The King of The City

Amulets with carefully inscribed words of significance and power were available to combat evil in all its forms, and many examples addressed ghosts in particular. Such amulets had to be written, of course, by a qualified person, a trained scribe with the requisite knowledge of traditional materials, and were much more than a step up from simple amulets without words. Prevention being preferable to cure, the sensible approach was to keep ghosts off in the first place. Cheap and Cheerful Two modest clay amulets from the fourth century bc represent the simplest – and cheapest – resource of written type procurable from a professional. Both are nineteenth-century-AD archaeological finds from the ancient Babylonian city of Sippar and they not only represent what was obviously a simple ‘everyday’ amuletic expedient but were probably also written by the same hand. They are almond-shaped beads of clay, about one inch long, inscribed in cuneiform and bored through lengthways for a string. There are no others known. Each carries the same Akkadian message written in Sumerian shorthand. Considering that only nine cuneiform signs are used, it is surprisingly informative for us: Spell of God Asalluḫi: Ghost! Do not keep coming in! Asalluḫi is an inside name for Marduk, chief god of the Babylonian state pantheon, and master of everything that required the application of magic. Putting his name as ‘owner’ on a ghost-banishing spell was the most effective possible move. Many full-length and more literary Babylonian spells proclaim to demons that their written content is a spell of such-and-such a god, but with these small amuletic inscriptions the fact that it is a spell from Marduk is, uniquely, half of the whole utterance. The second line embodies the essence, addressing the ghost head-on in direct speech, ‘Ghost!’ and telling it straight, ‘Do not keep coming in!’ The reiterative ‘keep-doing’ Babylonian verb form conveys that this is no ghost who might have been half-glimpsed once or twice; it is one that keeps on appearing in the house. In this way the amulet reveals its own case history: here is a ghost that is really beginning to get on someone’s nerves. In fact, it tells us more. Amulet-writers with their handbook of time-hardened spells, much like cylinder-seal-cutters with their hardstones, congregated in the markets or in the neighbourhood of the main temples and could always provide what was needed at a variety of prices. These paired clay amulets are as pared down as possible, and could be made and written on the spot. Significantly, no client’s name is included, which suggests that such amulets were, in fact, produced in advance, dried and stored until needed, to be handed over with a reassuring ‘Wear this round your neck and the thing will go away.’ It is easy to imagine that such an amulet would provide comfort and fortify the victim in case of further sightings.