Part 2 : the Ethiopic Text, continued. By E. A. Wallis

Budge. {In the Press.)
VOL. XVIII : The History of Baralam and Yewasef. The Ethiopic Version, translated from the Arabic by Enbakom, for the Ethiopic king Galawdewas, a.d. 1553. Vol. II: English Translation, Introduction, etc. By E. A. Wallis Budge. {In the Press.)
VOL. XIX: A Contribution to Babylonian History, being a series of Babylonian Historical Texts with English Trans- lations. By L. W. King. {In the Press.)
THE DEVILS AND EVIL SPIRITS OF BABYLONIA.
/
PLATE I.
Part of the tablet supposed to contain a mention of the Babylonian Garden of Eden (K. in).
THE
DEVILS AND EVIL SPIRITS
o\^
BABYLONIA,
BEING BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN INCANTATIONS AGAINST THE
DEMONS. GHOULS, VAMPIRES, HOBGOBLINS, GHOSTS. AND
KINDRED EVIL SPIRITS, WHICH ATTACK MANKIND.
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL CUNEIFORM TEXTS, WITH TRANSLITERATIONS, VOCABULARY, NOTES, ETC.
R. CAMPBELL THOMPSON, M.A.
ASSISTANT IN THE DEPARTMENT OF EGYPTIAN AND ASSYRIAN ANTIQUITIES. BRITISH MUSEUM.
VOL. L -^K/Z SPIRITSr
Xonbon :
LUZAC AND CO.
1903.
[All Rights Reserved.']
SEEN BY
PRESERVATION SERVICES
DATE
Hertford:
PRINTED BV STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS.
TO MY FATHER, REGINALD E. THOMPSON. M.D.
(preface,
object of the two volumes which form the present work is to supply the student of Assyrian Demonology with English transliterations and translations, with the necessary notes, etc., of the documents printed in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Parts of Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, etc., which have been recently issued by the Trustees of the British Museum. An examination of these two Parts will show that they contain copies of all the Tablets belonging to the Series Utukki Limnuti, Asakki Marsuti, and Ti'i, i.e., " Evil Spirits," '' Fever Sickness," and '' Headache," which have now been identified, together with the texts of a considerable number of compositions of a similar character.
These collections of Evil Spirit Texts form large and important sections of the native literature concerning Babylonian and Assyrian Demonology, and there is reason to believe that the material now published represents about one-half of that belonging to the three Series mentioned above which was known to the scribes of Assurbanipal. Of the condition of the archetypes in pre- Babylonian times we have no information whatever, but there is no reason to doubt that the versions which were adopted as standard
XII PREFACE.
texts In the reign of Assurbanipal represented sub- stantially the readings of the primitive documents. We are, In short, justified In assuming that we have In our hands at the present time tolerably accurate copies of the exorcisms and spells which the Sumerlan and his Babylonian successor employed, some six or seven thousand years ago, to avert the attacks of devils, and to ward off malign Influences of every kind.
The first to make known to the world the character of the Evil Spirit Texts was the late General H. C. Rawllnson, Bart., G.C.B., who published In the Fourth Volume of the Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, London, 1875, ^.s much of the text of the Fifth and Sixteenth Tablets as had then been Identified. During the period of the preparation of the seventy plates which form the Fourth Volume printed copies of many of them were supplied to