Magic rituals for soothing crying babies have survived from ancient Mesopotamia. Walter Farber has edited two Old Babylonian baby incantations of uncertain provenance and several Neo-Assyrian magical rituals on a tablet found at Nineveh.1 All the texts are in Akkadian dialects, and the tablet from Nineveh was part of the learning of the magical expert. New parents who suffer the stress-inducing, sleep-depriving effects of infant cries might like to know: Does this magic work?
Most likely, the magical rituals were effective, but not for the reasons its practitioners may have imagined.
Incantations often are attributed to one or more deities because the texts were understood to be divinely created and revealed spells that had the power to calm crying infants. The accompanying rituals often involve touching the infant (e.g., anointing with oil) and reciting (perhaps singing or chanting) the prayer multiple times. These rituals may have been effective because babies respond to touch and the human voice more than other noises. Furthermore, they enjoy singing more than speech.
The magicians distracted crying babies with novel stimuli and/or soothed them with lullaby-like melodies. Some scholars have suggested that these incantations developed from lullabies that mothers sang to their infants. Lullabies are “anonymous” texts in the sense that their creators are no longer known, and ritual experts might have modified existing lullabies to suit their needs. Across cultures, mothers sing to their infants in part because infants can be soothed by song (as well as touch and rhythmic rocking, which often accompanies such singing). Lullabies are magical, and the Mesopotamian magicians likely borrowed this maternal magic and attributed it to the gods.
The incantations were committed to writing as part of the lore of magicians, but the lullabies mothers sang to their babies were lost. Unlike lullabies, spells cost money. The wealth of the magicians’ clientele seems to be assumed in some incantations that mention wet-nurses and nannies:
You, baby, newborn human: you have now emerged, you have now seen the sun, the light. Why in the womb of your mother did you not treat her like this? Instead of treating your father well and allowing your mother to lead a normal life, you have terrified the nanny and kept the wet-nurse awake. With your noise, the household god is no longer sleeping, the household goddess cannot grab sleep. Whom shall I send to Enkidu, who fixed the three night watches [saying] “Let him overcome him who overcame the gazelle, let him bind him who bound the gazelle’s kid.” In the open country, let someone he meets give [him] his sleep, let an ox-driver let him have his sleep. Until his mother wakes him, let him not wake up.2
Any new parent will recognize the dominant theme of sleeplessness due to the baby’s cries. Even the household deities are disturbed, and the high god Enkidu is asked to help. The gazelle is imagined as an animal put to sleep by someone who “bound” it, evidently with a spell like the present incantation. The teamster is imagined as driving through the night and therefore has sleep to spare for the baby.
Another incantation speaks to its own power:
The one who dwelt in darkness where no light shone, he has come out and seen the light of the sun. Why does he scream so that his mother cries and the tears of Antu in heaven stream? “Who is this who makes such a noise on earth? If it is a dog, someone give it food. If it is a bird, someone throw a clod at it. If it is a mischievous human child, let someone cast the spell of Anu and Antu over him. Let his father lie down to get the rest of his sleep. Let his mother, who has her chores to do, get her chores done.” The spell is not mine, it is a spell070 of Ea and Asalluhi, a spell of Damu and Gula, a spell of Ningirima, mistress of spells. They said it to me, I repeated it.
(This is an) incantation to soothe a baby. Its ritual: Place bread by the head of the baby. Recite this incantation three times. Rub (the bread) on him from head to foot. Throw this bread before a dog. This baby will become quiet.3
The effectiveness of incantations is here depicted through the analogies of giving food to a dog and throwing a clod at a bird. Caregivers often respond to infant cries with both empathetic caregiving and hostility, and this incantation expresses both sentiments.
Lullabies in many traditions also express hostility toward the baby even as the existence of the lullaby itself testifies to the care the baby receives. These magical rituals for soothing babies similarly attest to the concern parents had for their infants and the frustration and stress their cries created.
The sleeplessness of the gods is an ominous sign for those who know that Mesopotamian mythology often depicts sleepless deities as angry and prone to violently attacking the source of noise (humans or other deities). In the Babylonian flood story, high infant mortality (a sad fact of life in the ancient world) was understood as a divine solution to the problem of human population growth and consequent disruptive noise. Since about one-third of babies born alive were dead within a year, parents worried about infant cries—stressful in themselves—as potential signs of fatal illness. Mesopotamian medical texts mention infant crying as a symptom of illness, which it sometimes is. The relief offered by the magician was not only a quiet baby, but less anxious parents. Even if the ritual did not work, it could provide parents with the sense that they had done all they could to quiet their baby and ward off disease.
Ritual and prayer offer hope in hopeless situations and provide people with the sense that they have done everything that was in their power to do. The baby incantations worked magic on infants and their parents, even if it was not in the way the magicians and their clients imagined.
Magic rituals for soothing crying babies have survived from ancient Mesopotamia. Walter Farber has edited two Old Babylonian baby incantations of uncertain provenance and several Neo-Assyrian magical rituals on a tablet found at Nineveh.1 All the texts are in Akkadian dialects, and the tablet from Nineveh was part of the learning of the magical expert. New parents who suffer the stress-inducing, sleep-depriving effects of infant cries might like to know: Does this magic work? Most likely, the magical rituals were effective, but not for the reasons its practitioners may have imagined. Incantations often are attributed to one or more […]
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.
