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Puzzling Words and Spellings in Babylonian Aramaic Magic Bowls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Christa Müller-Kessler
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Extract

Through work on the large collection of Mandaic lead rolls in the British Museum and collations of incantation bowls in various museums and libraries, it appears that Mandaic gnostic incantation formulas were often translated into Babylonian Aramaic and Syriac, but not the reverse. In Late Antiquity, Mandaic Vorlagen seem to have dominated the field of magic in Mesopotamia. Although, only a scanty amount of pre-Islamic Mandaic incantation material has been published so far, classical Mandaic literature already gives many hints of this fact. It turns out that many solutions to puzzling words or spellings in Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls can be explained in the light of a Mandaic Vorlage.

Type
Notes and communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , January 1999 , pp. 111 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1999

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References

1 See Müller-Kessler, Ch., ‘Aramäische Koine. Ein Beschwörungsformular aus Mesopotamien’, Baghdader Mitleilungen 29, 1998, 337–352.Google Scholar

2 As one has to work with late copies of that material scholars in the field of Mesopotamian magic of Late Antiquity have hesitated to use these sources as evidence.

3 Smelik, K. A. D., ‘An Aramaic incantation bowl in the Allard Pierson Museum’, Bibliotheca Orientalis 35, 1978, 175–177.Google Scholar

4 For similar passages cf. Naveh, J., ‘Another Mandaic lead roll’, Israel Oriental Studies 5, 1975, 47–63Google Scholar and Müller-Kessler, Ch., ‘The story of Bguzan-Lilit, daughter of Zanay-Lilit’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 116, 1996, 185–195CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On another unpublished lead sheet (BM 1357931) a ritual is described in which a thread has to be made from the hair of seven different animals, dyed with seven dyes and then knotted into seven knots. Later the thread is to be put on the amulet which should be worn by night and day.c

5 Smelik, art. cit., 176, n. 3.

6 See Gordon, C. H., ‘Aramaic magical bowls in the Istanbul and Baghdad Museums’ Archiv Orientálni 6, 1934, 331–334.Google Scholar

7 Smelik, art. cit., 175.

8 Somehow a preposition is missing here before the account of the demons who might cause harm again to the client. On this idiomatic usage cf. Drower, E. S. and Macuch, R., A Mandaic dictionary (Oxford, 1963), 131b.Google Scholar

9 cf. on this phonetic development in Mandaic, R. Macuch, Handbook of Classical and Modern Mandaic (Berlin, 1965), 41.Google Scholar

10 Published again in a collated version by Müller-Kessler, Ch., ‘Interrelations between Mandaic lead rolls and incantation bowls’, in Abusch, T. et al. (ed.), Mesopotamian magic (Groningen, 1998)Google Scholar, [in press] and for further examples, Drower, and Macuch, , Mandaic dictionary 53.Google Scholar

11 Sokoloff, M., A dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine period (Ramat-Gan, 1990), 222.Google Scholar

12 Smelik, art. cit., 176 f.

13 On this idiomatic usage cf. Drower and Macuch, Mandaic dictionary 131b.

14 Gordon, C. H., ‘Two Aramaic incantations’, in Tuttle, G. A. (ed.), Biblical and Near Eastern Studies: Essays in Honor of W. S. LaSor (Grand Rapids, 1978), 236 f.Google Scholar

15 Published by Obermann, J., ‘Two magic bowls: new incantation texts from Mesopotamia’, The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 57, 1940, 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar and again without alterations by Isbell, Ch., Corpus of the Aramaic incantation bowls (Missoula, Montana, 1975), 138.Google Scholar

16 Obermann, art. cit., 22 f.

17 It is questionable whether mlk' can be understood here as ‘king’ or may be connected with the Akkadian homonym malkū B ‘a chthonic demon or god’.

18 Drower, and Macuch, , Mandaic dictionary 402.Google Scholar

19 For more details on this Mandaic cosmoslogical term see Drower, and Macuch, , Mandaic dictionary 144.Google Scholar

20 Naveh, J. and Shaked, Sh., Amulets and magic bowls (Jerusalem, 1985), 212.Google Scholar

21 Gordon, C. H., ‘Aramaic incantation bowls’, Orientalia 10, 1941, 124–127Google Scholar = Isbell, Corpus 100–3; Further corrections, 1. 1 w'syryn instead of ՙwryn; wrwh՚ b˘t' instead of wrwḥh by˘t' qynynyh instead of pqynynwh also in 1. 7; 1. 4 nyštyh instead of nyšqyn yh, dmlk՚ instead of dmlkh; 1. 7 dtyklwn instead of dyklwn; ibid, correct Louvre AO 2099:11 l՚ysqwpt՚ to wl՚ yḥṭw bhwn.

22 See Isbell, , Corpus 102.Google Scholar

23 Drower, and Macuch, , Mandaic dictionary 299, 394.Google Scholar

24 e.g. p'rzl՚ w'nk՚ wnyrb՚ w'pl'nz՚ DC 43 J 172 etc. in late incantations (Drower, and Macuch, , Mandaic dictionary, 299Google Scholar) or in Mandaic incantation bowls, ՚rs' d-przl՚ nh'š՚ wnyrb՚ (BM 91715b:2, unpublished) or Nippur 18N97:10/1 bՙzyqt՚ ḏ-nhš wprzl' wnՙrb' [Hunter, E. C. D., ‘Two Mandaic incantation bowls from Nippur’, Baghdader Mitteilungen 25, 1994, 614Google Scholar, but she mistakenly reads wṣՙrb'? in the commentary to line 11].

25 See Drower, and Macuch, , Mandaic dictionary 394.Google Scholar

26 cf. von Soden, W., Akkadisches Handwörterbuch III (Wiesbaden, 1981), 1086.Google Scholar