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For queries about offprints, copyright and republication of your article, please contact the publisher via [email protected] ORIENTALIA LOVANIENSIA ANALECTA ————— 266 —————
SCRIBAL PRACTICES AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
in Antiquity, Late Antiquity and Medieval Islam
edited by
MYRIAM WISSA
foreword by SEBASTIAN BROCK
préface by PASCAL VERNUS
PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT 2017 CONTENTS
Contributors ...... vii
List of Illustrations ...... xiii
Sebastian P. Brock Foreword ...... xv
Pascal Vernus Préface ...... xvii
Acknowledgements ...... xxi
Myriam Wissa Introduction ...... 1
SECTION ONE
DECONSTRUCTING “SCRIBE”, EXPLORING SCRIBAL LORE AND SCRIPT: THE SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKGROUND OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN, CUNEIFORM, SYRIAC, JUDEO-ARABIC AND ARABIC SCRIBAL PRACTICES
Stephen Quirke Writing practices, people and materials in Egypt to the first millen- nium BC ...... 19
Mark Weeden The construction of meaning on the cuneiform periphery . . . . 33
Sebastian P. Brock Scribal tradition and the transmission of Syriac literature in Late Antiquity and Early Islam ...... 61
Geoffrey Khan Arabic documents from the early Islamic period ...... 69
Esther-Miriam Wagner Scribal practice in the Jewish community of Medieval Egypt . . 91
Elizabeth Urban Scribes as scapegoats: language, identity, and power in Jahshiyārī’s Book of Viziers and Scribes ...... 111 VI Contents
SECTION TWO
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF WRITING, TRANSCODING AND TRANSMITTING KNOWLEDGE IN JUDEO-CHRISTIAN, MANDEAN, COPTIC, SYRIAC, LATIN-ARABIC, ARABIC AND ETHIOPIC TRADITIONS
Timothy H. Lim The Rabbinic concept of Holy Scriptures as sacred objects . . . 127
Charles G. Häberl The Aramaic incantation texts as witnesses to the Mandaic Scrip- tures ...... 143
Myriam Wissa Social construction of knowledge or intra-communal concerns? Coptic letters from Sasanian Egypt ...... 161
Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala Transmitting texts from Latin into Arabic. A Christian culture at risk in the heart of the Islamic rule in al-Andalus ...... 177
Mathieu Tillier Scribal practices among Muslims and Christians: A comparison between the judicial letters of Qurra b. Sharīk and Ḥenanishoʿ (1st century AH) . 197
Alessandro Bausi The earlier Ethiopic textual heritage ...... 215
CONCLUSION
Myriam Wissa Mapping scribal practices: telling another story ...... 239
Indices Name index ...... 243 Subject index ...... 249 THE ARAMAIC INCANTATION TEXTS AS WITNESSES TO THE MANDAIC SCRIPTURES1
Charles G. HÄBERL Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
The Aramaic incantation texts from late antique Mesopotamia have been invoked as sources for the dialects of Late Aramaic, as well as sources on the religions of Late Antiquity, but outside of the small cabal of scholars who work on these texts, they are seldom viewed as a legitimate source of information about either. Often, they are deprecated as “defective” vernacular texts drawing upon a myr- iad of “hybrid” or heterodox folk religious traditions, rather than the normative orthodox religions from which they putatively derive. In addressing them, we presuppose a set of dyads: the material within them has been categorized as “religious” or “magical” on the one hand, and “literary” or “oral” on the other. These abstract categories, thus conceived, are then reified and sealed off from one another. By consigning these texts to one or another arm of these dyads, we perpetuate this highly problematic categorization. In my view, much could be obtained by setting aside the question of categorization and examining the ways in which these texts appear to be in dialog with one another. In part, the hesitance to regard these texts as anything other than “magical” (and certainly not “religious”) is likely motivated by the numerous prohibitions contained within scriptures, such as the Hebrew Bible, against ritual practices that we would consider “magical”, such as Deuteronomy 18:10–12. Yet when an incantation quotes a passage from the Hebrew Bible, does it cease to be a “religious” text and suddenly become “magical”? Certainly not. As I will dem- onstrate, the Mandaic incantations likewise reference or even quote entire pas- sages from the Mandaean scriptures. In doing so, I hope to affirm the value of the incantations as important wit- nesses for the textual history of the Mandaean scriptures prior to their final redaction in the years following the advent of Islam, which is to say long before any of the surviving manuscripts of these scriptures were copied. In addition, I will demonstrate how the incantations provide vital information about how these passages were understood by their contemporaries, and in what contexts they came to be used, information that is otherwise almost entirely lacking for the period in question.
1 I’d like to thank James N. Ford (Bar-Ilan) and Matthew Morgenstern (Tel Aviv) for their careful attention to an earlier draft of this chapter. Any errors of omission, commission, deduction, induction, transliteration, transcription, and/or translation that remain are naturally my sole responsibility. 144 C.G. HÄBERL
HISTORY OF THE QUESTION
Much has been made of the fact that no known copies of the Mandaean scriptures antedate the 16th century, the oldest being the Bodleian Library’s MS Mar- shall 691, copied in 1529,2 and that occasional references to Islam and the prophet Muhammad within them provide a terminus post quem for their final redaction of sometime during the 7th century. For example, in 1926 Svend Pallis argued that any points of similarity between the Jewish and the Mandaean scriptures were not acquired directly but rather through contact with Islam.3 In a similar vein, in 1930 Hans Lietzmann argued that Mandaeism is largely a product of the post-Islamic era and that its present form owes most to Christianity, the Mandaean baptism being derived from the East Syrian Christian liturgy.4 More recently, the theory of Islamic influence upon Mandaean traditions has been revived in a modified form by Edmondo Lupieri, who argues that while that the tradition of John the Baptist as a predecessor to Jesus was present in Mandaeism “right from the beginning”, his consolidation as a prophet is a post-Islamic development.5 Likewise, Jennifer Hart contends that the Mandaean literary depic- tion of figures like Miriai and Iuhana owes less to the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist of Christianity, and more to their Qur’ānic counterparts, Maryam bint ʻImrān and Yaḥyā ibn Zakarīya.6 Nevertheless, a large body of evidence attests to the antiquity of Mandaean traditions. While the manuscripts themselves are late, the antiquity of the texts contained therein is demonstrated by considerable data which cannot be dis- counted. The unique Mandaic script, for example, appears to be derived from the Parthian chancery script, which suggests that it must have been adopted no later than the end of the second century, providing us with a terminus ante quem for the emergence of a specifically Mandaean literary tradition.7 The manuscript colophons further suggest that the oldest portions of the Mandaean scriptures were being copied already at the beginning of the third.8 Additionally, multiple
2 J.J. BUCKLEY, The Great Stem of Souls: Reconstructing Mandaean History, Piscataway, NJ, 2010, 197. 3 S.A.F.D. PALLIS, Mandaean studies: a comparative enquiry into Mandaeism and Mandaean writings and Babylonian and Persian religions, Judaism and Gnosticism with linguistic and bibliographical notes and references, Revised Edition, London, 1926. 4 H. LIETZMANN, Ein Beitrag zur Mandäerfrage, in Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akade- mie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, 1930, p. 596–608. 5 E. LUPIERI, The Mandaeans: The Last Gnostics, Translated by Charles Hindley, Grand Rapids, MI, 2002. 6 J. HART, The Mandaeans, a People of the Book? An Examination of the Influence of Islam on the Development of Mandaean Literature, Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University, 2010. 7 C.G. HÄBERL, Iranian Scripts for Aramaic Languages: The Origin of the Mandaic Script, in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 341 (2006), p. 53–62. 8 BUCKLEY, Great Stem, p. 172–173. THE ARAMAIC INCANTATION TEXTS 145 parallel traditions or Nebenüberlieferungen indicate that these same texts were sometimes adopted and circulated by the adherents of neighboring religious traditions prior to the advent of Islam. Torgny Säve-Söderberg summarizes the Nebenüberlieferungen that were known to him at the time, including a formula from the death mass of the Valentinians, reported by the Christian heresiographer Irenaeus in the second century, and the Manichaean legend of Adam, related by the eighth century scholar Theodore bar Kōnay and the tenth century scholar Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Nadīm, which parallels that of Adam in the “left hand” volume of the Great Treasure.9 The former also quotes another portion of the “right hand” volume of the same work, which he attributes to yet another group, the Kenṯāye.10 In addition to this other material, Säve-Söderberg contributes his own significant discovery of substantial portions of both volumes of the Great Treasure and the Doctrine of John reproduced word-for-word within the fourth-century Coptic Psalms of Thomas.
OTHER WITNESSES TO MANDAEAN SCRIPTURES
Apart from the evidence of the manuscripts, the sole archaeological witnesses to the presence of Mandaeans in the region are the incantation texts composed in the Mandaic script and either inscribed upon pottery bowls or incised into sheets of lead. The former were probably inscribed sometime between the fifth and the eighth century AD, and the latter likely belong to a slightly earlier date, perhaps between the fourth and the seventh century.11 The distribution of these incantation texts, illustrated in Figure 1, corresponds to the testimony of their literary texts to their distribution prior to the advent of Islam, but only in part. While the literary texts reference locations throughout the “Fertile Crescent”,
9 T. SÄVE-SÖDERBERGH, Studies in the Coptic-Manichaean Psalm-Book, Uppsala, 1949, p. 156–158. 10 For which, now see K.T. VAN BLADEL, From Sasanian Mandaeans to Ṣābians of the Marshes, Leiden, 2017. See also H. POGNON, Inscriptions mandaïtes des coupes de Khouabir, Paris, 1898, p. 233–244 and D. KRUISHEER, Theodore bar Koni’s Ketābā d-᾿Eskolyon as a source for the study of early Mandæism, in Jaarbericht “Ex Oriente Lux” 33 (1993–94), p. 154–155. 11 Few bowls or scrolls have any provenance. Of these, some scrolls were discovered at Abu Shudhr in a 5th to 7th century context (C. MÜLLER-KESSLER, Interrelations between Mandaic Lead Rolls and Incantation Bowls, in T. ABUSCH & K. VAN DER TOORN (eds), Mesopotamian Magic: Textual, Historical, and Interpretative Perspectives, Leiden, 1999, p. 197), and the Nippur bowls may belong to the early Islamic period and perhaps even as late as the 8th century (E.C.D. HUNTER, Incantation Bowls: A Mesopotamian Phenomenon?, in Orientalia 65 (1996), p. 220–233). MÜLLER-KESSLER is of the opinion that the bowls and the scrolls belong to the same period (Aramä- ische Beschwörungen und astronomische Omina in nachbabylonischer Zeit. Das Fortleben meso- potamischer Kultur im Vorderen Orient, in J. RENGER (ed.), Babylon: Focus Mesopotamischer Geschichte, Wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne, Berlin, 1999, p. 430). A num- ber of bowls bearing specific dates, ranging from 545 to 611 AD, are currently being prepared for publication by Shaked and Ford; see S. SHAKED, J.N. FORD, and S. BHAYRO, Aramaic Bowl Spells I: Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, Leiden, 2013, p. 1, fn. 2. 146 C.G. HÄBERL
Figure 1. Incantation Text Find spots and Mandaic Toponyms. with considerably more references to locations in the western half of the Cres- cent than the eastern half, the incantation texts have thus far been discovered only within Iraq and Iran. The former represent the specifically Mandaean contribution to a broader corpus of incantations that transcend confessional boundaries, and appear in different scripts reflecting different religious traditions, imparting much valu- able information about the religions of those who composed them.12 The first collection of these texts was published in 1853 by Thomas Ellis of the British Museum.13 For nearly a century, until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, they were the earliest witnesses to the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish lit- urgy, apart from some manuscript fragments such as the Nash Papyrus. While the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has almost completely undermined their role as scriptural witnesses to the text of the Hebrew Bible, they still have much
12 M.G. MORONY, Religion and the Aramaic Incantation Bowls, in Religion Compass 1.4 (2007), p. 414–429. 13 A.H. LAYARD, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, London, 1853, p. 509–526. THE ARAMAIC INCANTATION TEXTS 147 to tell us about how they were understood by the communities that transmitted them, and how they were deployed in certain ritual contexts. The incantation texts in Mandaic script could potentially serve the same function for the Man- daean scriptures, in addition to serving as important witnesses to them prior to their final redaction.
BM 91715 bšumaihn ḏ-hiia BM 117880 asuta tihui lẖ
BM 132168 uhiia zikin lkulhun eubadia BM 117874 uhiia zakia
So, how exactly do the incantation texts relate to the scriptures? The first thing that even the most casual glance will reveal is that the incantation texts fre- quently incorporate individual formulae also found within the scriptures, per- forming precisely the same roles in both corpora (which is to say, they define the margins of these texts by opening and closing them). I have reproduced selections of four of the texts from the British Museum in the image above; starting with the upper left image and proceeding clockwise, they are B(ritish) M(useum) 91715, 117880, 117874, and 132168.14 Apart from the last text, which was a bequest to the museum from a private collector, the first three texts were excavated at Tell Ibrahim (ancient Kutha) by Hormuzd Rassam in March of 1881.15
14 Images extracted from J.B. SEGAL, Catalogue of the Aramaic and Mandaic Incantation Bowls in the British Museum, London, 2000, plates 89, 83, 79, 112, respectively. 15 H. RASSAM, Assur and the Land of Nimrod, Cincinnati and New York, 1897, p. 411, and J.E. READE, Rassam’s Excavations at Borsippa and Kutha, 1879-82, in Iraq 48 (1986), p. 112. 148 C.G. HÄBERL
One of the most common formulae that open individual prayers and the chap- ters of Mandaean manuscripts is bšumaihn ḏhiia (rbia) “in the name of the (Great) Life”, which can be seen written here immediately below the circle in the center of BM 91715, precisely where the incantation begins. Similarly, the formula asuta tihuilẖ “May there be healing for him/her”, or “May s/he have healing…” can be found opening the letter collected by de Morgan around the turn of the last century,16 just as it opens BM 117880 and many others like it. BM 117880 closes with the phrase uhiia zakia “and the Life is victorious!” which also closes the vast majority of prayers and chapters in the Mandaean scriptures. Occasionally, this same closing formula can be extended to uhiia zakin el kulhun eubadia “and Life is victorious over all works”, as it is at the very bottom of BM 132168.
CONTENT AND CONTEXT
Many of the incantations, such as the lead amulet published by Lidzbarski,17 attest to a developed Mandaean cosmology, angelology, and demonology through repeated references to uniquely Mandaean names. In addition, these same names are associated with characteristic phrases, both within the scriptures and the incantation texts. One such example is the phrase haila ueruta “power and favor”, which appears three times in the “left-hand” volume of the Great Treasure. In one instance, it is attributed to the Mandaean supreme being, the Great First Mana (mana rba qadmaia), as he turns the Seven Planets’ own traps against them: The Mana opened its mouth, and said to the Seven, “I will make it so that you don’t lay a finger upon me, Seven. I will not come under your power, I will not be caught with your net. Your darkness will not swallow me, and your shadow will not settle upon me. All of you, just as you are, will be entangled in your mesh and nets. I focused my mind on the Life, and my mind was grounded on the power (hailẖ) and favor (eruta) that the Great Life brought to me from its place”.18
One of the unprovenanced incantation texts from the British Museum, BM 91777, specifically invokes the “power and enlightenment” of the Great First Mana, just as in the Great Treasure, and its context is likewise one of trapping maleficent beings:
16 J.-J. DE MORGAN, Mission scientifique en Perse par J. de Morgan, Tome V, études linguis- tiques, deuxième partie: Textes Mandaites, Paris, 1904, p. 282. 17 M. LIDZBARSKI, Ein mandäisches Amulett, in G.C.C. MASPERO (ed.), Florilegium ou recueil de travaux d’érudition dédiés à M. le Marquis Melchior de Vogüé à l’occasion du quatrevingtième anniversaire de sa naissance, Paris, 1909, p. 349–373. Lidzbarski was of the opinion that the amulet was two centuries older than the bowls (p. 350). 18 M. LIDZBARSKI, Ginza: der Schatz oder das Grosse Buch der Mandäer, Leipzig, 1925, p. 481; p. 57, ln 24 in the original MS. My translation. THE ARAMAIC INCANTATION TEXTS 149
May all these [demons and evil spirits] be bound by the power (hila) and the enlightenment (eruta) of the Great First Mana.19
This is admittedly only a single instance, but the phrase itself is not common (appearing neither anywhere in the “right-hand” volume of the Great Treasure nor in the Mandaean Book of John) and the similarities between the two contexts certainly suggest a familiarity with the narratives of the Great Treasure. This example sets the stage for what I would like to accomplish in the second half of this article: identify possible parallels between the incantation texts and the Mandaean scriptures, and see whether the scriptural parallel might offer any context to the incantations or cues to their interpretation, which are often lack- ing. The example above likewise shares a common theme that runs throughout all those that follow: it is grounded in an agonistic context, a conflict between two supernatural beings (in the case of the scriptures) or between the enchanter and a supernatural being (in the case of the incantation texts). It must be admit- ted, though, that occasional parallels and the use of common idioms may serve as witnesses to Mandaeism, they are not necessarily witnesses to the Mandaean scriptures. For such a purpose, we would expect a direct quotation or at the minimum a faithful paraphrase, controlled for context so as to avoid the pos- sibility of coincidence. To this end, I am prepared to offer a few more examples in which the incantation texts reproduce portions of the canonical Mandaean scriptures. One of most common Mandaean incantations, which Segal dubbed “Refrain D”, is represented by no fewer than eleven exemplars.20 It begins with the phrase qal qala šimit “I heard the sound of a voice”. This formula cannot help but bring to mind the haunting beginning of one of the final chapters of the “left-hand” volume of the Great Treasure, which is marked by its colophons as one of the earliest works of Mandaean literature:21 The voice! Hark, I heard the sound of two voices: the sound of two voices, which sit together and weep: the voice of the spirit (ruha) and the voice of the soul (nišimta), which sit and teach one another.22
When compared specifically with text of one of the incantation bowls, other similarities emerge, such as the parallelism between two voices (between the strong and the weak on one hand, and the spirit and the soul on the other), and the direct mention of the spirit and the soul in both texts:
19 SEGAL, Catalogue, p. 139–141: “by the power and fever of the primeval great Mana”. 20 SEGAL, Catalogue, p. 159–162. In a personal communication, James Ford notes that while the rest of the passage is quite different. There ,קל קלא שמעית the JBA texts have the expression“ is, however, an unpublished Jewish bowl (JNF 247) that contains a translation to JBA of the entire Mandaic text” (J.N. FORD, p.c., 2014/02/24). 21 BUCKLEY, Great Stem, p. 260. 22 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, p. 566; p. 117, ln. 7 in the original MS. My translation. 150 C.G. HÄBERL
Hark, I heard a sound, the voice of the weak who are broken, and the voice of the strong who struggle in battle, and the sound of furious women who curse, bewitch, and cause pain to spirits (ruhia) and souls (nišmata).23
While this is obviously not a direct quotation, the similarity in terms of language and the parallelism within the content certainly suggest that these two texts are in dialogue. Hunter notes that the formula from the Mandaic incantations is also paralleled in two incantations in the square script from the British Museum col- lection, BM 127395 and 127396, which were likewise excavated by Rassam, but from Borsippa rather than Kutha.24 As I mentioned earlier, however, the strongest examples are those that not only correspond in phrasing to the Mandaean scriptures but also in the contexts in which they are deployed. Prayer Five of the Canonical Prayerbook, which is recited during the course of the baptism ritual, establishes a kind of cosmic ritual space, through explicit reference to the Mandaean cosmology, and calls it into action, according Buckley’s analysis:25 Brilliance, radiance, and purity dwell in the four corners of the House (arba zauiata ḏ-baita) and the seven sides of the firmament (šaba kanpia ḏ-rqiha).26
“The House” (baita) is a Mandaean metaphor for the material world, which Säve- Söderberg cites as one of the many points of contact between the Coptic Psalms of Thomas and the Mandaean scriptures, the corners of the House being the cardinal directions.27 The “world as a house” is also a common motif through- out the incantation texts.28 In addition to the explicit use of this metaphor, the very same cosmic ritual space invoked by the Canonical Prayerbook is unmis- takably established and deployed in at least eight of the Mandaean bowls, albeit with occasional variation in the numbers: May they all turn back and flee and be expelled from their places, and from the seven edges of the firmament (šaba knpa ḏ-rqeha) may they turn back and flee and be expelled, or (be it) from the eight […]s of the Earth, may they take wing and flee and be expelled, or (be it) from the four corners of this house of [mine…] (arbia zauiata ḏ-hazin [b]aita dil[ia…])29
23 Adapted from BM 91714 in SEGAL, Catalogue, p. 123–125, no. 94M, lns 2–6. 24 E.C.D. HUNTER, Incantation Bowls from Babylon and Borsippa in the British Museum, in Isimu II (1999), p. 168. 25 J.J. BUCKLEY, Polemics and Exorcism in Mandaean Baptism, in History of Religions 47.2 (2007), p. 162. 26 E.S. DROWER, The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans, Leiden, 1959, p. 4. 27 SÄVE-SÖDERBERGH, Studies, p. 124. 28 E.g. in the phrase šuba marẖ ḏbita “seven lords of the House”, in H. POGNON, Inscriptions mandaïtes des coupes de Khouabir, Paris, 1898, p. 61–69 (no. 22, ln 5, and no. 23, ln 10). 29 Based on lines 3–5 of BM 91761 from Kutha in SEGAL, Catalogue, p. 103. Translation adapted from J.N. FORD, Notes on the Mandaic Incantation Bowls in the British Museum, in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 26 (2002), p. 239. Segal identified the first formula (“seven edges of the firmament”) with the passage in the Canonical Prayerbook. THE ARAMAIC INCANTATION TEXTS 151
These same formulae appear, in part or in whole, in at least seven other incan- tations.30 In most of these variants, the enchanter specifically draws a parallel between the four corners of the material world and those of his own home. The first line following the opening formula of BM 117880, “upon a wreath of ætheric light do I stand”, invites comparison to the first line of another prayer from the Canonical Prayerbook, CP 113 “On the Ether-Light do I Stand” which, together with CP 114, 115, and 116, is one of the rahmia prayers regularly recited at daybreak: Upon the ætheric light I do stand (el nhur aiar qaiimna) […] turn back and drive from them the seven planets (šuba šibiahia), who are their demons (sahraihun), devils (daiuaihun), amulet spirits (humraihun), and evil creatures (qiriatun bišata).31
Fittingly, this specific prayer mentions driving away the seven planets, amulet spirits, and other evil creatures, all of which are also directly referenced in the incantation text: Upon a wreath of ætheric light I do stand (el klil nhur aiar qaimna) […] and above the seven planets (šuba šubaiahia) and above all the [fallen] angels (mlakia), and above all the spirits (ruhia) and wrathful amulet spirits (humria zidaniata) […] she [set] over them demons (shria), devils (diuia), spirits (ruhia), amulet spirits (humria), and liliths (liliata) that pervert the hearts [of humans].32
The insertion of the word klila “wreath” here suggests familiarity with and perhaps contamination from another Mandaean motif: the klil aiar or “ætheric wreath”, which is one of the garments that protects the soul from these same creatures in five verses of the Great Treasure.33 In a forthcoming article, Mat- thew Morgenstern and James Nathan Ford have also identified nine additional parallels that employ the formula b-/el- qaimna “I stand + LOCATIVE”, while not specifically referencing the ætheric light or wreath.34 Given the physical limitations of the medium, and the ancient tradition of employing the first line of a composition to stand pars pro toto for the whole composition, it is possible that the use of this phrase and of “Hark! I hear a sound” in one of the previous examples was intended to mark the use of these well- known and frequently used compositions in the course of the incantation ritual.
30 POGNON, Inscriptions, p. 17–26 (no. 1, lns 4–5, 2, lns 4–5, 3, lns 5–6, 4, ln 6); 77–81, no. 27, lns 9-10; LIDZBARSKI, Amulett, p. 371, lns 258–262; and C.H. GORDON, Aramaic Incanta- tion Bowls, in Orientalia 10 (1941), p. 344–345 (“Malmö”). 31 Modified from DROWER, Prayerbook, p. 109–110; original MS p. 145, penultimate line. 32 My translation. SEGAL, Catalogue, p. 107–108, lns 5–7, likewise from Rassam’s excavations at Kutha. Segal notes that this formula also appears in the Mandaean scriptures. 33 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, p. 324 (R(ight) G(inza) 15.12), 345 (RG 15.7), 516 (L(eft) G(inza) 3.7), 551 (LG 3.26), and 553 (LG 3.27). 34 M. MORGENSTERN and J.N. FORD, On Some Readings and Interpretations in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls, in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (Forth.). 152 C.G. HÄBERL
An even more precise correspondence is provided by an episode within the “right-hand” volume of the Great Treasure, in which the planets, together with a host of demons and evil spirits, create an incredible racket that awakens and terrifies Adam, the first man. He calls upon his protectors, the Excellencies (eutria), asking, What has happened within the House, so that the sound of the racket rises up to the heavens (šumia)? The whole Earth quaked (kula arqa nadat) and the whole firmament was hurled down (kulẖ rqiha etmasar).35
At least five incantation texts,36 one from Kutha, two allegedly from Khouabir (55 km NW of Musayyib), and three without provenance, directly invoke this episode in their phrasing, content, and context: The heavens ([š]umia) quaked (nadat) and the earth (arqa) was shaken (ezdrmbiat). The House of the Seven, the amulet spirits, and the idol spirits quaked, were fright- ened, and thrown into confusion.37
The clients of the enchanter find themselves in much the same situation as Adam, menaced by the very same evil beings, and appeal to their protectors using language that recalls his original appeal. In the two texts from Khouabir, the action likewise unfolds across the tri-fold division of the cosmos: earth (arqa), heavens (šumia), and the firmament (rqiha).38 The inclusion of this formula in the incantation therefore likely presupposes some familiarity with the episode mentioned within the Great Treasure. Intriguingly, in both of these texts, we find the word qal /qɔl/ “sound” in the place occupied by kul /kol/ “entire” in the Great Treasure — a near-homophone that suggests the possibil- ity that this formula was transmitted by mouth rather than in writing. Another phrase that appears with extreme frequency in the incantation texts, the exorcism formula “bound (esir) and suppressed (kbiš)” or “fettered (rgil) are you”39 also appears occasionally in the Mandaic scriptures. In the right-hand volume of the Great Treasure, the lightworld being Radiant Abel (hibil ziua) descends into the darkworld, and uses this formula to bind various darkworld beings: I [Radiant Abel] said to them [Gaf and Gafan], “You are (hereby) bound (esiritun) and fettered (rgilitun), dark giants, and your bodies are tied with the great bond with which the smith of monsters binds. May your magic and the deceit that you have created be bound. Bound be your wives, the liliths (liliata), the salamanders,
35 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, p. 126 (RG 3); p. 113, ln 24 to 114, ln 3 in the original MS. My translation. 36 Texts 13 and 14 in POGNON, Inscriptions, p. 36–43, BM 117880 in SEGAL, Catalogue, p. 107– 108, lns 12–13, BM 136203 on p. 136–137, lns 4-5, and BM 108824 on p. 138, ln 9. 37 BM 117880 in SEGAL, Catalogue, p. 107–108, lns 12–13. 38 POGNON, Inscriptions, p. 36–43, no. 13, lns 2–4, and 14, lns 2–4. 39 MÜLLER-KESSLER (Interrelations, p. 204) lists some parallels for this formula, of which the “best example”, in her opinion, is BM 132168. THE ARAMAIC INCANTATION TEXTS 153
the perverted forms that are hateful (dmauata epikata ḏsneia), contorted, and tied, the appearance and speech of whom none can stand”.40
The beings bound include “liliths” and “hateful forms”, which are likewise juxtaposed in BM 117874, also excavated by Rassam at Kutha.41 Unfortunately, the initial few words of the latter text are lost, but it would not be unreasonable to reconstruct “bound” or one of its synonyms in the lacuna, on the basis of the parallels. Sequences such as these are much more likely to be the result of dependence rather than coincidence, particularly as the sequence grows longer. One such sequence is attested in three incantation texts, two from Kutha and the third without provenance.42 In his treatment of BM 91715, Ford notes a parallel within a passage from the Book of Denanukht, in the right-hand volume of the Great Treasure.43 In this passage, the sage Denanukht encounters a sequence of binary pairs, normally conceived as being in opposition to one another, in a kind of anthropomorphized book called the Lesser Diṣai (diṣai zuṭa), and is dismayed when he cannot comprehend the significance of this sequence. After he tries to destroy the book by burning it in fire and submerging it in water, the Evil Spirit, here identified by the name Ewath, comes to Denanukht in his home: Ewath, the Evil Spirit, came to my celestial dwelling, stood before it and said to it, “Why do you lay there, Dinanukt, and why do you like to sleep? I am radi- ance, I am light. I am death, I am life. I am darkness (hšuka), I am light (nhura). I am wrong (ṭeia), I am right (šrara). I am destruction (hbila), I am construction (biniana). I am the wound (mhita), I am the treatment (asuta)”.44
Säve-Söderbergh compares this passage to the speech of Hylē and the Physician in Thomas Psalm 14, and notes that this same sequence occurs and reoccurs several times throughout the Great Treasure.45 In several of the incantation texts, members of each set are played against one another, with darkness being suppressed or crushed in the presence of light, and so forth: Suppressed, suppressed is darkness (hišuka) before light (nhura), and suppressed is destruction (hbila) before construction (biniana), and suppressed is wrong (ṭeia) before right (šrara) and suppressed are wound(s) (mhita) before treatment (asuta).46
40 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, p. 154 (RG 5.1); p. 139, ln 17 in the original MS. My translation. 41 SEGAL, Catalogue, p. 103–104, no. 77M, lns 3–5. 42 BM 139524 (Segal, Catalogue, p. 63–65, no. 23A, lns 4–5) is without provenance, and BM 117872 (Segal, Catalogue, p. 105–106, no. 079M, lns 3–4), and BM 91715 (Segal, Catalogue, p. 111–113, no. 084M, ln 19) are both from Kutha. 43 J.N. FORD, Another Look at the Mandaic Incantation Bowl BM 91715, in Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 29 (2002), p. 43: “Virtually the same set of parallel terms as in BM 91715 occurs in a non-magical context in Ginza Yamina”. 44 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, p. 207 (RG 6); p. 207, lns 13–19 in the original MS. My translation. 45 SÄVE-SÖDERBERGH, Studies, p. 148–149. 46 Adapted from FORD, Another Look, p. 33. 154 C.G. HÄBERL
It is worth noting that one of the texts in the British Museum that reproduces this sequence, BM 139524, is an Aramaic incantation in the square script, indi- cating that the use of this formula transcended sectarian boundaries, and sug- gesting that this third text might possibly have been composed at a time and place proximate to the two Mandaic exemplars. Unfortunately, the provenance of that text is unknown, but the same formula is also attested in a text from Nippur.47 Due to the virtual identity between the sequences of pairs and their mem- bers, the dependence of the incantation texts upon the Book of Denanukht is fairly evident. Furthermore, this passage demonstrates the value of comparing the incantation texts with the scriptures: it is only through comparison of this rather cryptic text with the scriptural passage do we understand that the intended recipient of the incantation is the Hylē/Ewath/the Evil Spirit, as her name is nowhere mentioned in any of these incantation texts. These bowls mention the maleficent agents by name much less frequently than they do the beneficent agents, preferring instead to identify them through pseudonyms and circumlo- cutions. The precise wording of the text suggests that the formula may even be a kind of mocking response to the Evil Spirit’s speech, a genre which is also known from the Coptic Psalms of Thomas.48 Some of these sequences can run into an even greater number of items, essentially becoming lists. As in ancient Mesopotamia, these lists serve multiple functions, among them organizing, preserving, and communicating important knowledge about the world, including the supernatural.49 For example, the Great Treasure lists twenty of the forms that the children of the King of Darkness assume:
The darkness grew and multiplied into demons (sahria), devils (dauia), incubi (šidia), liliths (liliata), the spirits (ruhia) of amulets (humria), temples (ekuria), and shrines (prikia), idols (patikria), archons (arkunia), and fallen angels (mlakia), vampires (nalia) and hobgoblins (niulia), demons of muteness (pigia) and paralysis (palgia), fiends (laṭabia), net-spirits (lihania) and long-haired spectres (gdultania), satans (saṭania), and hateful shapes of darkness (dmauata saina ḏhšuka) of every shape and kind, both male and female alike from the darkness.50
47 Bowl 16 from J.A. MONTGOMERY, Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur, Philadelphia, 1913, p. 188. This formula also appears in Bowl C from M.J. GELLER, Four Aramaic Incantation Bowls, in G. RENDSBURG ET AL. (eds), The Bible World: Essays in Honor of Cyrus H. Gordon, New York, 1980, p. 54–56 (J.N. FORD, p.c., 2014/02/24). 48 SÄVE-SÖDERBERGH, Studies, p. 105–107. 49 W. VON SODEN, Leistung und Grenze sumerischer und babylonischer Wissenschaft, in Die Welt als Geschichte 2 (1936), p. 411–505, 509–557. 50 LIDZBARSKI, Ginza, p. 277–278 (RG 12.6); p. 279, lns 1–7 in the original MS. My trans- lation. MORGENSTERN (p.c., 2014/04/04) suggests that the noun lihania translated by Lidzbarski as Netzgeister “net-spirits” is to be derived from Akkadian (a)laḫḫinu, an official in temple service. THE ARAMAIC INCANTATION TEXTS 155
Although not organized according to any systematic criteria, this list nonethe- less represents a way to structure information about the world, as an incipient science of Demonology. Abbreviated versions of this same list, reproducing from four to eleven of its items with minor variations in sequence, appear and reappear as a basic formula throughout the corpus. I have identified nearly twenty exemplars.51 While this list or some variant of it is therefore extremely common among the Mandaic texts, it has not thus far been attested among the texts composed in other scripts.52 In addition to parallels to the canonical scriptures, the incantation texts con- tain exorcism formulas that are also attested in much later magical texts such as DC 43 The Poor Priest’s Treasury, a collection of twelve exorcisms copied by the priest Yahia Bihram in 1853. In The Poor Priest’s Treasury, the enchanter invokes several weapons, including a “great mace of radiance”, a “great axe of exorcism”, some kind of weaponized water (a common form of offense in the Mandaean legends) and a “deadly knife of destruction” to fight off demons: They will be smitten by a great mace of radiance (akla rba ḏziua), and by a great axe of exorcisms (narga rba ḏširiata), and by an overwhelming stream of water (rukba epika ḏmia), and by a club of water, and by a rod of wrath, and by a great hammer of destruction, and […] and by a black […], and by a knife, a deadly knife of destruction (sikina sikina sup ḏhbila), by which were smitten the primeval sahras, the children of Samael the Satan.53
These same four weapons also appear in the text inscribed upon the aforemen- tioned bowl BM 91715 from Rassam’s excavations at Kutha, in an identical context, that of fighting demons: To my left is torrents of water (ṭipia ḏmia), and to my right is a knife, a deadly knife of violence and destruction (skina sikin supa tuqpa uhbila), at my pillow is a mace of radiance (akla ḏziua), at my feet is an axe of exorcisms (narga rba ḏšriata), and above my head is an [extraordinary] arrow. The demon that comes from my right will be smitten by the great mace of radiance (akla rba ḏziua). The demon that comes from my left will be smitten by the knife, the deadly knife of violence and destruction (sikina sikin supa tuqpa uhbila). The demon that comes from my pil- low will be smitten by the great axe of exorcisms (narga rba ḏšriata). The demon that comes from above the head will be smitten by the extraordinary arrow.54
51 These include Text 26 from POGNON, Inscriptions, p. 76–77, the Fitzwilliam, Malmö, and Princeton texts from GORDON, Bowls, p. 344–345 and 354–357, and at least 13 texts in (BM 91724, 91733, 91748, 91761, 91769, 91774, 91777, 108824, 117872, 117880, 117881, 132168, and 136203, published as SEGAL, Catalogue, 076M, 079–081M, 088–089M, 098M, 100–101M, and 104–107M). M. MORGENSTERN, The Mandaic Magic Bowl Dehays 63: An Unpublished Parallel to BM117872 (Segal 079A), in Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 32 (2011), p. 73–90 provides an additional exemplar of one of the aforementioned incantation texts. 52 J.N. FORD (p.c., 2014/02/24) notes that “while some of these demons are characteristic of Mandaism, long enumerations of types of demons are common in incantation bowls in all dialects”. 53 DC 43(R), Exorcism J, lns 109–14; trans. adapted from FORD, Another Look, p. 42 54 Trans. adapted from FORD, Another Look, p. 33. 156 C.G. HÄBERL
To Ford’s observations, I would like to add my own that two of these same magical weapons are also mentioned at the very beginning of chapter 76 in the Mandaean Book of John, where they are borne by the lightworld being Enosh (anuš eutra): I come with sandals of precious stones, and on my hands are choice [gems] and pearls. In my left hand, they placed a mace (akla), and the great axe of exorcisms (narga rba ḏširiata), which frees up (šaria) the way before me. I will destroy and I will build, I will lay waste and put up my temple. The images which were depicted upon it, I have wiped clean from left to right, [with] a wreath upon my head.55
Like the exorcist of the Poor Priest’s Treasury, Enosh comes arrayed for battle from head to toe with various apotropaic objects, listed according to their dis- position. Lidzbarski translates narga rba ḏširiata as “ein großes Beil, das Lösungen [vor mir löst]”, but following Drower it is conventionally translated as “a great axe of exorcisms”. In this instance, the passage explicitly identifies it as “opening the way before me”, using the same verb that is at the root of the word šrita “release; exorcism (prayer)”, lending support to Lidzbarski’s interpretation. It is therefore not clear whether this is an example of the famed Mandaean penchant for wordplay or whether the term should be more pro- saically translated as “great axe of openings” or “liberations”. In any case, the similarities between these three texts are manifest. In a similar vein, but in an inversion of the usual practice, a bowl text can even be used to reconstruct the text of one of the manuscripts which is badly corrupted. The Amulet of Radiant Abel is one of the longest and most popular amulets that was in circulation even as late as Drower’s time. Our earliest copy of the entirety of this amulet dates to the end of the 18th century.56 Even so, Ford has identified a passage within BM 91774 that corresponds rather precisely to a passage from the Amulet of Radiant Abel.57 The passage from BM 91774 reads: In precious robes I stand, in great robes of light, and I have bound about my thighs a girdle of splendor. I am the righteous Abel, who was sent and came from the worlds of the Great [Life] […] against the demons and against the devils and against the spirits and against the amulet spirits and against the liliths and against . . . the houses of humans (in order to) bind …
Even though this incantation text is of unknown date and provenance, as it was not discovered through an archaeological excavation, it was nonetheless likely composed sometime around the time of the advent of Islam, which is to say at
55 M. LIDZBARSKI, Das Johannesbuch der Mandäer, Teil 2: Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kom- mentar, Gießen, 1915, p. 242, and p. 273, ln 14 to p. 274, ln 3 in the original MS. 56 BUCKLEY, Great Stem, p. 331. 57 FORD, Notes, p. 263–264. THE ARAMAIC INCANTATION TEXTS 157 least a full millennium before the earliest manuscripts of the amulet that reproduces the passage they share. The passage from the amulet is unfortu- nately somewhat lacunose, but much can be restored through comparison with BM 91774:
In robes of the earth (read: of glory) I stand,
The correspondences between the two texts are unmistakable and once again cannot be attributed to coincidence.
CONCLUSIONS
With the exception of the stock introductory and closing formulae, all of the scriptural parallels I have adduced thus far are drawn from agonistic episodes involving demons and other malevolent supernatural beings. Through these incantations, the enchanter recalls these episodes, recreates the spaces in which the conflict occurred by means of the ritual, and casts himself or herself in the role of the lightworld protagonist. Thus far, explicit parallels have been identified in only 38 Mandaic incantation texts. Of these 38, nearly half (18) have no provenance, three are from Nippur, eight are from Khouabir (of 31 published texts), and fully nine are from Kutha (out of 16 such bowls in the British Museum collection, plus an additional three in the square script). The Kutha bowls likewise contain comparatively more references to the Mandaic scriptures; text BM 117880, for example, begins with the standard introductory formula “may there be healing for…”, echoes the rah- mia prayer CP 113 at its beginning, subsequently references two sections of the right-hand volume of the Great Treasure (RG 3 and RG 12.6), and finally closes with the formula “and the Life is victorious”. Many other Mesopotamian sites, such as Ashur, Babylon, Borsippa, Hillah, Nimrud, Teeb, and Uruk, have yielded Mandaic incantation texts, but few of these have as many obvious parallels to Mandaean scriptures as the ones from the latter two sites. In fact, my preliminary survey of Mandaic texts included 40 from the British Museum collection, five from Nippur (including three published by Montgomery and two by Hunter),58 and 47 other bowls from Yamauchi’s survey (not including the two in the British Museum collection
58 MONTGOMERY, Aramaic Incantation Texts, p. 244–255 and E.C.D. HUNTER, Two Mandaic Incantation Bowls from Nippur, in Baghdader Mitteilungen 25 (1994), p. 605–618. 158 C.G. HÄBERL and the three published by Montgomery). The 38 incantation texts that paral- lel Mandaic texts, primarily from Kutha and Khouabir, represent a substantial but minor portion of this corpus. The significance of this observation is not immediately apparent. It is very likely that other parallels have escaped my attention. The fact that most of the incantation bowls have no provenance likewise biases the results. Even so, I might tentatively propose that the incantation texts from these two sites in central Mesopotamia (and possibly those from Nippur) demonstrate a greater familiarity with the Mandaean scriptures than the incantation texts from other identified areas, and that this might possibly be relevant to our understanding of the history of these texts, their composition and early circulation. Unfortunately, little can be said about Kutha, and even less about Khouabir. Rassam limited his description of four weeks of excavation at Tell Ibrahim to a scant three pages and 1,118 words.59 Summarizing Rassam’s travelogue and field reports, Reade concludes: In short, he found a wall of baked bricks with a door in it, and the mudbrick walls of eight or nine rooms of a building, or rather the foundations of a building, which “look as if they were erected yesterday. The height of the rooms is about 25 feet and the top of which is between 15 and 20 feet below the surface of the mound”.60
Rassam gave no indication of where he found the incantation bowls, or how they related to the other artifacts recovered (some bricks stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar, likely transported from elsewhere, and a few clay tablets dating to the late Achaemenid and Seleucid era). Seven of them, including the aforementioned BM 117880, were inscribed for a client with a bilingual (Persian and Arabic) name, ῾Abd Raḥmān Ābān-Gušnasp bar Mēšowi,61 and his spouse, Bāšnēray pat Šāhāfrīd, but these names are of limited usefulness for dating the texts, as the Arab population in this region dates back to the Parthian period, at the latest, and their presence is already abundantly attested in the third and
59 RASSAM, Assur, p. 409–411. 60 READE, Rassam’s Excavations, p. 112. 61 Identified by M. MORGENSTERN and T. ALFIA, Arabic Magic Texts in Mandaic Script: A Forgotten Chapter in Near-Eastern Magic, in R. VOIGT (ed.), Durch Dein Wort ward jegliches Ding! / Through Thy Word All Things Were Made! – II. Mandäistische und Samaritanistische Tagung, Wiesbaden, 2013, p. 167, as an early attempt to render Arabic in the Mandaic script. This name is transcribed abdrahman in most bowls, but abrahiman in BM 91733. Assuming that this was not merely an attempt to correct abrahim to abdrahman, Segal (Catalogue, p. 107) argues that “Mandaean speakers had difficulty in pronouncing the consonantal cluster bdr”. This suggests that there was indeed a cluster there, without the expected interpolation of a case vowel (the loss of which had, in any case, begun already in the pre-Islamic period) or a definite article (əd- ῾Abd[i ᾿r-]Raḥmān…), neither of which are rendered in any of the attestations of this client’s name. The absence of these two features is typical of the personal names in the Natabaean and Palmyrene inscriptions, but not of Classical Arabic or any of the other dialects of Arabic attested in the pre-Islamic period; see K. VERSTEEGH, The Arabic Language, Edinburgh, 2001, p. 28–30, 47–51. THE ARAMAIC INCANTATION TEXTS 159 fourth centuries.62 An additional two incantations were composed for a client who might be their son, ᾿Isḥāq bar Bāšnēray, but his given name could just as easily be Syriac as Arabic. The only conclusion to be drawn is that these bowls could have been inscribed at any point during the Sasanian or early Islamic period. Undoubtedly more such parallels remain to be discovered within the corpus of published and unpublished texts. The fact that they appear both in their scriptures and in the Mandaic incantation texts, but not for the most part in texts representing other religious traditions, is undoubtedly significant, not merely for our reconstructions of these texts and their history, but also for our understanding of how these texts were understood and used by the contemporary communities.
62 M.G. MORONY, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest, First Gorgias Press Edition, Piscataway, NJ, 2005, p. 215–216.