File:The religion of Babylonia and Assyria especially in its relations to Israel (1908) (14595877269).jpg

Identifier: religionofbabyl00roge (find matches)
Title: The religion of Babylonia and Assyria especially in its relations to Israel
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Rogers, Robert William, 1864-
Subjects: Judaism
Publisher: New York, Eaton
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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rete instances. If inany case failure resulted it could only be ascribedto the use of the wrong formula or set of words.Hence there grew up a zealous and earnest de-termination to preserve exactly the words whichin some cases had brought healing, and to keepcareful record of the exact words then used. The next step, a perfectly natural one, was togather incantations into groups or rituals, classi-fying them according to purpose or use. Sev-eral of these incantation rituals have survived,and though they are sad—for the agonies ofpain-tossed and broken-hearted men and womencling to them even yet—they are still of deepinterest. We seem in them to touch closely avital, even though a hopeless, faith. There is amelancholy pleasure in turning over these oldwords, meaningless at times, as incantations arewont to be. There are now known six distinct series ofthese incantation rituals: (1) Maqlu, that isburning/ which is so called because there arein it many symbolical burnings of images of
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THE SACRED BOOKS 147 witches. This series is used in the deliveringof sufferers from witches or sorcerers.(2) Shurpu, another word for burning, andthis series also deals much in symbolical burn-ings and is used for practically the same set ofpurposes as the former. (3) Labartu, the nameof a female demon which exercised a balefulinfluence chiefly upon mothers and children.In this series are incantations especially di-rected against this class of demons. (4) Utukkulimnuti, evil demons. (5) Tiu, head sickness,and (6) Ashakku marsu, the Ashakku sickness.It is a sorry collection indeed, but we shall notdo justice to the religion if we do not see alsothis dark side of superstition. In these incantations we make the acquaint-ance of a large number of demons with strangenames, some of which possess a significationknown to us, while others are hopelessly dark.Among those that we know at least partiallyare the utukku, a strong demon; the shedu,sometimes malevolent, but more often benevo-lent, w

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