall meet in Pliny and the middle ages. The Egyptian doctors used herbs from other countries and preferred compound medicines containing a dozen ingredients to simple medicines.[35]Already we find such magiclogic as that the hair of a black calf will keep one from growing gray.[36]Already the parts of animals are a favorite ingredient in medical compounds, especially those connected with the organs of generation, on which account they were presumably looked upon as life-giving, or those which were recommended mainly by their nastiness and were probably thought to expel the demons of disease by their disagreeable properties.
Demons and disease.
In ancient Egypt, however, disease seems not to have been identified with possession by demons to the extent that it was in ancient Assyria and Babylonia. While Breasted asserts that “disease was due to hostile spirits and against these only magic could avail,”[37]Budge contents himself with the more cautious statement that there is “good reason for thinking that some diseases were attributed to ... evil spirits ... entering ... human bodies ... but the texts do not afford much information”[38]on this point. Certainly the beliefs in evil spirits and in magic do not always have to go together, and magic might be employed against disease whether or not it was ascribed to a demon.
Magic and science.
In the case of medicine as in that of religion Breasted takes the view that the amount of magic became greater in the Middle and New Kingdoms than in the Old Kingdom. This is true so far as the amount of space occupied by it in extant records is concerned. But it would be rash to assume that this marks a decline from a more rational and scientific attitude in the Old Kingdom. Yet Breasted rather gives this impression when he writes concerning the Old Kingdom that many of its recipes were useful and rational, that “medicine was already in the possession of much empirical wisdom, displaying close and accurate observation,” and that what “precluded any progress toward real science was the belief in magic, which later began to dominate all thepractice of the physician.”[39]Berthelot probably places the emphasis more correctly when he states that the later medical papyri “include traditional recipes, founded on an empiricism which is not always correct, mystic remedies, based upon the most bizarre analogies, and magic practices that date back to the remotest antiquity.”[40]The recent efforts of Sethe and Wilcken, of Elliot Smith, Müller, and Hooten to show that the ancient Egyptians possessed a considerable amount of medical knowledge and of surgical and dental skill, have been held by Todd to rest on slight and dubious evidence. Indeed, some of this evidence seems rather to suggest the ritualistic practices still employed by uncivilized African tribes. Certainly the evidence for any real scientific development in ancient Egypt has been very meager compared with the abundant indications of the prevalence of magic.[41]
Magic and industry.
Early Egypt was the home of many arts and industries, but not in so advanced a stage as has sometimes been suggested. Blown glass, for example, was unknown until late Greek and Roman times, and the supposed glass-blowers depicted on the early monuments are really smiths engaged in stirring their fires by blowing through reeds tipped with clay.[42]On the other hand, Professor Breasted informs me that there is no basis for Berthelot’s statement that “every sort of chemical process as well as medical treatment was executed with an accompaniment of religious formulae, of prayers and incantations, regarded as essential to the success of operations as well as the cure of maladies.”[43]
Alchemy.
Alchemy perhaps originated on the one hand from the practices of Egyptian goldsmiths and workers in metals, who experimented with alloys,[44]and on the other hand fromthe theories of the Greek philosophers concerning world-grounds, first matter, and the elements.[45]The words, alchemy and chemistry, are derived ultimately from the name of Egypt itself, Kamt or Qemt, meaning literally black, and applied to the Nile mud. The word was also applied to the black powder produced by quicksilver in Egyptian metallurgical processes. This powder, Budge says, was supposed to be the ground of all metals and to possess marvelous virtue, “and was mystically identified with the body which Osiris possessed in the underworld, and both were thought to be sources of life and power.”[46]The analogy to the sacrament of the mass and the marvelous powers ascribed to the host by medieval preachers like Stephen of Bourbon scarcely needs remark. The later writers on alchemy in Greek appear to have borrowed signs and phraseology from the Egyptian priests, and are fond of speaking of their art as the monopoly of Egyptian kings and priests who carved its secrets on ancient steles and obelisks. In a treatise dating from the twelfth dynasty a scribe recommends to his son a work entitledChemi, but there is no proof that it was concerned with chemistry or alchemy.[47]The papyri containing treatises of alchemy are of the third century of the Christian era.
Divination and astrology.
Evidences of divination in general and of astrology in particular do not appear as early in Egyptian records as examples of other varieties of magic. Yet the early date at which Egypt had a calendar suggests astronomical interest, and even those who deny that seven planets were distinguished in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley until the last millennium before Christ, admit that they were known in Egypt as far back as the Old Kingdom, although they deny the existence of a science of astronomy or an art of astrology then.[48]A dream of Thotmes IV is preserved from 1450 B.C. or thereabouts, and the incantations employed by magiciansin order to procure divining dreams for their customers attest the close connection of divination and magic.[49]Belief in lucky and unlucky days is shown in a papyrus calendar of about 1300 B.C.,[50]and we shall see later that “Egyptian Days” continued to be a favorite superstition of the middle ages. Tables of the risings of stars which may have an astrological significance have been found in graves, and there were gods for every month, every day of the month, and every hour of the day.[51]Such numbers as seven and twelve are frequently emphasized in the tombs and elsewhere, and if the vaulted ceiling in the tenth chamber of the tomb of Sethos is really of his time, we seem to find the signs of the zodiac under the nineteenth dynasty. If Boll is correct in suggesting that the zodiac originated in the transfer of animal gods to the sky,[52]no fitter place than Egypt could be found for the transfer. But there have not yet been discovered in Egypt lists of omens and appearances of constellations on days of disaster such as are found in the literature of the Tigris-Euphrates valley and in the Roman historians. Budge speaks of the seven Hathor goddesses who predict the death that the infant must some time die, and affirms that “the Egyptians believed that a man’s fate ... was decided before he was born, and that he had no power to alter it.”[53]But I cannot agree that “we have good reason for assigning the birthplace of the horoscope to Egypt,”[54]since the evidence seems to be limited to the almost medieval Pseudo-Callisthenes and a Greek horoscope in the British Museum to which is attached the letter of an astrologer urging his pupil to study the ancient Egyptians carefully. The later Greek and Latin tradition that astrology was the invention of the divine men of Egypt and Babylon probably has a basis of fact, but more contemporary evidence is needed if Egypt is to contest the claim of Babylon to precedence in that art.
The sources for Assyrian and Babylonian magic.
In the written remains of Babylonian and Assyrian civilization[55]the magic cuneiform tablets play a large part and give us the impression that fear of demons was a leading feature of Assyrian and Babylonian religion and that daily thought and life were constantly affected by magic. The bulk of the religious and magical texts are preserved in the library of Assurbanipal, king of Assyria from 668 to 626 B.C. But he collected his library from the ancient temple cities, the scribes tell us that they are copying very ancient texts, and the Sumerian language is still largely employed.[56]Eridu, one of the main centers of early Sumerian culture, “was an immemorial home of ancient wisdom, that is to say, magic.”[57]It is, however, difficult in the library of Assurbanipal to distinguish what is Babylonian from what is Assyrian or what is Sumerian from what is Semitic. Thus we are told that “with the exception of some very ancient texts, the Sumerian literature, consisting largely of religious material such as hymns and incantations, shows a number of Semitic loanwords and grammatical Semitisms, and in many cases, although not always, is quite patently a translation of Semitic ideas by Semitic priests into the formal religious Sumerian language.”[58]
Was astrology Sumerian or Chaldean?
The chief point in dispute, over which great controversy has taken place recently among German scholars, is as to the antiquity of both astronomical knowledge and astrological doctrine, including astral theology, among the dwellers in the Tigris-Euphrates region. Briefly, such writers as Winckler, Stücken, and Jeremias held that the religion of the early Babylonians was largely based on astrology and that all their thought was permeated by it, and that they had probably by an early date made astronomical observations and acquired astronomical knowledge which was lostin the decline of their culture. Opposing this view, such scholars as Kugler, Bezold, Boll, and Schiaparelli have shown the lack of certain evidence for either any considerable astronomical knowledge or astrological theory in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley until the late appearance of the Chaldeans. It is even denied that the seven planets were distinguished in the early period, much less the signs of the zodiac or the planetary week,[59]which last, together with any real advance in astronomy, is reserved for the Hellenistic period.
The number seven in early Babylonia.
Yet the prominence of the number seven in myth, religion, and magic is indisputable in the third millennium before our era. For instance, in the old Babylonian epic of creation there are seven winds, seven spirits of storms, seven evil diseases, seven divisions of the underworld closed by seven doors, seven zones of the upper world and sky, and so on. We are told, however, that the staged towers of Babylonia, which are said to have symbolized for millenniums the sacred Hebdomad, did not always have seven stages.[60]But the number seven was undoubtedly of frequent occurrence, of a sacred and mystic character, and virtue and perfection were ascribed to it. And no one has succeeded in giving any satisfactory explanation for this other than the rule of the seven planets over our world. This also applies to the sanctity of the number seven in the Old Testament[61]and the emphasis upon it in Hesiod, the Odyssey, and other early Greek sources.[62]
Incantation texts older than the astrological.
However that may be, the tendency prevailing at present is to regard astrology as a relatively late development introduced by the Semitic Chaldeans. Lenormant held that writing and magic were a Turanian or Sumerian (Accadian) contribution to Babylonian civilization, but that astronomy and astrology were Semitic innovations. Jastrow thinks that there was slight difference between the religion of Assyria and that of Babylonia, and that astral theology played a great part in both; but he grants that the older incantation texts are less influenced by this astral theology. L. W. King says, “Magic and divination bulk largely in the texts recovered, and in their case there is nothing to suggest an underlying astrological element.”[63]
Other divination than astrology.
Whatever its date and origin, the magic literature may be classified in three main groups. There are the astrological texts in which the stars are looked upon as gods and predictions are made especially for the king.[64]Then there are the tablets connected with other methods of foretelling the future, especially liver divination, although interpretation of dreams, augury, and divination by mixing oil and water were also practiced.[65]Fossey has further noted the close connection of operative magic with divination among the Assyrians, and calls divination “the indispensable auxiliary of magic.” Many feats of magic imply a precedent knowledge of the future or begin by consultation of a diviner, or a favorable day and hour should be chosen for the magic rite.[66]
Incantations against sorcery and demons.
Third, there are the collections of incantations, not however those employed by the sorcerers, which were presumably illicit and hence not publicly preserved—in an incantation which we shall soon quote sorcery is called evil and is said to employ “impure things”—but rather defensive measures against them and exorcisms of evil demons.[67]But doubtless this counter magic reflects the original procedure to a great extent. Inasmuch as diseases generally were regarded as due to demons, who had to be exorcized by incantations, medicine was simply a branch of magic. Evil spirits were also held responsible for disturbances in nature, and frequent incantations were thought necessary to keep them from upsetting the natural order entirely.[68]The various incantations are arranged in series of tablets: theMakluor burning,Ti’ior headaches,Asakki marsûtior fever,Labartuor hag-demon, andNis katior raising of the hand. Besides these tablets there are numerous ceremonial and medical texts which contain magical practice.[69]Also hymns of praise and religious epics which at first sight one would not classify as incantations seem to have had their magical uses, and Farnell suggests that “a magic origin for the practice of theological exegesis may be obscurely traced.”[70]Good spirits are represented as employing magic and exorcisms against the demons.[71]As a last resort when good spirits as well as human magic had failed to check the demons, the aid might be requisitioned of the god Ea, regarded as the repository of all science and who “alone was possessed of the magic secrets by means of which they could be conquered and repulsed.”[72]
A specimen incantation.
The incantations themselves show that other factors than the power of words entered into the magic, as may be illustrated by quoting one of them.
“Arise ye great gods, hear my complaint,Grant me justice, take cognizance of my condition.I have made an image of my sorcerer and sorceress;I have humbled myself before you and bring to you my cause,Because of the evil they have done,Of the impure things which they have handled.May she die! Let me live!May her charm, her witchcraft, her sorcery be broken.May the plucked sprig of thebinutree purify me;May it release me; may the evil odor of my mouth be scattered to the winds.May themashtakalherb which fills the earth cleanse me.Before you let me shine like thekankalherb,Let me be brilliant and pure as thelarduherb.The charm of the sorceress is evil;May her words return to her mouth, her tongue be cut off.Because of her witchcraft may the gods of night smite her,The three watches of the night break her evil charm.May her mouth be wax; her tongue, honey.May the word causing my misfortune that she has spoken dissolve like wax.May the charm she had wound up melt like honey,So that her magic knot be cut in twain, her work destroyed.”[73]
“Arise ye great gods, hear my complaint,Grant me justice, take cognizance of my condition.I have made an image of my sorcerer and sorceress;I have humbled myself before you and bring to you my cause,Because of the evil they have done,Of the impure things which they have handled.May she die! Let me live!May her charm, her witchcraft, her sorcery be broken.May the plucked sprig of thebinutree purify me;May it release me; may the evil odor of my mouth be scattered to the winds.May themashtakalherb which fills the earth cleanse me.Before you let me shine like thekankalherb,Let me be brilliant and pure as thelarduherb.The charm of the sorceress is evil;May her words return to her mouth, her tongue be cut off.Because of her witchcraft may the gods of night smite her,The three watches of the night break her evil charm.May her mouth be wax; her tongue, honey.May the word causing my misfortune that she has spoken dissolve like wax.May the charm she had wound up melt like honey,So that her magic knot be cut in twain, her work destroyed.”[73]
“Arise ye great gods, hear my complaint,Grant me justice, take cognizance of my condition.I have made an image of my sorcerer and sorceress;I have humbled myself before you and bring to you my cause,Because of the evil they have done,Of the impure things which they have handled.May she die! Let me live!May her charm, her witchcraft, her sorcery be broken.May the plucked sprig of thebinutree purify me;May it release me; may the evil odor of my mouth be scattered to the winds.May themashtakalherb which fills the earth cleanse me.Before you let me shine like thekankalherb,Let me be brilliant and pure as thelarduherb.The charm of the sorceress is evil;May her words return to her mouth, her tongue be cut off.Because of her witchcraft may the gods of night smite her,The three watches of the night break her evil charm.May her mouth be wax; her tongue, honey.May the word causing my misfortune that she has spoken dissolve like wax.May the charm she had wound up melt like honey,So that her magic knot be cut in twain, her work destroyed.”[73]
“Arise ye great gods, hear my complaint,
Grant me justice, take cognizance of my condition.
I have made an image of my sorcerer and sorceress;
I have humbled myself before you and bring to you my cause,
Because of the evil they have done,
Of the impure things which they have handled.
May she die! Let me live!
May her charm, her witchcraft, her sorcery be broken.
May the plucked sprig of thebinutree purify me;
May it release me; may the evil odor of my mouth be scattered to the winds.
May themashtakalherb which fills the earth cleanse me.
Before you let me shine like thekankalherb,
Let me be brilliant and pure as thelarduherb.
The charm of the sorceress is evil;
May her words return to her mouth, her tongue be cut off.
Because of her witchcraft may the gods of night smite her,
The three watches of the night break her evil charm.
May her mouth be wax; her tongue, honey.
May the word causing my misfortune that she has spoken dissolve like wax.
May the charm she had wound up melt like honey,
So that her magic knot be cut in twain, her work destroyed.”[73]
Materials and devices employed in the magic.
It is evident from this incantation that use was made of magic images and knots, and of the properties of trees and herbs. Magic images were made of clay, wax, tallow, and other substances and were employed in various ways. Thus directions are given for making a tallow image of an enemy of the king and binding its face with a cord in order to deprive the person whom it represents of speech and willpower.[74]Images were also constructed in order that disease demons might be magically transferred into them,[75]and sometimes the images are slain and buried.[76]In the above incantation the magic knot was employed only by the sorceress, but Fossey states that knots were also used ascounter-charms against the demons.[77]In the above incantation the names of herbs were left untranslated and it is not possible to say much concerning the pharmacy of the Assyrians and Babylonians because of our lack of a lexicon for their botanical and mineralogical terminology.[78]However, from what scholars have been able to translate it appears that common rather than rare and outlandish substances were the ones most employed. Wine and oil, salt and dates, and onions and saliva are the sort of things used. There is also evidence of the employment of a magic wand.[79]Gems and animal substances were used as well as herbs; all sorts of philters were concocted; and varied rites and ceremonies were employed such as ablutions and fumigations. In the account of the ark of the Babylonian Noah we are told of the magic significance of its various parts; thus the mast and cabin ceiling were made of cedar, a wood that counteracts sorceries.[80]