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‘BEWARE THE EVIL EYE’ A CLOSER GLANCE AT A RECENT TITLE The age-old and universal belief that a human being could wittingly or unwittingly cause misfortune, injury, or even death to another person by casting an unseen emanation from the eye embodies a concept that requires little introduction, even in today’s modern world of computers, ‘smart’-phones, autonomous cars, and artificial intelligence. The notion of the ‘Evil Eye’ appears tightly bound up with the idea that there existed in ancient communities a limited bounty of natural resources, whether tangible or intangible, from which animal, human, and even divine forces, could draw upon for sustenance, livelihood, prosperity, success, repute, and societal honor. The projection of a malevolent glance against an unwary target could, in part, seek to acquire a set of goods or other indiscernible benefits that would not otherwise be available to the propagator. In this respect, the Evil Eye was closely aligned from the beginning, in the ancient literature, with jealousy and envy (Gk. φθόνος, ζηλοτυπία), whether it was the envy of someone else’s fruit-bearing crops, another’s beautiful child, or a competitor’s successful business. The workings of the Evil Eye also pre- supposed an active and emanative physiology of vision rarely advocated in today’s scientific community which interprets the eye as a passive ‘lens’ receiving reflected light from a remote object as an inverted image on the retina that the brain then reverts. A recent four-volume work by John H. Elliott, whose initial tome appeared more than three years ago, has now come to complete fruition with the publication of the final volume in the series, namely, that dealing with the Evil Eye in the world of post-Biblical Jewish and Christian antiq- uity1. With the consummation of this memorable academic achievement of so many years of research, its seems beneficial at this time to bring these volumes to the attention of interested readers of this journal by offering a modest overview of the author’s work in the form of a review article. Elliott’s compendium on the Evil Eye in antiquity is a work of tremen- dous industry, enormous scholarship, and personal devotion, encompass- ing some 1219 pages (+ 123 illustrations) on the culture and history of a phenomenon so widespread as to cover the ancient Near Eastern, Egyp- tian, Greco-Roman, and circum-Mediterranean societies from the earliest 1 ELLIOTT, Beware the Evil Eye. Le Muséon 131 (1-2), 217-237. doi: 10.2143/MUS.131.1.3284840 - Tous droits réservés. © Le Muséon, 2018. 218 R.D. KOTANSKY recorded documents of the 3rd millenium BCE to the late antique Byzan- tine Amulettswesen and post-Biblical citations of the later Church Fathers. A fresh assessment and update, of sorts, of the material covered in Selig- mann’s magisterial two-volume work, Der Böse Blick und Verwandtes (1910), Elliott’s encyclopedic contribution offers an examination of the texts and documents related to the phenomenon of the Evil Eye that is more wide-ranging and comprehensive than any of his predecessors’ (e.g., Jahn [1855], Elworthy [1895], Seligmann [1910], Rakoczy [1996], etc.), whom he duly acknowledges (ELLIOTT, vol. 1, p. 59). The work will remain the standard assessment of the belief in the Evil Eye for many generations to come, especially in respect of his treatment of the Biblical material (ELLIOTT, vol. 3), for which his work, overall, is intended as a wide-ranging background-study for the concept as it pertains to Holy Writ, especially to the New Testament, the area of the author’s specialty. Overall, Elliott’s is a very impressive oeuvre and is to be highly recommended. Vol. 1, following a 76-page Introduction (ch. 1), presents the Meso- potamian and Egyptian material in a single, second chapter, followed by a lengthy Bibliography. The Introduction lays out the author’s approach and presuppositions in a thorough and convincing manner, including an over- view of research with a comprehensive examination of theories and views. Most helpful are his reviews of modern literature, language, and social back- ground, as well as his perceptive observations on the distinction between jealousy and envy as it pertains to the Evil Eye (ELLIOTT, vol. 1, p. 22). Although discussed in greater detail later on, and throughout his work in general, Elliott’s pertinent awareness that the Evil Eye complex is pred- icated on an ancient theory of vision presupposing that the instrument of the eye acts as an extramissional anatomical device that projects rays, or emanations, outward to meet the object of its vision, represents a concept that cannot be overemphasized. This theory of vision is cogently argued by Elliott throughout his work, and it is one that has much to commend it. In this he correctly follows the modern research of Rupert Sheldrake and Dean Radin on the extramissional theory of vision (ELLIOTT, vol. 1, p. 67f.)2. One idea that Elliott seems to misunderstand, however, is the concept that the Evil Eye is somehow not related to ‘magical’ thinking, but is rather a natural, as opposed to supernatural phenomenon; it is a premise that he goes to lengths to defend (ELLIOTT, vol. 1, p. 61-68). But here, I think, he is not fully appreciating the fact that it is not the ‘magicalness’ of the Evil Eye that is in question, but rather that it is the means of protecting from it that both involves and pertains to what is ‘magic’ (sc., by the use of amulets, 2 SHELDRAKE, The Sense of Being Stared At; RADIN, The Conscious Universe. ‘BEWARE THE EVIL EYE’ 219 incantations, spitting rituals, and the like). The cause of the Evil Eye may not, to him, belong to the social matrix of magical belief, but that is not the issue at stake. What does, in ancient social thought, belong to the world of ‘magical’ belief, one may ask? Demons, spirits, the stars, and other malevolent influences can be thought to be the cause of bad luck, harm, or daimonic possession – all part of ‘magical’ thinking, it can be supposed – but how one is to be protected from the bad and to promote the influence of the good in life, is really what proves most pertinent. Amulets and other apotropaic means, as opposed to prayer, on the other hand, or other forms of divine healing (laying on of hands, incubation, lustration, sacrifice, etc.), pertain to the protection of individuals from the Evil Eye in just the same way that ‘non-rational’ methods apply to the warding off of demons, spirit-causing infirmities, bad influences, and witchery. I know of no instances where a sufferer, or patient, went to a doctor (iatros), or even a priestly- / divine-healer (iatromantis) to effect a cure for the Evil Eye. No incubation rites, prayers, or sacrifices, are recorded for the healing of the Evil Eye, only ‘magical’ means. Fever, headache, or epilepsy may have had natural causes in popular thinking and in medical prognosis; but it could well have had supernatural causes, as well. Thus, such medical complaints can resort to a means of protection that involves both ‘super- natural’ methodologies (i.e., the use of amulets, incantations, spitting ritu- als, and the like), and more ‘natural’ approaches. Such is not the case with the Evil Eye, which belongs to the world of ‘magic’, despite its quasi- scientific cause (e.g., extra-transmissional emanation). Elliott is confusing causation with cure. The means employed to protect and ward off the Evil Eye were always ‘magical’, and not rational. No ancient sufferer resorted to standard medical care for a cure against the Evil Eye, but used ‘magical’ means for deliverance. In this regard the Evil Eye is even more ‘magical’ and superstitious than other medical complaints and diseases, for the latter had the benefit of doctors, as well as magicians, for remedy. The former did not. The concept of the Evil Eye and protection from it belongs right up there with the categories of demonology and demonic possession, and with the ‘magical’ prophylaxis of it. Chapter 2 is wholly devoted to the concept of the Evil Eye in Mesopo- tamia and Egypt. In contrast with the work of Thomsen3, Elliott demon- strates that the Evil Eye is more widely reported in the Mesopotamian cuneiform and other texts than is generally accepted (ELLIOTT, vol. 1, p. 77- 114). Marshalling examples from Sumerian, Akkadian, and Ugaritic texts, Elliott translates, briefly discusses, and provides the relevant bibliography 3 THOMSEN, The Evil Eye in Mesopotamia. 220 R.D. KOTANSKY for most of the extant examples of incantations against the Eye (Sumerian, igi; īnu / īni, Akkadian; ‘nn, Ugaritic; ‘ayin, Hebrew; aina, Mandaic; ‘ayn, Arabic), also called ‘Evil’ (e.g., Sumerian, igi-ḫul). But less common than the ‘liturgical’ incantations are actual amulets that ward off the Evil Eye (ELLIOTT, vol. 1, p. 105f.). Elliott can only give instances of general eye-symbols on a cylinder seal and other pendants (of unclear date), that are probably unrelated to the concept of the Evil Eye, as well as a very late incantation bowl in Aramaic from Mesopotamia (ca. 300-600 CE), mentioning ‘yn’ bishta, as possible protective devices for the Evil Eye. This paucity of amulets against the Evil Eye, in contrast to actual texts that mention it, is mirrored in the earlier Roman period amulets, as well, where specific protective devices are rare, appearing only in the late antique bronze pendants, and the like, as if there were a recrudescence in popular belief about the Evil Eye in later antiquity4. This absence in the earlier documents represents a social phenomenon that could benefit, perhaps, from further study.

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