1.1 Definitions and Scientific Research

I often reiterate Oscar Wilde’s quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray, “To define is to limit.” This is probably the first thing we must acknowledge when trying to define “magic”: any definition we offer is bound to be limited and inaccurate and will surely attract fierce objections from many.Footnote ² Avoiding any definition, however, is impossible in an Element whose main purpose is to acquaint the reader with the topic of magic in the ancient Near East. I therefore offer, cautiously and quite apologetically, the following working definition of magical rituals, which, as explained later, are the practical manifestation of magic as practiced in ancient times: a performative and oral set of procedures conducted by professional practitioners according to written or oral predefined rules, which has a clear objective, involving the assistance or deterrence of para-human entities that influence human reality. This working definition is undoubtedly long and cumbersome. This is the downside of trying to supply an impossibly all-inclusive definition for a concept that cannot be easily defined. But now that the obstacle of providing a working definition is out of the way, we can proceed to more detailed explanations. The magical ritual is meant to modify reality when other means are insufficient for this end. The relation between the procedures and the objective can be direct or symbolic; the performers are often professional practitioners trained in the craft; their knowledge frequently forms part of a secret lore, known only to a select few; the beneficiaries are often people in need of help that could not be achieved by other means: the sick and wretched, the poor and miserable, those tormented by life. Later, I will attempt to explain the considerations behind this definition and justify my views of its components as much as possible.

Before I proceed with discussing the basics of magic, it is imperative to clarify the complex relationship between two frequently interrelated realms: magic and religion. How do we distinguish between them? We may safely assume that in the ancient world, such distinctions differed from our own (emic and etic perspectives on magic are discussed later). As explained in detail later, the ancient Greeks distinguished between superstitio and religio, a perspective that influenced later Western thought. Furthermore, Frazer established an evolutionary model according to which religion is a superior social construct that replaced the inferior “primitive” magic. However, we must acknowledge that magic and religion share many characteristics; for example, both utilize rituals. In fact, one may argue that the working definition I supply earlier for “magic” could work just as well for “religion.” The two categories, however, do differ, and I will now offer my assumptions as to how and why.

By religion, I mean the elite form manifested by the authors of much of the Hebrew Bible and many ancient Near Eastern texts. Such religion is characterized as an organized, bureaucratic, highly hierarchical social system conducted by a priesthood and tightly monitored and controlled by the highest social echelons. A complex array of official rules governs its daily operation.

Magic, on the other hand, is characterized as a loosely organized, non-bureaucratic, barely hierarchical social system. It is sometimes categorized with “folk religion,” or “popular religion,” but its internal hierarchy is based on individual prestige rather than on a systematic structure of decision-making, and it is hardly monitored or controlled by a social authority. Magic is often based on the activities and performance of learned individual practitioners, and its daily operation is prompted by ad hoc needs.

Both magic and religion utilize rituals, and people of all social classes in ancient Israel and the ancient Near East would have had some access to both. However, there are significant differences: while religion contains many additional performative components, magic centers almost exclusively on ritual performance. Magic is predominantly used to achieve specific and clear goals, while religion serves wider needs, such as seasonal festivals and state ceremonies. Religion promotes social consolidation, while magic mostly involves the participation of individuals.

Therefore, I do not assume that magic and religion form two sides of the same coin; rather, I view them as two different coins, each of which can be used for acquiring various commodities. At times, the two different currencies can be used to obtain the same commodity, but some commodities can only be acquired with one of these currencies.

As stated, in practical terms, the discussion of magic in the ancient Near East (and, by extension, the Hebrew Bible) focuses on the performance of what we call “magical rituals.” These rituals included sets of practices – oral (utterances) and performative (actions) – performed by professionals on behalf of beneficiaries, meant to achieve numerous possible goals benefiting the beneficiaries. The acts and utterances performed in these rituals were frequently directed at non-human entities such as deities, demons, or ghosts, harnessing their powers to assist the beneficiaries or deter them from harming. In modern eyes, we may claim that there was no obvious causal relation between these sets of practices and the goals they were meant to achieve. However, in the eyes of the ancient people who practiced these rituals, the rituals were entirely realistic, and the causal relation between performing them and achieving their goals was real. People’s belief in the effectiveness of magical rituals is discussed later (see “7 Did it Work?”).

The remarks about causality in magic – or the lack thereof – bring me to another major consideration that must be kept in mind: the “emic” (internal/first-hand) versus “etic” (external/second-hand) perspectives on ancient magic. What did they think, and what do we think? Is our research even valid, or is it the product of anachronistic projections of our own worldviews and assumptions concerning ancient human reality that may have profoundly differed from our own? Did people of antiquity even perceive “magic” as a distinct category in the same way we do?Footnote ³ Nihilistic approaches that deny our very ability to study ancient rituals (see the final paragraph of “1.2 History of Research” later) are not to be endorsed, as they undermine the basic foundations of historical research. On the other hand, naïve assumptions that the past can be fully and clearly revealed to us may be overly optimistic and misleading. As is usually the case in life, a certain middle ground between these two extremes should be found.

Modern research on ancient magic is complicated and, at times, quite heated. Many scholars are reluctant to use the term “magic” at all, claiming that it reflects biases and negative connotations. Magic has frequently been equated with other human categories, such as religion, science, and medicine, and has usually been portrayed as the inferior – at times even negative – element in the equation.Footnote ⁴ At the core of the negative sentiments toward magic, one may argue, lie judgmental assumptions that magic is nothing but idle superstitious procedures practiced by pre-industrial underdeveloped societies, while science and medicine are more sophisticated systems of thought that emerged later on. The origins of such assumptions, no doubt, go back to Frazer’s The Golden Bough, which, for better or worse, shaped scholarly attitudes toward mythology and magic for well over a century. To circumvent such judgmental perspectives, one should first seek to understand the realm of magic in its own right – not in comparison to other systems of thought and practice, but as a distinct system with its own characteristics, norms, and rules.

Contextualization is also of the highest importance: the study of magic in the ancient Near East can only be effectively conducted within the context of the ancient Near Eastern cultures that produced the magical rituals in question: the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and ancient Israelites. Comparison with other cultures is certainly warranted, but it must be done with due caution, as the worldviews that guided ancient Near Eastern cultures frequently differed widely from those that prevailed in the Graeco-Roman world – let alone other human cultures. All these considerations lie at the basis of the approach assumed in the present Element toward the study of magic in the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible. One more significant thing must be kept in mind: this Element does not study rituals; it studies the textual evidence concerning ritual performance, with all the implications and limitations involved. The textual evidence sheds important light on these fascinating phenomena, but never entirely illuminates them since they are no longer performed. Without video or audio recordings, much remains a matter of speculation. This issue is discussed further below (see the “chocolate cake metaphor” in “3 How Do We Know?”).

1.2 History of Research

The scholarly study of magic in ancient times forms an academic discipline in its own right.Footnote ⁵ However, it draws its content from several other disciplines, some of which relate to magic in their own ways: religious studies, history, philosophy, anthropology, and folklore. The study of magic is hardly new; already in ancient times, people attempted to understand the mechanics of magical rituals, and as soon as “magic” was established as a field of knowledge in its own right, it attracted curiosity, scrutiny, and criticism.

It is hard to define the beginning of scientific research of magic. Putting aside pre-modern inquiries into the validity of magical acts, we may generally subdivide the history of research into several main phases. Its “prehistory” is probably found in theological and philosophical trends of thought during the Age of Enlightenment (eighteenth century) and the Industrial Revolution (mid eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries). Modern scholarship, however, began in the late nineteenth century, with scholars such as Edward Tylor, William Robertson Smith, and James Frazer. Three main phases can be discerned in the scholarship that has developed. The first phase, between the late nineteenth and mid twentieth centuries, saw the formation of academic disciplines and the emergence of ethnography within the context of colonialism. In this context, theorists and ethnographers became interested in religions and rituals as exotic phenomena. In the second phase, during the mid-to-late twentieth century, rituals were viewed as a key to understanding culture, and anthropological fieldwork and ethnographic research attempted to understand human social behavior through the practice of rituals. In the third phase, from the late twentieth century to the present, multi- and inter-disciplinary studies of religions and rituals have focused more on theoretical thought and less on ethnographic fieldwork and observations.

The “first phase” I mentioned earlier was influenced by the pioneering works of scholars such as Edward Tylor (the founder of Cultural Anthropology), William Robertson Smith, Jane Ellen Harrison, James Frazer, Arnold van Gennep, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Edward Evans-Pritchard. Some of them based their research on ethnographic studies of non-Western tribal groups. Others offered analyses based on what they assumed to be the role of magic in global human history. One of the influential schools of thought during this era was the so-called Cambridge School or Myth-and-Ritual School, which focused on fertility and the cycle of life as central features of rituals, and on the role of ritual as the basis for the development of myth and the performance of drama. During this era, Frazer formulated his highly influential three-stage model of the development of human belief: from primitive magic to more developed religion, and from religion to science (mostly in The Golden Bough, his magnum opus). If one is to trace the origins of viewing magic as inferior to religion and medicine, some are sure to be found here. Be that as it may, the large paradigms of the scientific research of magic were shaped during this period and by these scholars.

The “second phase” continued the pioneering age of its predecessors, adding new components and perspectives to the study of magic. Scholars such as Claude Lévi-Strauss (founder of Structural Anthropology), Max Gluckman (founder of the Manchester School of Anthropology), Victor Turner, and Clifford Geertz continued to base their research on ethnographic fieldwork but increasingly focused on symbolism and cultural nuances, analyzing specific case studies rather than offering all-inclusive and overarching paradigmatic theories.

The “third phase” arguably emerged as a critical response to methodological and conceptual shortcomings and deficiencies that had characterized over a century of modernistic approaches to the study of magic. Broad and comparative perspectives, which highlighted liturgy and ceremonies, rites of passage, and life cycles, gave way to more nuanced attempts to understand the world of magic and rituals. Scholars such as Catherine Bell and Ronald Grimes viewed ritual as a process composed of numerous small-scale modes. They drew attention to subtle details in the ritual process rather than to large, all-encompassing analyses.

Later scholars such as Frits Staal and Talal Asad examined ritual through postmodernist lenses, characterized by deconstructionist rationales. For them, ritual is itself meaningless, or at best, self-referential. They argue that ritual cannot be studied from the outside, and that the study of ritual is anachronistic, Eurocentric, and shaped by colonialist and Western views of cultural superiority. Arguably, however, such perspectives verge on nihilism. Deconstruction ought to be supplemented by constructive alternatives to the paradigms it challenges, or else it contributes very little to the academic discussion.

1.3 Typology

When scholars discuss the concept of magic, they distinguish between different types based on the procedures and rationales that guide the ritualistic performance. The main categories of magical performance are analogic/sympathetic rituals, transference/contagion, scapegoat rituals, substitute rites, and rites of passage.Footnote ⁶ Not surprisingly, most of these terms were conceptualized by James Frazer in The Golden Bough, and were subsequently elaborated by later scholars. In addition, a distinction is made between performative rituals, which are based on actions, and oral ones, which are based on speech, even though most rituals combine actions and utterances. Naturally, such categorizations are merely the product of our modernistic, tentative viewpoints, and the actual separation between them is rather fluid and loose, as many rituals employed various techniques and procedures belonging to several different categories. Assigning specific rituals to any of these categories is, therefore, no less tentative than the very attempt to define the categories in question. As said, to define is to limit.

1.4 Almost, but Not Quite, Entirely Unlike Magic

Until now, we have defined what magic is, thus limiting its extent. It remains for us to mention a few brief points about ancient Near Eastern practices that were similar to magical rituals but differed enough to fall outside the scope of this Element: cultic ceremonies, state festivals, and divination practices. Additionally, elements such as prayers, divine invocations, and incantations could be incorporated into the performance of magical rituals, but did not constitute rituals themselves; being entirely verbal, they lacked the performative aspect that magical rituals have.

Cultic ceremonies were part of the state priesthood and institutionalized religion. In these ceremonies, the gods were venerated in the temples, received offerings and sacrifices, and routine prayers were made by official clergy. These ceremonies reflected the daily operation of the nation’s organized religious system and usually did not fulfill specific objectives other than the ongoing performance of the state cult.

State festivals were typically annual and integrated into a formal calendar. They could be seasonal, celebrating the onset of a new year or a specific agricultural period. Other state festivals marked special events, such as coronations, royal weddings, or the inauguration of a new palace. Occasionally, these large-scale events included certain magical rituals that served specific purposes – purificatory or otherwise – within the broader context of the festival, but the festival itself primarily represented a large-scale public celebration, not a magical or ritualistic occurrence.

Divination, much like magic, constituted a distinct field of knowledge. Skilled practitioners carried it out, employing various techniques. The distinction between divination and magical rituals is not clear-cut, and the two could integrate into one another. For instance, divination could prompt the performance of magical rituals if an ominous future was revealed, leading to an expiatory ritual. While the ritual was action-based, divination was limited to revealing divine intentions and future occurrences. Hence, while divination can certainly be viewed as a magical performance, it lacked the intention to affect or change reality inherent in rituals.

1.5 Magic in the Graeco-Roman World

Before embarking on our journey into the ins and outs of magic in the ancient Near East, we should consider the wider historical context of the classical world. The Graeco-Roman world drew many cultural elements from the ancient Near East, and, in turn, formed a conduit through which these elements endured through the history of Western civilizations. We shall briefly consider this later in the sphere of magical rituals.Footnote ¹⁵ Indeed, the modern term “magic” derives from the Greek mageía (Latin magia), and the Greek term mágos (magician) was itself a borrowing from Old Persian maguš (priest). We especially focus on Greek rituals in this respect, as the Romans existed too far down the historical line to be directly influenced by the ancient Near East; such influences were mediated by the Greeks.

The earliest mentions in the Greek world of practices we may consider “magical” derive from the Homeric epos: Book 11 of the Odyssey describes sacrifice, bloodletting, and necromancy performed by Odysseus in the underworld for raising the dead and consulting them. While no consensus exists regarding its precise date of composition, the origins of the Homeric epics may go back to the eighth century and certainly before the sixth. While it was believed that gods and goddesses possessed magical powers, many Greek philosophers (such as Plato) and Hippocratic physicians were suspicious of the human practice of magic. They did not question the validity of magic, but the appropriateness of its use: for them, magic reflected improper and disrespectful human control over gods. A distinction was therefore made between acceptable divine influence on human life and unacceptable human practice of magic that alters reality. To heal a sick person, therefore, imploring the gods for assistance or supplying medicinal herbs was acceptable; resorting to magical practices such as uttering spells and charms or using figurines was not. This gave rise to the division between the concepts superstitio and religio, much in contrast with the ancient Near Eastern perspectives where no such division existed.

Several terms designated the different Greek magical practitioners: kathartai (purifiers), agurtai (beggar-priests), and manteis (seers), but the actual differences between them and the performance typical of each are not always clear. Additional terms exist, such as goetes (originally probably cultic lamenters), but the most prominent magical performers in ancient Greece were the magoi (magicians).

What magical procedures could these practitioners perform? They could invoke non-human entities such as spirits and raise the dead to consult them (necromancy). They could prepare amulets, figurines, and potions to be used in rituals to protect or heal people. A different type of ritualistic performance involved “binding magic.” These rituals used written spells and curses or small anthropomorphic figurines. The texts of the spells and curses were rolled and placed in locations of special significance, usually graves or wells, thus allowing them closer contact with the power of the dead. The anthropomorphic figurines were usually shaped as kneeling and bound persons, sometimes pierced with needles to emphasize the attack symbolism. They, too, could be buried or cast into wells. The purpose of such rituals was to bind their victim, thus attacking or coercing them to act according to the attacker’s will.

Here we conclude the introductory section of this Element. We have introduced the concept of “magic” and its definitions, implications, and history of research; we have reviewed the main generic types of magical rituals, and types of human activities that shared similarities with magical rituals but differed from them. Finally, we considered the wider historical framework of the performance of magical rituals in ancient Greece and Rome. We shall now proceed to discuss the performance of magical rituals in the ancient Near East.

2.1 Geographical Boundaries

Somewhat paradoxically, geographical definitions of the ancient Near East are, in fact, cultural rather than purely physical. By “ancient Near East” we mean “the people who lived in the ancient Near East,” and by “people” we mean “cultures that produced writing,” because we mostly know about people in ancient times thanks to the written evidence they left behind. Hence, in defining the area, we actually delineate the boundaries within which the ancient cultures in question lived: first the Sumerians, then the Akkadians, followed by the Amorite Babylonians and Assyrians, the Hurrians, Hittites and many others. The core area of habitation of many of these cultures is known by the Greek term “Mesopotamia,” the region “between the two rivers,” which roughly corresponds to present-day Iraq. The two rivers in question are the Euphrates and the Tigris. The Hittites lived in what is now the Anatolian plateau of central Turkey, and the Hurrians were located between Anatolia and Mesopotamia. As time progressed and these populations grew, their habitation areas expanded to encompass what today corresponds to the countries and regions surrounding Iraq, such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the northern parts of the Arabian Peninsula. The ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah were but two of many small kingdoms that existed in the area, sandwiched between larger powers: Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt. From a geographical perspective, these two kingdoms roughly correspond to the present-day state of Israel – again, a culturally oriented definition of geographical terms. The case of ancient Egypt is complex. It existed within the geographical extent of the “Near East,” but differed from other ancient Near Eastern cultures in many respects, the most notable of which were language and writing systems. While Akkadian was the lingua franca of the ancient Near East, and the cuneiform script was used by all literate cultures, the Egyptians spoke their own language and used their own script (the so-called hieroglyphs).

The cultures that inhabited the region came in frequent contact with one another, strongly influencing each other. However, in the first millennium BCE, when the Hebrew Bible was written, Mesopotamia exerted significantly much greater imperial pressure on Levantine states, and its cultural influence is much more widely recognized in the Hebrew Bible. Biblical stories of Egyptian magicians (e.g., Exod. 7–9) invite reflection on Egyptian magic in another venue, but since Egyptology forms a distinct subfield, Egypt is not discussed in this Element.Footnote ¹⁷

2.2 Chronological Boundaries

When does history begin? When does it end? These are, in fact, the wrong questions to ask. We should rather ask: When do our sources begin, and when do they end? For people lived in the Near East long before the invention of cuneiform writing and continued to do so long after this writing ceased. Our sources, therefore, limit our research to the specific human reality that they document. The chronological boundaries of this Element, therefore, merely reflect the timespan covered by people’s writing in the ancient Near East: from the invention of the cuneiform script in the late fourth millennium BCE until this writing system was abandoned, giving way to the much simpler alphabetic writing in the first millennium BCE.

A crucial consideration to keep in mind, however, is that many of the texts pertinent to the topic of magic are rooted in old traditions, and were copied time and time again. The implication is that we may consider a text that was produced in a certain era, while its origins go centuries back. This raises the obvious question, does the text genuinely represent the cultural setting of the time of its writing (or copying), the time of its original composition (of which we are frequently ignorant), or any other cultural reality? Indeed, cultural continuity and long-lasting traditions are highly typical of the civilizations of the ancient Near East. This makes the historical aspects of this Element – as represented, for example, by the chronological timeframe it covers – more fluid than one may expect. In a sense, this grants credibility to generalizations and overarching assumptions: what was true in a certain time and place was likely true in other times and places as well. Therefore, we may indeed speak about “Mesopotamian” magical practices in an all-encompassing manner.

A different set of considerations applies to ancient Israel. On the one hand, as explained earlier, the kingdoms of Israel and JudahFootnote ¹⁸ must be viewed against the backdrop of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age in the southern Levant. On the other hand, the vast majority of evidence relevant to magic in ancient Israel derives from the Hebrew Bible rather than from epigraphic sources contemporaneous with the so-called biblical era (mostly the First Temple period). This is not the place to discuss the validity of using biblical evidence for reconstructing social life in ancient Israel; it will have to suffice to state that while the topic is obviously complicated, whatever historical reality the biblical evidence reflects, it is assumed in this Element to be representative of the attitudes that prevailed in ancient Israel towards magical practices.

3.1 Mesopotamia

As previously noted, Mesopotamia was the core area of the ancient Near East, home to its most prominent civilizations. These civilizations engaged in a wide variety of magical rituals, many of which were carefully documented with detailed performance instructions. The most important aspect to consider concerning magical rituals in Mesopotamia is cultural continuity. As was already explained, “Mesopotamia” is merely a geographical term, encompassing multiple cultures. These groups, while sometimes different in beliefs and customs, shared a notable continuity in traditions and cult practices. As a result, rituals rooted in third-millennium Sumer continued to be practiced in first-millennium Assyria and Babylonia, albeit with modifications and elaborations. Naturally, some ritual practices were abandoned over time, and others were invented anew. For these reasons, it is not always easy for the modern scholar to assign a given ritual its specific time and place of documentation. Broad terms such as “Babylonian,” “Assyrian” or even generally “Mesopotamian” are sometimes sufficient. Ritual texts were found in public archives in palaces and temples, as well as in private archives of noble families. Thus, they could be used for the benefit of high-profile people belonging to royalty and nobility, but also for people of lower social ranks.

3.2 Hatti

The Hittites differed in many ways from the civilizations of Mesopotamia. They spoke an entirely different language (Indo-European rather than Semitic) and had distinctive religious, mythological, and cultic traits. The Hittites were highly influenced by the cultures surrounding them, and the term “Hittite culture” itself refers to a rich cultural amalgam of traditions and customs of different origins: Luwian, Hurrian, Hattian, Mesopotamian – and yes, eventually also native Hittite.

The vast majority of Hittite texts we know of have been found in the royal and priestly archives of the capital city, Hattuša. While smaller archives have been discovered in provincial cities, these usually do not contain magical texts. Thousands of tablets and fragments of rituals have been recovered from the Hattuša archives, amounting to about one hundred complete texts.

3.3 Northwest Syria

Mesopotamia was inhabited by the most influential cultures of the ancient Near East: the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Hatti represented the most significant ancient Near Eastern culture peripheral to Mesopotamia. However, numerous other populations thrived in other parts of the region, in the area corresponding to present-day Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. These groups were usually organized within small kingdoms or city-states, and several archives of cuneiform tablets were found in some of their cities. Some of these tablets described magical rituals.

In the royal archives of the city-state of Ebla, present-day northwest Syria, several ritual texts were found. These texts are dated to around 2500–2250 BCE, which makes them some of the earliest ritual texts we have from the ancient Near East. Perhaps the most striking fact about these texts is that they appear to document the earliest scapegoat rituals in human history. More about this is discussed later (see “8 Case Study: The Scapegoat Ritual”).Footnote ²⁰

Further east, in the region of the Middle Euphrates (present-day eastern Syria), the city-state Mari held significant political and cultural influence. Archaeologists discovered in the royal archives of the capital city over 25,000 cuneiform tablets, some describing magical rituals. The tablets date to the final decades of the kingdom before its fall to Hammurabi’s conquests around 1760 BCE. The rituals were to be performed by or on behalf of the king, mostly in veneration of major deities like Ištar or as funerary rites honoring dead ancestors.Footnote ²¹

Another major city-state in this region was Ugarit, located on the coast of present-day Lebanon. The royal archives found in the capital city reveal an interesting world of magical rituals, some therapeutic, apotropaic, and purificatory. Their intended beneficiaries were mostly the royal family, especially the king himself. These texts are much later than the ones found in Ebla and Mari, and date to the last years of the kingdom, around 1200–1185 BCE.Footnote ²²

3.4 Ancient Israel

Our knowledge of the history and daily life in ancient Israel derives from multiple sources, both written and archaeological. Historical records from Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria from the first millennium BCE shed some light on the history of ancient Israel. Sporadic epigraphic evidence came down to us from the regions of Israel, Judah, and their surrounding kingdoms. However, these sources are silent concerning ritual practices. This leaves the Hebrew Bible as the primary source for understanding ritual practice in ancient Israel. The problem, of course, is that the biblical text as we presently have it was not contemporaneous with most of the periods it discusses, so its validity must be carefully assessed. Again, the moment we try to define our sources, we are forced to limit the scope of our discussion.

Thus, we mainly concentrate on what the Hebrew Bible reveals about magical practices. The most dominant voices are religious prohibitions; biblical authors often viewed magical practices with a high degree of animosity, considering them idolatrous and in opposition to the proper worship of God.

Nonetheless, several references to the practice of magic appear in the Hebrew Bible, clearly defying the official legal stance of the biblical authors. These references are highly significant, shedding light on the tense relationship between official law and everyday custom in ancient Israel. The uncertainties modern scholars face in defining the boundary between forbidden magic and permitted divine worship of God are illustrated by the Levites’ use of the Urim and Thummim to foretell the future or interpret God’s will. This practice echoes ancient Near Eastern divination methods, which should have been prohibited by biblical law. Similarly, the contest between Aaron and Moses and the Egyptian magicians at Pharaoh’s court (Exod. 7:8–11) involved the performance of magical acts. The Levites’ divination using the Urim and Thummim could also be considered magic, and miraculous acts performed by God’s prophets should be understood in a similar context. In effect, magic was like prophecy in that it was permitted in the name of God but forbidden otherwise (Deut. 18:17–20).

A peculiar case that may be interpreted as applying magical practices within a religious context is found in the “sotah ordeal/judgment” (מבחן/דין סוטה; Num. 5:12–31): if a husband suspected his wife of being adulterous without being able to prove his suspicions, she would be forced to undergo the “Ordeal of the bitter water” in the temple. A priest would add dirt from the temple ground into a vessel containing holy water and have the woman swear she did not commit the alleged adultery. He would then inscribe the curses to befall her if she did sin, and wipe the written curses into the water. The woman would then drink the water. If she were guilty of adultery, the water would affect her thigh and stomach, but if she were innocent, no harm would happen to her. Since the water merely contained dirt and ink, it was assumed that any harm the woman might suffer would result from divine retribution.Footnote ²³

However, when it comes to official law, all forms of magic were disapproved of. Biblical law mentions several times people resorting to magical means, explicitly bans such practices, and prescribes the death penalty for anyone who engages in them. These prohibitions are found in all three major legal collections in the Pentateuch, the “Covenant Code” (Exod. 22:17), the “Holiness Code” (Lev. 19:26, 31; 20:6, 27), and the “Deuteronomic Code” (Deut. 18:10–11, 14).Footnote ²⁴ The exact contents of these texts are presented and discussed later (see “5.3 Magicians in the Hebrew Bible”).

3.5 Magic and the Law

As we saw in the previous section, the biblical stance on magic is mostly reflected in legal sources. This leads us to consider the legal perspectives on magic that prevailed throughout the ancient Near East.Footnote ²⁵ Aside from performance instructions, written sources attesting to the practice of magical rituals are sporadic. They are rarely mentioned in letters, for example. One type of evidence that sheds important light on magical rituals is legal texts. These reveal the legal stance of different populations across the ancient Near East on the practice of aggressive magic. We therefore conclude the section titled “How Do We Know?” with an overview of legal texts addressing magical practices – specifically aggressive ones – from all over the ancient Near East; not surprisingly, the attitude they reveal was hardly positive.

In contrast to the biblical notion of unequivocally deeming magic an illicit, capital offense, ancient Near Eastern cultures were far more accepting of its practice. Magical rituals formed an integral part of the institutionalized polytheistic religions of Mesopotamia and Hatti, and magicians were held in high esteem as professionals possessing healing capabilities who could ward off evil through their charms and knowledge of the occult.

Nonetheless, a clear distinction was drawn between defensive and aggressive magic. While the former was permitted, the latter was prohibited by law and met with harsh sanctions. Most ancient Near Eastern law collections address acts of magic, prohibiting them when their aim was harmful.Footnote ²⁶

In the Laws of Ur-Namma, a false accusation of witchcraft was sanctioned by a fine:

The Laws of Hammurabi prescribed the death penalty for the same crime:

The Hittite Laws specified several acts as practices of forbidden aggressive magic, for which the performer would be judged by the king. Since only severe crimes were brought before the Hittite monarch, who was authorized to impose the death penalty, it is assumed that most aggressive magic was conceived as a capital offense in Hatti. However, one clause prescribed a heavy fine for witchcraft performed by a free person, and execution only if the performer was a slave:

A different Hittite source – the royal edict of King Telipinu (ca. 1500 BCE) – generally banned the practice of aggressive magic:

The forbidden magical practices mentioned in the Hittite laws include the disposal of used materia magica in another’s house (HL §44), fashioning of clay figurines (HL §111), and killing a snake while uttering a person’s name (HL §170).

The Middle Assyrian Laws ordered the execution of a man or woman who practiced harmful magic:

The Neo-Babylonian Laws, however, distinguished between a woman who performed witchcraft against property (sanctioned by a fine) and against people (sanctioned by execution):

The latter collection refers only to women as such culprits, whereas the Middle Assyrian Laws explicitly mention both men and women. Descriptions of magical rituals from across the ancient Near East clearly demonstrate that, indeed, members of both genders could practice magic.

4.1 Aims

The key to understanding the aims of magical rituals lies in the nature of these acts as means to achieve goals that other methods could not. If a sick person did not recover, if a poor person could not gain wealth, if an impure person could not be cleansed, magical rituals were performed to harness the power of the gods or expel evil entities. As a result, magical rituals could have nearly any imaginable aim. These aims can be classified into several broad categories: therapeutic, apotropaic, purificatory, and anti-witchcraft. Naturally, many rituals could serve more than one purpose and thus could belong to more than one of these categories.

4.2 Beneficiaries

The connection between ritual aim and beneficiary is inseparable, as one reflects the other. However, the texts typically leave the ritual beneficiaries anonymous. The reason for this is straightforward: as previously explained, the magical texts we have are prescriptions, instruction texts that detail how rituals should be performed. These texts do not specify accounts of actual rituals that were performed, and therefore, they do not document specific beneficiaries. This is evidenced by occasional instructions to engrave or pronounce the beneficiary’s name during the ritual. In such cases, the text includes a rubric such as “so-and-so, the beneficiary” or simply instructs the practitioner to write or pronounce the person’s name aloud. Generally speaking, the ritual beneficiaries were people in need, occasionally referred to as “a sick person” in therapeutic rituals.

Specific rituals, however, may have unique beneficiaries, such as babies and women in labor in birth rituals, the king and/or queen in specific royal rituals, and adult men in potency rituals. Since most rituals were performed in response to illness or other health-related issues, the beneficiaries were frequently considered “patients.”

An intriguing exception to the usual anonymity of ritual beneficiaries is found in the Hittite ritual for the Sun-goddess of the earth (CTH 448.4.9). This was a substitute ritual intended to relieve the king of bewitchment. However, the beneficiary is identified in this text either generically as a “ritual beneficiary” (EN SISKUR, literally “lord/owner of the ritual”) or by the name Tudhaliya, which presents interesting possible interpretations since several Hittite kings bore this name. On one hand, kings would not normally be addressed by their names, but by their royal titles: “His Majesty,” “the king,” and the like. On the other hand, had the ritual been intended for a non-royal person, no explicit name would have been specified. This, therefore, stands as a rare example of a ritual where the king’s name is explicitly stated as the beneficiary.

These considerations lead us into a broader discussion concerning the public and private spheres. Historians have long debated the validity of the division between these spheres, and for good reason. It is quite possible that such divisions existed in the ancient Near East just as they do today. However, it is difficult to claim with certainty that this division is discernible in the ritual texts themselves. The vast majority of Hittite magical texts, along with many Mesopotamian ones, were discovered in palace or temple archives, and as such, they can hardly be considered “private.” Nevertheless, the knowledge they reflect was intended to treat any person in need, not just royalty. And what about the most “public” of all people – the king? He was, after all, flesh and blood, a person who could suffer from ailments just as any “private” person might. Thus, it is plausible that the king would require magical rituals no less than any person. Such considerations suggest that the discussion as a whole may be somewhat redundant, and the division between “public” and “private” is a matter of modern categorization rather than a real ancient conceptualization. To define is to limit, and with these definitions, we are probably needlessly limiting our understanding of the ancient world and its magical practices.

5.1 Magicians in Mesopotamia

In Mesopotamia, the most significant magical professionals belonged to two main subdivisions within the realm of magical performance: āšipūtu (“craft of the āšipu”) and asûtu (“craft of the asû”). Other domains, such as divination (bārûtu, “craft of the bārû”) and cultic lamentation (kalûtu, “craft of the kalû”), were not directly related to magical rituals and will not be discussed here, although some of the activities performed by professionals like the bārû and the kalû were certainly related to magical performance.Footnote ³⁹

The main Mesopotamian practitioner of magical rituals was the āšipu (frequently designated by logographic terms such as ^lúmaš.maš or ^lúmu₇.mu₇). Modern texts usually translate this term as “exorcist,” but the reader is to be dissuaded from attempting to draw parallels to the priest in the famous 1973 Hollywood horror film. The āšipu was a multifaceted practitioner, responsible for diverse activities beyond mere healing. His tasks were to diagnose the patient, determine the cause of illness, and decide on appropriate therapeutic actions. He performed apotropaic and purificatory rituals, recited incantations and prayers for the gods, offered sacrifices, created and used figurines and amulets, and applied potions and ointments. However, he did not normally treat the physical aspects of the patient’s illness.

The second practitioner – the asû – had different functions. Modern scholars usually translate this term as “physician,” and indeed, his activities were typically related to the physical aspects of healing. In JoAnn Scurlock’s words, modern scholars often view the asû as “the representative of a putative ‘medical’ healing tradition which used ‘rational’ treatments, and which attributed diseases to ‘natural’ causes.”Footnote ⁴⁰ The asû could administer herbs, potions and ointments, treat skin diseases and eye inflammations, set bones and apply bandages. Interestingly, the asû did not make “clinical observations”: he did not diagnose the patients or supply prognoses – these actions were performed by the āšipu – but merely treated physical ailments.

The āšipu and asû frequently cooperated. The exact boundaries separating their spheres of activity are not easily distinguishable, and certain overlaps existed between them. For example, the āšipu could perform physical healing actions that otherwise belonged to the sphere of asûtu.Footnote ⁴¹ Be that as it may, many texts attest to the joint performance of these two professionals as they healed their patients.

Additional professionals were engaged in magical rituals, but they are far less attested. Among these, we may mention the mušlahhu (snake charmer), mušēlû (necromancer) and eššebû (ecstatic / owl-man?), and priestesses such as the nadı̄tu and qadištu who were involved in cultic performance. However, unlike the āšipu and asû, we have no records detailing how these additional practitioners performed their craft, and their ritual activities are only occasionally mentioned in passing in certain texts, such as āšipu incantations.

However, things were not always positive, and the āšipu and asû had adversaries. While these were frequently evil non-human entities, such as ghosts and demons, they occasionally were flesh and blood. Certain humans who possessed the secret knowledge of magic could misuse it to perform harmful rituals that were generally called kišpū, a term modern scholars usually translate as “witchcraft.” As we saw (see “3.5 Magic and The Law”), kišpū-rituals were forbidden by law and could even lead to the evildoer’s execution. Despite this, not all people seemed to be deterred from practicing it. The most notable designation of such performers of forbidden aggressive magic was kaššāpu (sorcerer), with its feminine equivalent kaššāptu (sorceress). However, these performers of harmful magic differ markedly from the āšipu, asû and other magical practitioners, and we only find them mentioned as anonymous evildoers in anti-witchcraft rituals or a few other sources.

5.2 Magicians in Hatti

Hittite magical rituals present a different picture than their Mesopotamian counterparts. Unlike the relative uniformity of having one or two main male practitioners in Mesopotamia, the Hittite texts mention a wide variety of practitioners, both male and female, each with different titles.Footnote ⁴² One of the most prominent of these was the Old Woman, designated logographically as ^MUNUSŠU.GI. While these women were not necessarily “old,” they were likely experienced women held in high esteem for their knowledge of magical rituals. These Old Women performed a wide range of rituals, mostly related to healing. Other practitioners of magical rituals were priests and priestesses of various types, as well as professionals such as diviners, seers, and augurs. There was usually no clear correlation between specific types of performers and specific types of rituals. Judging by the terms designating these practitioners, we can see that many of these professions derive from neighboring cultures, especially the Hurrians and Luwians. We even find the Mesopotamian āšipu and asû as performers of Hittite rituals. This reflects the Hittites’ tendency to adopt religious and cultic ideas from other cultures; ritual performance was no exception.

5.3 Magicians in the Hebrew Bible

As noted, the negative biblical stance on magic and its performance differed significantly from the generally positive views held by people in Mesopotamia and Hatti in this respect. This was also reflected in the biblical attitude toward people who performed magic. The evidence for magical practitioners in the Hebrew Bible derives from various sources, mostly narrative and legal. Among the narrative sources, we find miraculous acts performed under the auspices of God by prophets like Moses and Aaron, Elijah, and numerous others. A particularly interesting reference to a female magical practitioner (not identified in the text by terms such as “witch” or “sorceress”) is found in the famous story of King Saul and the woman of Endor (I Sam. 28). This story vividly highlights the tension between the legal prohibition of magical practices and people’s occasional resort to it in desperate situations.

The legal evidence opposing different forms of magic reveals several terms of magical practitioners. These are the pertinent texts:

As shown in these quotations, the magical practices alluded to in the different biblical provisions all belonged to the realm of divination. If other forms of magic were practiced, the law did not address them. However, some of the terms found in these provisions require clarification. יִדְּעֺנִי likely derives from the root for “knowledge” (דעת) or “to know” (לדעת); the etymological origins of אוֺב are obscure but may be connected to ancient Near Eastern multilingual and multicultural terminology associated with magical offering pits.Footnote ⁴³ Be that as it may, it is clear that both terms had shared semantics. Scholars have suggested that both referred to types of ghosts or spirits consulted through necromancy,Footnote ⁴⁴ but it cannot be overruled that these terms designated the magical practitioners who invoked these supernatural beings rather than the beings themselves.

The verb לעונן likely derives from ענן, “cloud,” referring to a technique of future-telling based on the observation of cloud formations (nephomancy). The term דֺרֵשׁ אֶל-הַמֵּתִים means “he who inquires by the dead,” that is, a performer of necromancy. We may also speculate whether the term חֺבֵר חָבֶר, literally “he who joins a joining,” alludes to the Akkadian term riksu, “knot” or “bond,” which generally designated acts of magic, usually aggressive ones.Footnote ⁴⁵

More generally, we can observe that while in Exod. 22:17, only female practitioners are mentioned as sorcerers, and as such, they were to be executed, Lev. 20:27 prescribes execution for either a man or a woman who practices magic. This discrepancy most likely stems from the fact that these two versions of the law derive from different sources of the Pentateuch. The “Covenant Code” in the Book of Exodus and the “Holiness Code” of Leviticus were composed by different authors at different times, reflecting different social realities and serving different purposes.Footnote ⁴⁶

6.1 Procedures

As mentioned, magical rituals included numerous procedural components whose performance was essential for the ritual process. The most notable of these are analogy, transference, and substitute. We shall now examine how they were carried out.

6.2 Actions

The performance of magical rituals entailed a wide range of specific actions, some special and esoteric, others rather mundane. It would be impossible to mention every action involved in the rituals, and we will only note some of the more recurring or significant ones here.

6.3 Materia magica

“Die Materia magica ist auf Grund der Assoziations- und Verflechtungsmöglichkeiten jeglicher Lebewesen, Pflanzen und Gegenstände nahezu unbegrenzt.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Indeed, a wide range of materials and substances were used in rituals beyond those used for sacrifice or libation.Footnote ⁵⁹ While their purpose is sometimes explained, it is often only inferred from the context. Some of these materia magica surely had therapeutic qualities and can be regarded as materia medica, but many seem to carry symbolic implications for the ritual and the beneficiary. It would be impossible to cover all the hundreds, if not thousands, of such materials in this brief section, and we will focus on a few general comments regarding the most notable ones.

In general, the items used in magical rituals can be divided into three main groups: flora (plants), fauna (animals), and inanimate objects. Floral items were often used for their medical properties, especially when their effects were immediately visible, as they possessed antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, or astringent ingredients. These are discussed in more detail in the next section. Animals were predominantly used for sacrificial purposes, either as offerings to the gods or as carriers of disposed-of evil in transference rituals. Therefore, we do not discuss them here. We thus concentrate on the third group, of inanimate objects used as materia magica.

Products such as grain and seeds symbolized fertility and could be used in rituals that promoted healing. However, when roasted, they contrarily symbolized infertility. Similarly, items like salt, ash, malt, and roasted products symbolized sterility and infertility. They were sometimes used as purificatory agents to cleanse people, houses, and habitation areas. Sterility was possibly associated with warding off unwelcome entities or symbolizing the prevention of portended evil from materializing, just like roasted products cannot reproduce. The corrosive and antibacterial qualities of salt made it suitable for countering disease and repelling evil forces.

Some products were used for their strong odor: those with a pleasant aroma (incense, myrrh, and tree extracts) were viewed as pleasing the gods and attracting positive forces, while those with an unpleasant smell (onion and garlic) were considered as repelling demons and malevolent forces.

Soil and clay from riverbanks and springs were considered to originate from the underworld and, hence, to possess qualities associated with chthonic deities and the realm of the dead. Consequently, such materials could be used in rituals invoking chthonic deities, and figurines made from them served similar symbolic functions.

Stones, minerals, and metals – whether precious or alloys – lacked obvious therapeutic properties, but were nonetheless believed to possess healing abilities. In case these materials were valuable, they could be offered as gifts to the gods. Precious metals like gold and silver were believed to possess purifying qualities, likely due to their bright and shiny colors and possibly also because of their rarity.

Products such as bread, dough, and porridge were thought to be absorbents and could be attached to a sick person’s body to absorb his illness.

Blood as materia magica forms a special case. As representing life, it was used in rituals for purificatory purposes. It could be smeared on objects to purify them and on doorposts to protect the house entrance from evil forces. This brings to mind the biblical account of the tenth plague as told in Exod. 12: the enslaved Israelites marked their houses by smearing the doorposts with animal blood, so God would pass over them and not kill their firstborn sons as done to the Egyptians. Other biblical mentions of using blood in expiatory and purificatory rites are found in Lev. 14.

Colored wool strings were used in many rituals, presumably bestowing magical protection upon the people or items to which they were attached, but their exact purpose remains obscure. The frequent colors are red, blue, white, black, and occasionally yellow. Usually, no clear correlation can be observed between particular colors and the magical application of the wool. It may be assumed that white was associated with purity, life, and the celestial realm, while black represented impurity, death, and the underworld. Red could sometimes be associated with fever, and as symbolizing blood, could signify life or danger. Frequently, several colors were combined, obscuring any individual significance each of them could have.

6.4 Orality

We have previously briefly mentioned the concept of “performative utterance” (see “1.3.6 Performative Utterance”), which reflects the oral aspect of ritual performance.Footnote ⁶⁰ Orality is used in magical rituals to pronounce prayers, incantations, and invocations, helping establish the vital connection between the realms of mortals and gods. Orality is also used to establish analogies within rituals. Words may supplement actions when the analogy is established, or maintain the analogy independently, without any supplementary action. Other uses of orality in magical rituals include the uttering of the beneficiary’s name aloud, thus focusing the ritual on them. We shall consider illustrative examples for each one of these aspects of orality in magical rituals.

6.5 Medicinal Techniques

Many rituals – especially therapeutic ones – incorporated procedures we would term “medicinal.”Footnote ⁶⁴ The boundaries between the “magical” and the “medicinal” were anything but solid, and the very distinction between them is a modern categorization rather than a real ancient conceptualization. What characterizes the techniques described in this section is their apparent physical effect on the human body, which can be attributed to genuine medicinal properties. Since numerous such “medicinal” practices were employed, we only focus on some of the more common and noteworthy of them.

7.1 Did They Believe in Magic?

The first question to consider is whether people in the ancient Near East indeed believed that magic existed. This question can be answered in several ways, mostly indirect ones. To begin with, we have already mentioned that several law collections from the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible stipulated clear sanctions against the performance of aggressive magic.Footnote ⁶⁵ One might argue that a lack of belief in the effectiveness of magic would have made such laws redundant. Another argument in this line involves the evidence concerning what we might term “witch trials.” Performing such “trials” suggests that people indeed believed that aggressive magic could harm them.Footnote ⁶⁶ We may consider an intriguing example from a family dispute documented in two Old Babylonian letters. The dispute arose between a man named Ilı̄-iddinam and his son, Ur-Šubula, leading the father to accuse his son’s wife and mother-in-law of performing forbidden witchcraft, following which he prosecuted these women in a court of law. His son, however, responded with counter-accusations, claiming that his father was assisted by unlawful witchcraft.Footnote ⁶⁷ One of the letters quotes the father’s statement concerning what had previously happened:

The judges then ordered that the women in question be brought before them so the matter may be resolved through a legal procedure:

The mention in this letter of the “king’s regulation” (ṣimdat šarrim) may well refer to official laws stipulated against witchcraft already in the Laws of Ur-Namma, and also in the Old Babylonian Laws of Hammurabi (see “3.5 Magic and The Law”).

7.2 Causality

We therefore reach the conclusion that, yes, people in the ancient Near East indeed believed in magic. This, however, is not enough, and we must address another obstacle: the belief in causality. The ultimate question, “Did it work?” reflects the notion of causality: Did people believe in the existence of a direct and necessarily consequential (cause-and-effect) connection between the ritualistic performance and the outcomes it was meant to achieve? What happened if a ritual was unsuccessful? Was the practitioner blamed for incapability? The inadequate performance of the ritual? Or the ritual itself, as a measure that cannot truly achieve its goals? These questions are difficult to answer with certainty because, as was explained, we do not have any documentation of the actual performance of magical rituals. This inevitably leads to a lack of evidence concerning unsuccessful rituals. Many scholars have offered general considerations in this respect, but the lack of actual evidence leaves these views hypothetical.Footnote ⁷⁰ We may probably assume that if the ancient people indeed believed in the force of magic, they also believed in the causality it entailed. This, of course, is merely a circumstantial argument.

7.3 The Psychological Effect

So, they believed in magic. And they probably believed in causality. Are we to view the people of the ancient Near East as naïve souls, devoid of the advantages of technology and actual understanding of medicine that we possess? Such patronizing sentiments should probably be toned down a bit. Rather than asking, “Did magic work?” let us pose this question: When you go to a psychologist, does it work? Some rituals were performed in cases where people suffered from what we might term “psychological disorders,” such as anxiety, depression, or mental instability. Let us consider an exemplary text:

The opening lines of this ritual specify the symptoms to be cured. Some are physical, such as epilepsy and stroke, but others are purely behavioral. Either way, they all seem to belong to the sphere of emotional distress and tension. Such rituals belonged to the anti-witchcraft realm because it was believed that the people treated were afflicted by evil entities such as demons or ghosts. They could include physical practices such as placing medicinal plants and amulets on the patient, but one might argue that the success of such rituals was purely psychological, as the problems they treated were not physical. Did they work? Probably no more or less than present-day psychological treatments.

Geller discussed the psychological aspects of using magic: countering fears and guilt feelings by focusing the beneficiary’s attention on replacements, such as a demon that can be repelled.Footnote ⁷² This way, the intangible becomes tangible, and psychological anxieties are reduced. Some rituals included a declaration that the procedures would indeed work and the ritual would surely achieve its goals. These were also psychological means for lessening the beneficiaries’ worries and strengthening their confidence in the ritual and its success. The people of the ancient Near East, ultimately, may not necessarily have been more naïve than we are – but perhaps less cynical. Belief, in the end, is in the eye of the beholder. So, did it work? Like most things in life, I guess: to each his own.

8.1 Ebla: Purification for the Royal Couple

The earliest attestations of the scapegoat ritual were found in texts from the royal archives of the city-state of Ebla, dated to the twenty-fourth century BCE. In these archives, some 15,000 cuneiform tablets were found. Some of these tablets contain descriptions of magical ceremonies, two of which describe two unique ceremonies that exhibit the earliest known examples of a scapegoat ritual:

These two brief texts are similar, and the procedures they detail were performed as part of a long sequence of ceremonies whose beneficiaries were the future royal couple, prior to their wedding. The rituals took place at the royal mausoleum (é ma-da-am₆ / é ma-tim, “house of the dead”). A female goat (ùz/uzud), adorned with a silver bracelet on its neck, was placed in front of the entry of the deities Kura and Barama, the chief male and female deities of Ebla. The goat was then dispatched towards a place termed “land/mountains of Alini” (kur^ki a-li-NI^ki), an unclear term that has been interpreted as steppe, wilderness, or wasteland.

This act should be understood in the context of the cleansing of the mausoleum before the royal wedding. In this context, therefore, it appears that the scapegoat ritual was performed as part of a purification rite held for the royal couple. Whether the dispatched goat symbolized the removal and elimination of some uncleanliness or evil remains unknown.

8.2 Mesopotamia: Individual Protection against Evil, Private, and Royal

We move on to greater Mesopotamia. The scapegoat motif is found in numerous magical rituals and ceremonies documented throughout the history of the region. Goats are used as carriers in several rituals, for example, in the utukkū lemnūtu / udug hul (“evil demons”) series, but there, the animal is sacrificed and not sent away. An example of expelling a scapegoat is found in several Neo-Assyrian royal substitute rituals,Footnote ⁷⁹ where a gazelle (máš.dà, ṣabı̄tu) was used to transfer a perceived evil from the king. In these rituals, however, the scapegoat was not fulfilled by a goat but by a gazelle.

We may also consider a Sumero-Akkadian substitute ritual text from Ashurbanipal’s library in Nineveh, in which a billy-goat was equated to a suffering human by comparing their body organs:

The fate of the goat is not specified: we are only informed of the invocation of Enki/Ea, the analogic magical procedure and the transference of evil from the human patient into the carrier – the goat. Here the ritual ends, and it remains unknown how the evil was eliminated – whether through sacrifice or expulsion.

8.3 Hatti: Individual and Communal Protection against Evil

Next, the scapegoat motif is dominant in Hittite magical rituals. Some of the most paradigmatic types include birth rituals, royal substitutes, communal and individual purification after sinning, and the elimination of plague in the military. Various animals were used in these rituals as expelled carriers in analogic rites: rams, mice, dogs, and even humans. However, I will focus on rituals that involved goats. One of the relevant magical rituals in this respect was Zuwi’s ritual, during which several animals were used as materia magica in different ways. At the beginning of the healing process, the perceived evil, in the form of spittle, was extracted from the patient and transferred to an external carrier by means of sympathetic magic. A billy-goat was chosen as the carrier, and the patient spat into its mouth. The animal was then sent away, completing its role as a scapegoat. At this point, the healing process of the patient could begin.Footnote ⁸¹

Another example involves birth rituals meant to protect newborns from potential evil. In one such text, a billy-goat is equated to the baby:

The billy-goat was then sacrificed to the chthonic Sun-goddess of the earth, a very similar practice to the one performed during the Mesopotamian utukkū lemnūtu ritual mentioned earlier. However, since the goat was sacrificed rather than expelled, the case differs from the ones we discuss.

8.4 The Hebrew Bible: Communal Expiation from Sin

We now turn to ancient Israel. The biblical text, of course, was widely known millennia before the rediscovery of ancient Near Eastern texts. However, from a diachronic perspective, it is later than most of the relevant Mesopotamian or Hittite descriptions of the scapegoat ritual. The procedure is described in Chapter 16 of the Book of Leviticus:

After the death of the sons of Aaron – Moses’ brother and high priest in his own right – God commands that a communal cleansing ritual be performed to absolve the Israelites of their sins. Two billy-goats – se‘irey ‘izim / se‘irim – were taken, and lots were cast upon them. One lot was dedicated to YHWH and the other to Azazel. The goat whose lot fell to YHWH was sacrificed for Him, but the goat whose lot was for Azazel was to remain alive and be sent “for Azazel, to the desert” (לַעֲזָאזֵל, הַמִּדְבָּרָה). The two goats were meant to fulfill the same purpose: communal atonement for all the Israelites. While one was sacrificed, the other was expelled.

The key term in this description is Azazel (עזאזל). This term has sparked much scholarly debate and confusion, dating back to ancient biblical translators and commentators. What exactly was Azazel? Later translations and commentaries, such as the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and even the Talmud, typically interpreted it as “steppe” or “wilderness,” but these are circumstantial translations based on context, not on etymology or solid evidence. The true meaning of the term remains obscure.

And what about the use of billy-goats in the ritual? Was this simply a random animal chosen for the magical procedure, or is there more to it? It was sometimes suggested that the use of billy-goats in the Levitical ceremony reflects a pre-Israelite (Canaanite) origin in the form of worship of se‘irim, goat-like supernatural beings, as alluded to in Leviticus 17:

It has been suggested that Azazel was a competing deity to YHWH, and later the theophoric element in the name (אל, ’el) was obscured by metathesis (עזאזל < עזזאל; ‘zz’l > ‘z’zl). In this way, scribes might have obscured a name that originally meant something like “Mighty God” or “Defiant God” and diminished its original deified status. This element is preserved in the Qumran scrolls and the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, where ‘Azaz’el (עזזאל) appears as the head of the Fallen Angels, perhaps an archetypal negative mirror-image of YHWH. We should also note that the first syllable of the term Azazel/Azaz’el can be read as the Hebrew word for goat, ‘ez (עז). This has led to numerous etymological suggestions, none of which is more compelling than the others. Other proposals link Azazel to the Akkadian verb ezēzum, “to be angry, rage,” suggesting the term could mean “an angry deity.” Whatever the case, it is clear that the function of the biblical scapegoat ritual was communal atonement: one goat was sacrificed for YHWH, and the other expelled to Azazel.

Thus, we can summarize the biblical perspective of the scapegoat rationale as follows: it was an analogic magical procedure based on the substitute motif. The evil aspects of sin, perceived as possessing physical attributes, were extracted from the community and transferred to a carrier – a goat. The carrier was then dispatched “to Azazel,” a negative supernatural being opposing the positive YHWH. While the goat sent to Azazel was not sacrificed, the one dedicated to YHWH was. The goat for Azazel, charged with the sins of the whole community, was sent to the negative deity ‘Azaz’el. Over time, as ‘Azaz’el ceased to be perceived as a competing deity to YHWH, the term lost its theophoric element, was written as Azazel, and came to be understood as “steppe” or “wilderness.” Nonetheless, traces of its original deified essence can be found in non-canonical versions of the Hebrew Bible, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Book of Enoch.

8.5 The Scapegoat Ritual in the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible

The key to understanding the procedure lies in the ancients’ perception of evil as possessing a physical manifestation and embodiment, thus making it controllable and manipulable. This is the psychological aspect: the human need to control the unknown. Then, there is the rationale of the analogic/sympathetic magic and the substitute/scapegoat motif: transference and the use of a carrier. This is the practical aspect: how to control the unknown.

When discussing the scapegoat ritual in the ancient Near East, four main cases come to mind: Ebla, Mesopotamia, Hatti and ancient Israel. Each case had its own unique characteristics and different aims. Ancient Near Eastern expiation rituals involving the scapegoat motif could take two forms: sacrifice or expulsion. The former was by far the default option, while the latter was rare. The expulsion option is found in Ebla, Hatti and the Hebrew Bible, but is largely absent from Mesopotamian expiation rituals. If we look for the possible origins of the biblical practice, it seems unlikely that these can be found in third-millennium Ebla. The Hittites as a direct source also seem improbable: the chronological and geographical gaps seem too large, and the practice itself is not identical.

This could leave Mesopotamia as the only plausible candidate for the source of the biblical ritual, but Mesopotamian evidence is almost nonexistent in this regard. Generally speaking, goats seem to have been used in Mesopotamian rituals for sacrificial purposes, like many other animals, with no special distinction. Exact Mesopotamian parallels to the biblical scapegoat ritual are rare, if they ever existed. The biblical ceremony, being communal, lacks an obvious Mesopotamian counterpart. So, was the scapegoat ritual in the ancient Near East a case of monogenesis or polygenesis? Cultural diffusion, traditional continuity, or an independently recurring innovation? The final judgment on this may forever remain in the eye of the beholder. Be that as it may, the scapegoat ritual undoubtedly offers an excellent lens through which to examine many of the themes discussed throughout this Element.