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Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts. By F. A. M. WIGGERMANN. Cuneiform Monographs, 1. Groningen: STYX PUBLICATIONS, 1992. Pp. xiv + 225; 1 schematic insert. Hfl 125, DM 110, £ 65 (paper).
This book is the revised version of the author's doctoral thesis, originally published in 1986 as Mesopotamian Prophylactic Figures: The Ritual Texts, by the Free University Press, Amsterdam. Of this first edition, however, only two hundred copies were printed, and it was therefore hard to find outside the Dutch library system. The author deserves our sincere thanks for now making a revised version available to all interested scholars.
The work is an in-depth study of six Mesopotamian rituals which, as a prominent feature, deal with the manufacture and use of apotropaic figurines. These include rituals performed prophylactically against impending dangerous demonic influences and subsequent disease and other misfortune in one's house or family (texts I-II, genre sep lemutti ina bit ameli parasi); rituals used against real occurrences of such problems, the actual reasons for which often remained unknown (text III, genre bit meseri); the apotropaic protection and purification of new buildings (texts IV-V); and a passage from the famous Ritual for the Substitute King (text VI). Three of these texts are fully edited (nos. I, IV, and V). All of them are thoroughly analyzed, and similarities and/or differences in purpose, structure, and individual wording are highlighted. Special emphasis is placed on the descriptions of the figurines and any names, spells, or incantations mentioned in connection with them. This leads to many interesting observations regarding the choice of materials used, the accessories given to the figurines, their specific places in the ritual setup, and the like. But perhaps even more important, Wiggermann was able to identify most of the protective spirits mentioned in these texts with apotropaic representations of such genii known from the Kleinkunst (i.e., from preserved specimens of exactly those figurines whose manufacture is described in his texts), as well as from amulets and palace reliefs. The detailed results reached from the analysis of the individual texts are then collected for each spirit (or "monster") and arranged into an extremely useful inventory of all such creatures known.
There can be only praise for the philological work displayed in this book. The transliterations...