The Witchcraft Series Maqlû by Tzvi Abusch

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Witchcraft Series Maqlû by Tzvi Abusch Michael S. Moore tzvi abusch, The Witchcraft Series Maqlû (WAW 37; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015). Pp. xiv + 201. Paper $29.95. Complementing Gerhard Meier's long-standing, sturdy edition (Die assyrische Beschwörungssammlung Maqlû [AfO Beiheft 2; Berlin: n.p., 1937]), this affordable paperback features an Akkadian transcription plus English translation of the longest and most famous of the Mesopotamian rituals against witchcraft, self-titled "Maqlû" ("burning," CAD M:252) in the final line of each tablet. Prefacing this is a forty-page introduction to the bizarre world of ancient Near Eastern witchcraft generally and Maqlû particularly, its major points reflecting those penned in previous studies (e.g., A.'s revised dissertation, Babylonian Witchcraft Literature: Case Studies [BJS 132; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987]). Simultaneously with this WAW volume, Abusch also publishes a detailed edition of Maqlû in a critical edition entitled The Magical Ceremony Maqlû: A Critical Edition (Ancient Magic and Divination 10; Leiden: Brill, 2015), a volume representing the culmination of the life work of one of the world's foremost experts on this ritual series. For many years A. has argued that the nine tablets making up the standard version of Maqlû (including the ritual tablet), far from being inchoate, disconnected Sammeltafeln, constitute instead a "single complex ceremony" (p. 4; see his "Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Literature: Texts and Studies, Part I. The Nature of Maqlû: Its Character, Divisions, and Calendrical Setting," JNES 33 [1974) 251-62, here 252). From ABL (Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum [ed. Robert F. Harper; 14 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1892–1914]) 56.2′-6′ he argues that āšipu-"exorcists" annually recite the first two divisions of Maqlû on the night of Abu 28, finishing the third and final division the next morning. Evidently they choose the month of Abu (July–August) because so many "black-headed people" believe this to be a "time when spirits are thought to move back and forth between the netherworld and this world" (p. 4). A. attempts to reconstruct Maqlû's history of composition by inter-textually examining portions of the standard version alongside other incantational fragments and intratextually comparing similar paragraphs within Maqlû itself. Example: "The [End Page 106] incantations found on the fragmentary Nimrud tablet CTN [Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud] 4.92 + 145 + 147 are . . . variations of incantations found in Maqlû 5-8" (p. 129). Synoptically publishing these Akkadian texts alongside each another allows interested students the chance to reconstruct this history for themselves (pp. 130-31), even though A. himself leans toward assigning greater antiquity to the Nimrud texts. With regard to structure, the Maqlû ritual(s), like all elimination rites (see David P. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature [SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987]), embody the usual priestly sequence of activity—construction, destruction, and elimination. "Building upon the basic ritual of burning, drowning, and burial, the ceremony takes up and integrates the additional themes of destruction and release of witchcraft as well as protection against future witchcraft attacks." Or, to use A.'s language, the "main concern" of Maqlû is "the judgment, execution, and expulsion of the witch" (pp. 17, 19). One of the distinctive features of this WAW edition is the author's proposal that a "divergent proto-form" of Maqlû "may already have existed in Aššur towards the end of the middle Assyrian period," and that the "long ritual with its nearly one hundred incantations" most likely "grows out of a much shorter ritual" and not the other way around (p. 5). Where the shorter ritual includes some ten incantations, the longer one multiplies this by a factor of ten. With regard to content, this ritual/incantation series preserves some of the most terrifying words ever uttered, presuming as it does the existence of a universe in which kaššāp(t)ū-"sorcer(esse)s" regularly and relentlessly prey on the "souls" of their neighbors (see Richard C. Steiner, Disembodied Souls: The Nefesh in Israel and Kindred Spirits in the Ancient Near East, with an Appendix on the Katumuwa Inscription [ANEM 11...