Among the great collections of Mesopotamian exorcisms, the oldest and largest devoted to demons is known by the Akkadian title Utukkū lemnūtu, «Evil Demons». In Sumerian the series is called Udug-hul, with the same meaning. It is a work that accompanies Mesopotamian culture for almost two millennia: its roots go back to Sumerian incantations of the third and early second millennium BCE, while the canonical form in several tablets is attested in the first millennium.
A bilingual series
The most obvious feature of Utukkū lemnūtu is its bilingualism. Many tablets present the text in alternating lines: one line in Sumerian and the next in Akkadian translation. Sumerian, no longer spoken in daily life, remained the sacred language of ritual, much as Latin was in European liturgy for many centuries. Akkadian made the meaning accessible to scholars.
This detail tells us that exorcism was a scholastic discipline: its practitioners had to know two languages, an ancient formula and its interpretation.
The world of demons
The term utukku denotes a general category of spirits, but the series names many others, often in long lists:
- utukku, the evil spirit par excellence;
- alû, a demon that falls upon a man and oppresses him;
- eṭemmu, the spirit of a dead person who has not found peace;
- gallû, the enforcer demon, often linked to the underworld;
- rābiṣu, the «lurker» who waits in hiding;
- lilû and lilītu, spirits of the air and the night.
The world of demons is not a kingdom organised against the gods, but a crowd of dangerous forces that enter houses, hide in corners and travel on the wind.
The Seven
One of the series' most powerful themes is that of the Seven (Akkadian Sebettu), a group of demons described in almost poetic language. The incantations repeat the number seven obsessively:
«Seven are they, seven are they. In the deep abyss they are seven.»
The Seven have neither wife nor children, know no mercy, heed no prayer. They are begotten in the mountains or in the depths and move like a storm. The number seven, which in Mesopotamia carried a strong sense of totality, here expresses the completeness of evil: an entire army, with no gaps.
It should be said that Mesopotamian religion also knows Seven of a benevolent or ambivalent nature, linked for instance to the warrior god Erra. The theme of seven is thus a flexible symbol, not a fixed identity.
The formula of Asalluhi and Ea
Utukkū lemnūtu makes extensive use of the narrative pattern found in other series: the god Asalluhi, later identified with Marduk, sees the man struck by the demon, goes to his father Ea in Eridu and asks for help. Ea replies that his son already knows everything he knows, and then indicates the rite to perform.
This dialogue turns every rite into a cosmic scene: the exorcist does not act alone, but as the executor of a divine instruction spoken in the Apsû, the underground ocean of fresh water.
The gestures of the rite
The instructions in the series and in related texts describe gestures that recur in many Mesopotamian exorcisms:
- holy water drawn from the river or a ritual basin, used for sprinkling;
- circles of flour drawn around the bed or the house, as an impassable boundary;
- incense and torches, to purify with smoke and light;
- protective figurines placed in corners or by the door;
- knots tied and untied to bind the demon.
| Gesture | Symbolic meaning |
|---|---|
| Sprinkling | washing away the demon's presence |
| Circle of flour | marking out a protected space |
| Torch | making visible what hides |
| Knot | binding the hostile force |
A legacy across the centuries
Many elements of Utukkū lemnūtu, such as lists of demons, the value of the number seven and the idea of protected space, reappear in different forms in later Near Eastern traditions. Without forcing the comparisons, we can say the series is one of the first great written demonologies in human history, a catalogue of the invisible organised with the care of a treatise.
In a symbolic reading, the Seven are the image of forces that come compact and faceless. The rite responds by giving them a name, a place and a boundary: three gestures that turn fear into order.
In short
- Utukkū lemnūtu, Sumerian Udug-hul, means «Evil Demons» and is a major exorcism series.
- Many tablets are bilingual, with Sumerian as sacred language and Akkadian as translation.
- The series lists many kinds of demons, from spirits of the dead to lurking demons.
- The Seven represent the totality of evil, described in repetitive formulas.
- Water, flour, fire, figurines and knots are the main gestures of the rite.
