8/12/22, 2:43 PM
2. The Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean - (2022) - CLAS3625: Magic in the Ancient World - Kathryn Kelley
(2022) - CLAS3625: Magic in the Ancient World - Kathryn Kelley
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Table of Contents
⎈ Start Here: Course Syllabus
1. What is (Ancient) Magic?
2. The Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean
Cuneiform culture
Religions in the ancient Near East
Ea: Most ancient god of magic
Module Conclusion and Module 1–2 Quiz
3. Ancient Egypt
4. Mesopotamia : Magic of the palaces and temples
5. Mesopotamia: Witchcraft (kišpū)
6. Mesopotamia : Popular Magic
7. Ancient Israel
8. Ancient Iran
9. The Graeco-Roman World
Bonus Material: Magic Ancient and Modern
2. The Ancient Near East and the
Mediterranean
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2. The Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean - (2022) - CLAS3625: Magic in the Ancient World - Kathryn Kelley
Map by K. Kelley / Google Maps 2020.
This course will offer a geographically and chronologically wide perspective on magic in the ancient
Near East and Mediterranean, although we mainly focus on the 1st millennium BC (the first half of
which represents the "Iron Age" in these regions). To begin with, check your knowledge of the
geography of the modern Middle East with this quick online self-study map quiz.
You may find this interactive map helpful. You can change the date to see a map showing the
dominant cultural powers and their boundaries at that time. Note: unfortunately, the site requires you
to pause adblocker.
The "classical world" refers to powers of the western Mediterranean, Greece and Rome. The Aegean
sea between Greece and Turkey was an important area of cultural exchange. To the east and south of
the Mediterranean existed a network of complex civilizations, many of which had attained literacy
two thousand years before the introduction of writing in Greece: we refer to these disparate
civilizations as the ancient Near East. The "Near East" in this context corresponds approximately to
the modern Middle East. "Mesopotamia" is a Greek word that means "land between the two rivers",
referring to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that run from eastern Turkey into Syria and Iraq down to
the Persian Gulf. The Ancient Near East includes the regions surrounding Mesopotamia proper,
especially Anatolia (modern Turkey), Iran, the Levant (the eastern Mediterranean coast including
Lebanon, parts of Syria, and Israel), and Egypt.
By the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, societies had been connected by extensive networks of
trade for at least two thousand. Along with the trade in goods, there was also clearly exchange of
ideas.
📚
Read this brief summary of the modern archaeological discovery
of the Brone Age shipwreck at Uluburun
This underwater archaeological site, located off the southwest coast of Turkey, has provided a
glimpse of the flow of goods around the eastern mediterranean during the 14th century BC. The map
cuts off the vast eastern extent of this exchange network from Syria to Iraq and further; however,
note that the Kassite cylinder seals found in the wreck are a reference to Kassite Babylonia of
modern day Iraq (that is, southern Mesopotamia).
You might like to quiz your understanding of the ancient geography presented above, by marking up
this blank map of the modern Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean with the ancient region names
and important geographic features (rivers, seas, mountain ranges). Perhaps you'd like to share your
result with other students in the general discussion board.
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2. The Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean - (2022) - CLAS3625: Magic in the Ancient World - Kathryn Kelley
Cuneiform culture
Cuneiform Culture
Foremost among the defining features of the ancient Near East is the use of the cuneiform
writing system from c. 3200 BC until the first few centuries AD–that is, for around three
thousand years. Cuneiform is the world's earliest known writing system, developing shortly
before or at the same time as Egyptian heiroglyphs, the other most ancient writing system. By
comparison, note that the Greek alphabet, adapted from Phoenician writing of the Levant
(modern Lebanon), didn't appear until the first millennium BC, that is, two thousand years
after Mesopotamians began to write. There were also some limited attempts at early writing
in the western Mediterranean, beginning with the undeciphered Cretan Heiroglyphs and
Linear A of the early 2nd millennium BC, about 1,000 years after cuneiform had been
established.
The large number of cuneiform texts related to magic practice are discussed in modules 4–6
of this course. Cuneiform was a script used to write many different languages. One of the
earliest was Sumerian, which is unrelated to any other known language. Sumerian ceased
being spoken already during the course of Mesopotamian history (probably before 2000 BC),
but continued to be used in writing–particularly in magical / religious and scholarly texts–until
cuneiform died out in the first century AD. From the mid-third millennium BC, another
language had become important both as a spoken language and one for written diplomacy,
literature, and scholarship: this is Akkadian, which was written in different dialects including
Babylonian and Assyrian. Akkadian is a semitic language related to modern Arabic. In modules
4–6 we will run across a number of cuneiform texts relating to magic, most of which are in
Akkadian, and sometimes include Sumerian terms that seem to be valued for their great
antiquity.
Watch this video by an Assyriologist (cuneiform text specialist) at UCLA:
Treasures of the UCLA Library: Cuneiform Tablets Part 3 of 5
1. Notice the different shapes of cuneiform tablets and prisms that the researcher has on the
table.
2. Notice that cuneiform is written by impression in clay (rather than using ink on paper or
parchment). What is a "line drawing" as described by Sara in the video?
The earliest cuneiform was used to write administrative records, especially tracking barley and
other staple products in important households, including temples and palaces. By
approximately 500 years after its invention, the uses of writing had expanded to include texts
of literary, religious, and political nature. Clear evidence for recording magical incantations and
other texts related to magic appear early in the second millennium BC.
When scribes in the ancient Near East abandoned cuneiform in the first centuries AD in
favour of Aramaic, Greek, and other systems, knowledge of how to read cuneiform became
completely extinct, and modern archaeologists and linguists only deciphered the system again
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in the 19th and 20th centuries AD. One of the most remarkable things about cuneiform and
the cultures of the Near East that used it is the sheer quantity of writing that has survived,
since the medium for writing, clay, tends to survive in the soils at archaeological ruins across
much of the Middle East. Since modern excavations began, large numbers of these tablets
have made their way into modern museum collections: by some estimates, the current number
is between 500,000 and one million tablets. A large portion of the tablets in museum
collections remain untranslated, since the script was only deciphered in the 19th century and
there are very few specialists in Assyriology.
Listen to this podcast on the cultural heritage of Iraq in the modern world. Experts discuss the
theft and recovery of a relief depicting an ancient Assyrian "winged genie" from Nimrud—an
object similar to that shown on your course homepage.
📚
Read this excerpt from The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in
the West. From Antiquity to Present.
Further media of interest
Watch this short video about a Babylonian tablet demonstrating knowledge of the
pythagorean theorem (before Pythagoras' lifetime!) and see how researchers are using 3D
imaging to aid their study of cuneiform texts.
Religions in the ancient Near East
Alabaster relief from Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), depicting the army of Neo-Assyrian King
Tiglath- Pileser III (c. 745–727 BC) plundering a Syrian city and carrying off their cult statues.
Note that the statues are being carried away upright and carefully. Image: © The Trustees of
the British Museum
https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?
objectId=367010&partId=1
The religious landscape of the ancient world was diverse, but for most of the periods, in most
places, societies were polytheistic (believing in and worshiping multiple gods) or henotheistic
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2. The Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean - (2022) - CLAS3625: Magic in the Ancient World - Kathryn Kelley
(having belief in multiple gods but focusing worship on just one). Monolatry is a similar term to
henotheism, perhaps with greater emphasis on forbidding the worship of other gods (that
however do, in one's world view, exist). An examination of ancient textual sources informs us
that monotheism (the belief that there is only one god) is a later development, emerging
gradually from henotheism between the later 1st millennium BC through the first several
centuries AD.
Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean civilizations did not generally deny the existence or
right to worship the gods of neighbouring societies, and there is no evidence that societies
were motivated to fight wars in order to convert others to their religion. However, powerful
societies like Assyria might force you to swear by your own gods to keep allegiance to their
state god (for Assyria this was the god Assur). Mesopotamians sometimes engaged in
"godnapping", in which they stole the cult statues of their neighbours, bringing them back to
their own cities where they set them up and kept them safe, so that that god's power and
favour might be transferred to their city (or, temporarily reduced in the conquered city).
📚
Read the entries "Cult Statues" and "Gods and Goddesses" in
Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An illustrated
Dictionary.
Further Reading
Walls, Neal H. (ed) Cult Image and Divine Representation in the Ancient Near East. American
Schools of Oriental Research Book Series 10, Boston 2005.
Noegel, S. "Greek Religion and the Ancient Near East" in: Ogden, D. (ed), The Blackwell Companion to
Greek Religion, London (2006), 33–37.
Zaia, S. "Godnapping in the Ancient Near East", ASOR blog 4/9 (September 2016).
http://www.asor.org/anetoday/2016/09/godnapping-ancient-near-east/
Ea: Most ancient god of magic
Watch this lecture by Dr. Kelley on the Mesopotamia god Ea (his name in the Akkadian
language), also known by his more ancient Sumerian name Enki. A god worshipped for three
thousand years, Ea's role as intermediary between the gods and mankind is closely linked to
his patronage of magic. To be clear, there is no close equivalent in Akkadian or Sumerian to
the general English concept of "magic", probably since what constitutes magic is too woven
into the fabric of the universe in the Mesopotamian worldview: however, there are words for
"witchcraft", "spell", "incantation", "to cast a spell", "curse", "witch/warlock", and other similar
terms that can be used to help identify magic as an etic category of analysis. Other gods also
played important roles in magic practice, include Shamash the sun god who was responsible
for divination, and Gula, a healing goddess.
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26:53
📚
Read this excerpt from the Babylonian Epic of Creation, Enuma
Elish, which is recorded on clay cuneiform tablets written during the 1st
millennium BC.
In your reading, the Babylonian city god Marduk has been raised to the head of the assembly
of the gods, following a plan laid out by his father Ea, in order to vanquish the primordial
goddess Tiamat who has waged war against the assembly of the gods. Note how the myth
describes their fight in terms of "battle magic" (to borrow a modern term from The Magicians
series!), and consider the implications of the creation of the world by Marduk from Tiamat's
corpse.
Module Conclusion and Module 1–2 Quiz
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