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INTRODUCTION
Scholars have long acknowledged that curses were expressed in conventional ways throughout the ancient Near East.1 Thus, maledictions could endure over many centuries in diverse texts with relatively minor changes in terminology.2 Since curses were somewhat standardized, it may not be surprising to find they could be incorporated into oaths which are nothing other than a form of conditional self-cursing. The purpose of this brief examination is to demonstrate how a well-known malediction could be incorporated into an oath whose accompanying ritual is specifically designed to intensify the anathema. Such a "ceremonial curse" appears to be intrinsically linked to the nature of the malediction's punishment.3 This, in turn, may have contributed to the endurance of certain terminological expressions that remained a feature of the same curse not only in Neo-Assyrian texts but also in Psalm 109 of the Hebrew Bible.
A Hittite oath ritual which links anointing with the "putting on a garment" of an oathcurse will be examined through an investigation of a similar, recurrent simile curse that is found in Akkadian texts. The Middle Babylonian texts demonstrate the independent nature of the curse. Here the simile is expanded by the reference to the skin condition sahar.sub.ba, which results in social expulsion. Surpu, a collection of Akkadian and Sumerian invocations and rituals, provides additional information on the character and activities of a personified mamitu, curse, oath-curse, and her relationship with the moon deity Sîn. The well-known Neo-Assyrian loyalty oath (adê) agreements of Esarhaddon use expressions reminiscent of the Hittite oath ritual and the Babylonian Sîn-curses.4 As will be shown, Psalm 109 shares a similar range of standardized vocabulary that immediately suggests a connection with the Akkadian maledictions as well as the Hittite ceremonial curse incorporated into oath rituals.
HITTITE LITERATURE
An Oath Ritual
Let us open by reviewing an important Hittite text, KUB 26.25, that CTH dates to the reign of Suppiluliuma II (c. 1200-1180).5 The passage is a fragment of an oath ritual which compares the act of coating a person with oil to smearing MAMIT^sup HI.A^, oath-curses, into the body. This is followed by a garment simile, the effectiveness of which depends on the unique characteristic of oaths as a form of self-cursing.
[Just as] you ^sup 5a^rub yourself ^sup 4^down...