Jewish Aramaic Curse Texts from Late-Antique Mesopotamia Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity
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Jewish Aramaic Curse Texts from Late-Antique Mesopotamia Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity Series Editors Shaul Shaked Siam Bhayro VOLUME 2 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mrla Jewish Aramaic Curse Texts from Late-Antique Mesopotamia “May These Curses Go Out and Flee” By Dan Levene LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Levene, Dan, author Jewish Aramaic curse texts from late-antique Mesopotamia : may these curses go out and flee / by Dan Levene. pages cm. – (Magical and religious literature of late antiquity; volume 2) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-90-04-25092-5 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-25726-9 (e-book) 1. Incantations, Aramaic. 2. Incantation bowls. 3. Jewish magic–History. 4. Pergamonmuseum (Berlin, Germany)–Archaeological collections. 5. British Museum–Archaeological collections. I. Title. PJ5208.A2 2014 133.4'4089924035–dc23 2013024746 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/ brill-typeface. ISSN 2211-016X ISBN 978-90-04-25092-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-25726-9 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Dedicated to my loved ones: Michaela, Isi, Shiphra, Cyril, Susi, Naomi, Mark and Reuven. “There was a domineering fellow who bullied a certain Collegiate. The latter came before R. Joseph [for advice] said he to him: ‘Go and put the shammetha on him’. ‘I am afraid of him’, he replied. Said he to him, ‘Then go and take [out] a Writ against him.’—‘I am all the more afraid to do that!’ Said R. Joseph to him: ‘Take that Writ, put it into a jar, take it to a graveyard and hoot into it a thousand shipur [horn-blasts] on forty days’. He went and did so. The jar burst and the domineering bully died.” —Babylonian Talmud, Moʿed Qatan, 17ab “There is no one, too, who does not dread being spell-bound by means of evil imprecations.” —Pliny the Elder, The Natural History (London, 1855), Book 28, chapter 4 “Underlying all this talk, however, is the very real fear of a capacity for someone to remove your ability to choose and act freely without your even realizing it. For the jealousy that motivates witchcraft is not only the resentment of the envious but the bitter desires of the sexually jealous.” —A. Ashforth, Madumo: A Man Bewitched (Chicago, 2005), p. 159 “Of course there was much less of that sort of thing than there used to be, but it still existed, and its effects could be potent. If you heard that somebody had put a curse on you, then however much you might claim not to believe in all that mumbo-jumbo, you would still feel uneasy. This was because there was always a part of the human mind that was prepared to entertain such notions, particularly at night, in the world of shadows, when there were sounds that one could not understand and when each one of us was in some sense alone. Some people found this intolerable, and succumbed, as if life itself simply gave out in the face of such evil; and when this happened, it served only to strengthen the belief of some that such things worked.” —A. McCall Smith, Blue Shoes and Happiness (London, 2007), p. 123 CONTENTS Abbreviations. ix List of Photographs . xi Preface.............................................................................................. xiii Introduction . 1 The Rationale for the Selection Made in This Book . 1 Self-Designations and Contents . 2 Yuval Harari on Aggressive Jewish Magic . 4 The Effectiveness of the Bowls . 5 The Curse and its Consequences . 7 Praxis........................................................................................... 7 Characteristics of the Curse Bowls . 8 The Lexicography of Aggressive Magic Bowls . 12 Parallels with Greco-Roman Materials? . 16 Postscript . 17 Bowls Newly Edited. 19 VA.2484......................................................................................... 20 VA.2509......................................................................................... 30 VA.2423......................................................................................... 35 VA.2416......................................................................................... 45 VA.2434......................................................................................... 52 VA.2424......................................................................................... 57 VA.2496 and VA.2575 . 62 VA.3382......................................................................................... 74 VA.3381 ......................................................................................... 79 VA.2492......................................................................................... 84 VA.2418 ......................................................................................... 87 VA.2417 ......................................................................................... 90 SD27 ........................................................................................... 95 Bowls That Have Already Been Published . 107 M102............................................................................................ 108 M163............................................................................................ 110 005A (BM 91745) . 114 024A (BM 91760). 116 039A (BM 91771) . 117 040A(BM91767)................................................................................ 119 041A(BM91763)................................................................................ 121 043A(BM91770)................................................................................ 123 N&ShB6........................................................................................ 124 N&ShB7........................................................................................ 125 N&ShB9........................................................................................ 126 viii contents N&ShB21....................................................................................... 128 N&ShB23....................................................................................... 130 Isbell 22 (Gordon 1934b) . 131 Royal Ontario Mus 907.1.1. 132 YBC2393 ....................................................................................... 133 Synopses............................................................................................ 135 Glossaries . 143 Bibliography . 159 Index ............................................................................................... 163 ABBREVIATIONS AIT Bowls that appear in J.A. Montgomery, Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur (Philadelphia, 1913). ABD The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York, 1992). AMB J. Naveh and S. Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem, 1985). BM British Museum. All of these can be found in CAMIB (reference below). BTA Babylonian Talmudic Aramaic. CAMIB J.B. Segal, Catalogue of the Aramaic and Mandaic Incantation Bowls in the British Museum (London, 2000). DJBA M.A. Sokoloff, Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods (Ramat Gan, 2002). Isbell Bowls according to the numbers in C.D. Isbell, Corpus of the Aramaic Incantation Bowls, Dissertation Series 17 (Missoula, Montana, 1975). Jastrow M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim (New York, 1950). Justi F. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch (Hildesheim, 1963). M Bowls Bowls from the Moussaieff Collection. Unless otherwise noted these are from D. Levene, A Corpus of Magic Bowls: Incantation Texts in Jewish Aramaic from Late Antiquity (London, 2003). MD E.S. Drower and R. Macuch, A Mandaic Dictionary (Oxford, 1963). MSF J. Naveh and S. Shaked, MagicSpellsandFormulae:AramaicIncantationsofLateAntiquity (Jerusalem, 1993). N&Sh Bowls published by Naveh and Shaked in AMB and MSF. MT Masoretic Text. PS R. Payne Smith and J.D. Payne Smith, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary, Founded upon the Thesaurus Syriacus of R. Payne Smith, D.D (Oxford, 1903). SL M. Sokoloff and C. Brockelmann, ASyriacLexicon:a TranslationfromtheLatin: Correction,Expansion, and Update of C. Brockelmann’s Lexicon Syriacum (Winona Lake, Indiana, 2009). SLA Standard Literary Aramaic. TS R.P. Smith, Thesaurus Syriacus (Hildesheim, 2001). SD Bowls Bowls from the collection of Mr Samir DeHays. VA. Bowls Bowls from the collection of the Vorderasiatisches Museum. VAM Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS VA.2484......................................................................................... 28–29 VA.2509......................................................................................... 33 VA.2484 & VA.2509.