Lamaštu

Summary

Lamaštu is a harmful being of Mesopotamia who attacks pregnant women, women in childbirth and newborn babies; scribes write her name with the two Sumerian signs ᵈDÌM.ME. She is the daughter of Anu, god of the sky, cast down by him to the earth. She has no long story in the epics; we know her from the incantations recited to drive her away and from the amulets, of which more than sixty survive.

The incantations tell her story in scattered pieces that fit together. An Old Assyrian incantation: "She is one, she is a goddess, she is always parched, daughter of Anu. Because of her evil intentions and blasphemous decisions Anu her father smashed her down from heaven to earth. Her hair is loose, her garments are stripped off; she goes straight for the godless." An Old Babylonian one: "Anu created her, Ea brought her up, Enlil fixed for her the face of a lioness. She is short of hands, very long of fingers, very long of nails. She entered the door of the house, slipping through the door socket; once through, she saw the child, and seized it seven times in its belly." Then the exorcist commands her: "Take off your nails, drop your arms, before Ea the wise reaches you. The door socket is wide for you, the doors are open: go, roam the steppe. With dust I will fill your mouth, your face with a whirlwind, your eyes with finely ground cress seed. I conjure you by Ea's curse: go away." Old Assyrian incantation, Old Babylonian incantation.

Another incantation describes her work in house and town: "Although she is not a physician, she bandages the umbilical cord; although she is not a midwife, she wipes off the newborn; she keeps counting the months of pregnant women, she blocks the gate of the woman giving birth, she follows the stride of the livestock, she seizes the young man in the street, the young woman in the dance, the little one on the nurse's shoulder." Then two gods throw her out of the window, make her slip out through the door socket and tie her to a tamarisk in the middle of the sea. Another: "She is a she-wolf, daughter of Anu, the grass is her lair; she strangles the little ones and makes the older ones drink the birth waters." The procedure that goes with one incantation: tie a lump of salt in a cloth and hang it on the patient's neck, and he will be well.

The idea her stories turn on is that the danger that threatens the hour of birth is given a body and a road so that it can be driven out. When a child dies in its first days or a mother in labour, people saw no outward cause, so the incantations make the cause a woman with long fingers and nails who comes in through the door socket, and give her a lineage in heaven and an expulsion from it. Since she has a door she came in by, she has a door to leave by: the exorcist orders her to take off her nails and go back to the steppe, amulets are made against her, and Pazuzu is shown beside her, driving her away.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Lamaštu ends in the Akkadian case vowel -u, and before it stands the feminine t, the same t the Akkadians added in Mulliltu, the name of Ninlil. What remains is lamaš: l, m and š. Akkadian š answers Arabic s, as in salām and šalāmu. So the root is l-m-s, and the name is al-lāmisa, "the one who touches". In Lane lams is touching with the hand, and figuratively lamasa al-baṣar, it took away the sight. The project's Babylonian and Sumerian essays both read the name from lams and then take its end as shaṭṭa, to go beyond the limit, "the toucher who oversteps"; but the t is the feminine ending, so shaṭṭa is not needed. That is what the incantations make her: every one of them dwells on her hands, fingers and nails; she seizes the child in its belly, wipes the newborn, bandages its cord, and the exorcist orders her to take off her nails and drop her arms.

Linguistic Root

Written forms

The name falls into three parts: lamaš, then t, then the case vowel, followed by m in Old Babylonian. A t before the case vowel is the feminine ending in Akkadian, which made many names feminine, as Enlil's Emesal name became Mulliltu when it named his wife. So the root has three letters: l, m and š.

Akkadian š answers Arabic s in words of common origin, as the project's laws record: Arabic salām, Akkadian šalāmu. This route takes the name to l-m-s with nothing added and nothing left over. In Lane lams is touching, especially touching with the hand, or feeling a thing with the hand to know it; from it comes iltamasa, to seek, and one says lamasa al-baṣar, it took away the sight.

The two essays read the name as lams + shaṭṭa, the one who touches and oversteps, and bring lams close to the mass, the touch, attributed to the jinn. They propose a second reading, lamma + ashatta, she who gathers and then scatters, that is, who snatches children. Both cut the t from the š and treat it as a root letter, while in Akkadian it is the feminine ending, so lams alone remains as the reading. The Sumerian essay reads the name of the lamassu, the winged guardian at the gates, from the same root, "the one who touches and protects". The guardian who stands at the door and the harmful one who slips through it are read, in the essay, from one root.

The limit on this reading is that Akkadian's verb for touching is lapātu, no verb l-m-s meaning touch has yet been shown in Akkadian or in any Semitic branch other than Arabic, and scholars have no agreed origin for the name.

Key Mythic Narratives

The cast-out daughter of Anu

The incantations agree that she is the daughter of Anu and differ on why she was cast out. The Old Assyrian incantation says Anu threw her from heaven because of her evil intentions and blasphemous decisions, and the Metropolitan Museum notes that in some accounts the reason is that she asked to feed on the flesh of babies. These accounts meet in one picture: a being from the sky come down to earth hungry and thirsty, roaming among the houses for what she was denied.

Gifts and amulets

On amulets Lamaštu is shown with a tall human body, a lion's head, claws and the feet of a bird of prey, and in some images a puppy and a piglet suckle at her breasts. Around her are gifts offered to placate her so that she will leave: a comb, a spindle and a pin, all things belonging to women, and perhaps an animal limb as food. An Akkadian text runs around the amulet, addressing her as "exalted lady" and calling on the gods to drive her out.

Pazuzu who drives her off

On many amulets she appears with Pazuzu, king of the wind demons, to whom the cold winds coming down from the Zagros mountains were ascribed and which were thought to bring illness. He was not benevolent in himself, but he turned Lamaštu back and drove her to the underworld. On a bronze plaque in the Louvre a patient lies on a bed surrounded by exorcists dressed as fish, Lamaštu appears at the bottom, and Pazuzu's head and legs appear at the top and again at the bottom left, called on to frighten her away. People wore his head as a pendant with the face turned outward, aiming it at whatever they feared. The Babylonian essay reads his name from Arabic fazza, with p answering Arabic f, since Arabic has no p. Lane gives fazza fulānan ʿan mawḍiʿihi, he frightened and unsettled someone from his place and made his heart fly. That is his work on the amulets: to frighten Lamaštu away from the sick bed.

Symbolic Reading

The two essays read Lamaštu as an evil power that "touches and harms", and bring her close to the mass, the touch people attribute to the jinn. The incantations themselves support part of this reading, since they describe the harm as touching: seizing the belly, wiping the newborn, binding the cord, strangling the little ones.

The incantations are also a record of what a household feared. They count the moments of danger one after another: the months of pregnancy, the hour of labour, the cord being tied, the newborn being wiped, the child on the nurse's shoulder, the livestock whose steps she follows. And they show what was done: salt hung on the neck, women's tools, a comb, a spindle and a pin, offered to placate her, Pazuzu drawn to drive her off, the door she came in by opened for her to leave. The being who came down from the sky hungry became a name for everything that threatens mother and child, and the incantation and the amulet became what a household had to face it with.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The Sumerian essay compares Lamaštu with the Hebrew Lilith, the Greek Hecate and the Egyptian Ammit. Within Mesopotamia her connections are clearer: she is the daughter of Anu driven down to earth, as Enlil is driven out of Nippur in the story of Ninlil; her harm is a sickness that enters the house as Namtar enters the city in Atrahasis; and both are given something in the texts so that they will be satisfied and leave: Namtar bread and flour at his gate, Lamaštu a comb, a spindle and a pin.