Religion and The Aramaic Incantation Bowls: Michael G. Morony

Religion Compass 1/4 (2007): 414–429, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2007.00029.
Religion and the Aramaic Incantation Bowls

Michael G. Morony*
University of California, Los Angeles
Abstract
The corpus of Late Antique Aramaic incantation texts is defined. The issues in this
field are identified as explicating the language of the Aramaic dialects used for these
texts, correlating the religious identity of their authors with the dialects and the
scripts used for them, the level of the authors’ literacy, and explaining the magic
praxis of the bowls and their demonology. The pagan, Judaic, Mandaean, Christian,
and Zoroastrian content of these texts is surveyed. It is noted that the nature of this
content tends to be explained in terms of syncretism and popular religion.
Aramaic magic incantations written in ink on pottery bowls or inscribed on

sheets of metal during Late Antiquity contain information about religion as
well as about magic. However, the scholarship on these texts has concen-
trated on their language and magical practices more than anything else. In
recent decades, the discussion has broadened to include the religious identity
of the people who wrote these incantations and of their clients, and the
religious content in the texts. It still tends to be assumed that magic and
religion are different categories.
There are several useful introductions to this material.Yamauchi (1965)
gives a survey of research on Aramaic bowls up to 1965. There are also
accounts by Isbell (1978) and in the introductions of Naveh and Shaked
(1998, pp. 13 –38), Segal (2000, pp. 21–33), and Levene (2003, pp. 1–30).
Müller-Kessler (1999, pp. 197– 8) has a brief survey of the history of
scholarship on lead rolls inscribed in the Mandaic dialect of Aramaic.
In spite of being written in three or four different Aramaic dialects, in
different scripts, and on different kinds of surfaces, these texts are regarded
as forming a distinct corpus that reflects widespread magic practices in the
Levant, Anatolia, Iraq, and western Iran from about the fourth to the seventh
centuries CE. These practices represent a continuation of ancient Assyrian,
Babylonian, and Egyptian magic and share affinities with the Greek magical
literature written on Egyptian papyri as well as to the early Jewish Hekhalot
literature and the later Jewish magical texts from the Cairo Geniza.
Within this corpus, the incantations written on pottery bowls come from
central Iraq (Babylonia) where they were used between the fifth and eighth
centuries CE (Hunter 1996, p. 220). There is still no adequate explanation
for why this practice started and stopped when it did. Most incantation
© 2007 The Author
Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Religion and the Aramaic Incantation Bowls . 415
bowls are 13– 20 cm in diameter and 3– 8 cm in depth. They are either

hemispherical or have a wide, flaring rim and straight sides that slope inwards
to a flat base [for the physical aspects of the bowls, see Hunter (2000)]. The
text is normally written on the inside in concentric circles, spirals from the
center or the rim, registers, or radii. Long texts can continue on the outside
of the bowl, and sometimes the location where the bowl is to be placed is
specified on the outside. Unlike amulets designed to be worn on a person’s
body to protect an individual, the bowl texts often protect groups of
individuals (households) and the place where they live. Bowls have been
found in situ placed upside down in some part of a house, such as under the
threshold or inside an interior wall. Sometimes several have been found
stacked on top of each other. Mandaic incantations inscribed on lead rolls,
which were also placed in houses, began to be used earlier than the bowls
and date from the fourth to the seventh century CE.
The primary activity in this field remains the publication of incantation
texts with translations and commentaries. This has been happening since
1853 when Ellis published the first five incantation bowls in Jewish
Aramaic (Layard 1853, pp. 434 –8). The publication of 40 bowl texts from
Nippur (30 in Jewish Aramaic, seven in Syriac, and three in Mandaic) by
Montgomery (1913) is considered to have been a watershed (Naveh &
Shaked 1998, pp. 19–20; Segal 2000, p. 21). Montgomery provided editions
with translations, notes and indices, summarized earlier work, gave a history
of this kind of magic, and set the standard for all subsequent work on these
texts. Since the 1930s, Gordon and his students have published bowl texts
from collections in the USA, Europe, and the Middle East (Gordon, 1934a,b,
1937, 1941, 1951, 1993; Yamauchi 1967; cf. Hamilton 1971; Isbell 1975;
Naveh & Shaked 1998, pp. 20 –21; Levene 2003, p. 1). The first edition of
22 Jewish Aramaic bowl texts by Naveh and Shaked (1998) in 1985 marked
a new plateau by including Aramaic amulets in the discussion, by using
parallel texts to complement and improve readings, and by comparing the
content to other contemporary and later sources – Greek magic papyri, early
magic literature in Hebrew, and magic fragments in the Cairo Geniza – in
order to understand the terminology and praxis of the Aramaic texts. In the
preface to their 1985 edition, Naveh and Shaked (1998, p. 10) asserted that
their purpose was to provide ‘philologically reliable material, and not to
offer a detailed study of the religious implications of these texts.’ More
recently, Müller-Kessler (1996, 1999) has widened the discussion further to
include the early Mandaic texts inscribed on lead rolls to help elucidate the
bowl texts.
Over the last 15 years or so, there has been renewed interest in and
intensive study of these materials. The current objectives are to improve
our knowledge of the structure and vocabulary of the Aramaic that was used
in Sasanian Babylonia and to understand the popular religion and cults of
the late Sasanian period (Shaked 2001, p. 61). There has also been a more
sophisticated discussion of the religious syncretism in these texts. The number
© 2007 The Author Religion Compass 1/4 (2007): 414–429, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2007.00029.x
416 . Michael G. Morony
of edited bowl texts continues to increase as new material from private

collections becomes available (Shaked 2001, p. 62). Levene (2003) has
published a representative selection of 20 Jewish Aramaic texts from the
Moussaief collection, and Shaked (1997, p. 105) is currently working on
the Schøyen collection of bowls in Jewish Aramaic and Syriac. Approxi-
mately 200 texts have been published by now, and according to Levene
(2003, p. 7), a new grammar of the Aramaic of the bowl texts since that of
Rossell (1953) is long overdue. More material also means new information,
and this field continues to be revised as a result.
According to Shaked (1997, p. 103), the Iranian elements now seem to
be more prominent than they did before 1997. But at least 1000 incantation
bowls are known to exist in museums, private collections, and on the
antiquities market. Thus, the study of Aramaic incantation texts is an open
field in every respect with hundreds of bowls still waiting to be read. At this
point, it would be unwise to base any argument on the lack of evidence.
The two most obvious variables in these texts are language and script. This
has produced an ongoing debate over whether or not language and script
correspond and whether the language/script corresponds to ethnic or
religious identities. Out of the many varieties of Aramaic, the incantation
texts are written in three literary dialects that also were used for literature
outside the realm of magic. One of them that is written in the square letters
of the Hebrew alphabet tends to be called ‘Jewish Aramaic’ (or simply
‘Aramaic’) because of the alphabet and the presence of Jewish content in
the texts. But Müller-Kessler and Kwasman (2000) have argued based on
an exception that the Aramaic used in the Babylonian Talmud is not the
dialect used in the incantation bowls. Most of the bowl texts using the
Hebrew alphabet that have been published are in a Standard Literary
Babylonian Aramaic, while a smaller number are in a ‘koiné’ of southern
Babylonian Aramaic that had been identified by Harviainen (1981a,b) as an
Eastern Aramaic ‘koiné’.
The second dialect of Aramaic is Mandaic (Yamauchi 1967) written in
the Mandaic script, which is the language and script of the texts of the
Gnostic Mandaean religion that began to be written down in the seventh
century CE. What is significant here is that the Mandaean religious content
in the Mandaic incantation texts predates the Mandaean literature and is
evidence for at least some Mandaean religious ideas before the seventh
century (Müller-Kessler & Kessler 1999, p. 65).
The third dialect is Syriac (Hamilton 1971; Gignoux 1987). So far one
of 57 known bowls is written in Estrangelo, one of the scripts used for
Christian Syriac literature, but most are in a Syriac script similar to Palmyrene
cursive and to the script used by Manichaeans when they wrote in Middle
Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, and Old Turkish in Central Asia (Montgomery
1912; Shaked 2000, pp. 59, 63). This script tends to be called
proto-Manichaean, but the religious content in these incantations is pagan,
Jewish, or Christian. Nevertheless, it has been argued (BeDuhn 1995) that
the incantation texts in this script were written by Manichaeans, and one
text has been found so far (repeated on three bowls) that does seem to have
Manichaean religious content (Shaked 2000, pp. 66, 73). But Shaked argues
that this makes it even more likely that the others are non-Manichaean:
either Christian or pagan. Indeed, Harviainen (1995) has argued for a
connection between the proto-Manichaean script and the pagan content of
these incantations and regards these pagan Syriac bowl texts as the last vestiges
of non-Christian writing in Syriac. It has been noted that the Eastern Aramaic
‘koiné’ also occurs in the proto-Manichaean Syriac script (Harviainen 1981a;
Müller-Kessler 1998).
Aramaic is not the only language that occurs on these bowls. There are
some said to be in Middle Persian that have resisted interpretation (Shaked
2001, p. 71), although Shaked (2000, pp. 64–5) has read a couple of
statements in Middle Persian on the outside of bowls that say where the
bowls were to be placed. There are also a few incantation bowls in Arabic
that have never been studied. At least two of these are in the British Museum
and may date to the early Islamic period.
For Jewish Aramaic and Mandaic, the language and form of writing of
these texts are seen to correspond to the religious identity of their authors
(Shaked 1997, pp. 104 –5; 2000, p. 59: Naveh & Shaked 1998, p. 17; Juusola
1999, p. 75; Levene 2003, p. 22). This does raise the question of whether
there was a connection between the religion of the authors and the type of
magic being practiced. Harviainen (1993, pp. 34 –6; 1995, p. 57) compared
31 Mandaic, 90 Jewish Aramaic, and 26 Syriac bowls and found that, while
demons tended to be shared by different languages/scripts, the opening
formulae and the beneficent beings were specific to the religion associated
with the language/script.
Nevertheless, the existence of Syriac and Mandaic texts containing Judaic
references has been used to undermine the correspondence between language
and religion and to argue that these texts were written by Jews (Juusola
1999, p. 75; Shaked 2000, p. 66). Although Juusola (1999, pp. 76, 87, 89)
still thinks that most Jewish Aramaic and Mandaic texts were written by
Jews and Mandaeans, respectively, some Syriac texts might have been written
by Jews. Shaked thinks that the Jewish formulae in Syriac texts could have
been borrowed by non-Jewish magicians.
This does not mean, however, that the people who used the bowls
belonged to the same religion as the people who wrote them. Bowls with
texts in different dialects have been found in the same house or written for
the same client (Levene 2003, p. 23). For clients of Mandaic bowl texts with
Jewish names, see Segal 2000, pp. 23–4). Many of the clients may have been
illiterate.
Harviainen (1983, p. 15) has also questioned the level of the authors’
literacy based on problems in the texts, suggesting that ‘the inconsistency
of the orthography, numerous mistakes, phonetic spellings, and linguistic
peculiarities which deviate from the literary dialects of Aramaic point back
to unlearned scribes who more or less wrote as they spoke.’ According to

Shaked (1995, p. 206) some of the writers seem to have been as illiterate as
their clients. Levene (2003, p. 7) has responded to Harviainen that one
should not judge the literacy of the authors based on the vagaries of these
texts. Other explanations could include the variety of the sources from which
they drew, the process of exchanging material between different groups that
spoke similar dialects, and changes in the incantations during the process of
transmission.
It is the case that repetitive formulae and duplicate texts exist in two or
all of the Aramaic dialects. Magic formulae belonged to a common stock
that transcended religious and linguistic boundaries. Many incantation texts
contain no phrase that identifies the religion of the writer (Shaked 2000,
p. 62). According to Juusola (1999, p. 84), even when these materials were
Jewish in origin, by the time they came to be used on incantation bowls
they had become ‘interconfessional magical material, which does not
automatically reveal the religious background of any text in which they
appear.’ How is this to be explained? Were these texts copied from a
common source or transmitted orally? Did the magicians in different religious
groups consult each other? How did they communicate (Levene 2003,
pp. 29 –30)? According to Müller-Kessler (1996, p. 185), isolated elements
and complete formulae occur on both magic bowls and on lead rolls. For
instance, there are extensive parallels in phraseology among three Mandaic
adjuration texts, a Babylonian Jewish Aramaic bowl (Greenfield & Naveh
1985, pp. 97, 102–4) and a Syriac bowl in proto-Manichaean script (Müller-
Kessler 1996, p. 185). In the judgment of Müller-Kessler, ‘the scribes who
produced such objects presumably drew their texts from a specific corpus
of incantations.’ According to Naveh and Shaked (1998, p. 27), the
transmission of magical formulae was both written and oral. Juusola (1999,
pp. 75–6, 88) takes the position that the Syriac-writing scribes probably
copied texts from Jewish Aramaic or Mandaic originals or transcribed oral
formulae from them. The religious identity of the authors is complicated
by the syncretistic nature of the texts and by their transmission of material
from one dialect to another, and therefore from one religious group to
another. For Juusola, ‘it may always be argued that a Babylonian Jewish
Aramaic text, for instance, with Mandaic religious features may be based on
a Mandaic Vorlage rather than testifying to a Mandaic scribe using the
“Jewish” script.’
Except for some of the Mandaic texts (Yamauchi 1967), the authors
are usually unnamed. Their clients, however, are identified by name with
matronymics along with the members of their households that are to be
protected. It has been noted that both Aramaic and Iranian names occur
among the clients as well as names with Jewish and Zoroastrian religious
significance, sometimes in the same household. We are still a long way from
understanding what this means, but the current position in this field is that
personal names are a better indicator of religious than of ethnic identity.
Segal (2000, p. 24) sees a trend to assimilate the Semitic clients into the
dominant Iranian society, which makes the use of Iranian names no
indication of ethnicity. Hunter (1996) has argued that certain names would
only have been used in particular religious groups and that Jews would have
been unlikely to have used personal names with Zoroastrian religious
significance. Nevertheless, the names of the clients testify to the mixed
religious population in Late Antique Iraq, where there were Jews,
Mandaeans, Zoroastrians, Christians, Manichaeans, and even pagans.
The relationships among the clients that are specified in the text make it
possible to diagram the households. Multiple bowl texts for the same client
or household make it possible to trace a group over a client’s lifetime or
several generations. This material is just beginning to be used for social
history (Morony 2003), and at this point it would seem that most clients’
households were monogamous nuclear families and that this social structure
transcended religious and linguistic boundaries.
The texts themselves are defensive magic. Evil spirits that are causing
trouble for the client are expelled and/or bound and sealed. Sometimes
images of bound demons are pictured on the bowls. Curses are overturned
or turned back on those who made them. Bowls found in situ are upside
down, presumably to trap the demons (McCullough 1967, p. xiii), like a
mouse trap or roach motel. In spite of the logical inconsistency of both
trapping and expelling evil spirits at the same time, this view tends to hold
the field as the most likely explanation of this practice. Naveh and Shaked
(1998, p. 15) see no real contradiction in the bowl both entrapping and
expelling demons. Harviainen (1981a) explained the burial of the bowl in
the house as a microcosm of the cosmic bowls buried in heaven and earth
that preserve the order of the elements according to one Syriac text, but
that does not explain why the bowls are upside down. Gordon (1993, p. 143)
suggested that inverting the bowls effectively upset the curses aimed at the
client based on a text he had published in 1941. Hunter (1996, p. 231) has
also suggested that burying the bowls upside down may have been an act
of sympathetic magic to overturn the curses.
Some aspects of the bowl magic appear to be very old and signify the
survival of the ancient polytheistic traditions of Mesopotamia in the
confessional religions of Late Antiquity. Sometimes this is direct. For
Müller-Kessler and Kwasman (2000, p. 164), ‘the sequence of eating bread,
drinking water, and anointing with oil is clearly a survival of an Akkadian
magical ritual concept.’ Montgomery (1913, pp. 100–1) had already noticed
the similarity between the way the Aramaic magicians invoke the name of
some beneficent being to coerce the demons and the incantation specialist
(Ašipu) of ancient Babylonia who attributed his skill to the deities (Binsbergen
& Wiggerman 1999, pp. 24– 6). The ancient deities themselves survived,
mainly because of their identification with the planets in astrology (Yamauchi
1967, p. 63; Reiner 1995, p. 19). Sin (the Moon), Šamiš (the Sun), Nabu
(Mercury), Bel (Jupiter), Nerig/Nergal (Mars), Kewan (Saturn), and Ištar
as Dilbat/Libat (Venus) as well as Bablita (B)ltia, the consort of Bel), Mulit

(Ninlil), Nanaia, and Mamitu (the consort of Nergal) appear in these texts
together with the Hellenic Zeus, Hermes, Okeanos, and Protogenos and
the Iranian Bagd-na and Šadya. Sometimes these are beneficient powers
called upon to bind and seal the demons, most often in the Syriac texts.
Sometimes they are demons themselves, most often in the Mandaic texts
(Montgomery 1913, pp. 100, 196–7; Müller-Kessler & Kessler 1999).
Babylon, Borsippa, and Kutha appear to have been the main locations for
the Babylonian deities but there is very little evidence for the survival of a
temple cult in the incantation texts. The latter might not be expected in
what are essentially private texts, but references to temples do occur in these
texts, and that does raise the question of when the temple cult ended.
The demotion of former Babylonian deities to demons (Müller-Kessler
& Kessler 1999, pp. 65, 68 –9; Müller-Kessler & Kwasman 2000, p. 164) is
symptomatic of the religious changes during Late Antiquity. Even the ancient
Babylonian protective spirit (šedu) depicted as a winged bull with a human
face became a generic term for demon in the Aramaic texts (Gordon 1951,
p. 307; Yamauchi 1965, p. 518). This word also occurs in the Bible (Deut.
32:17) with an uncertain meaning. The transformation of the Iranian Bagd-na
into the king of the demons in Aramaic incantations (Shaked 1985) is also
symptomatic of the boundaries being created among different religious
traditions during Late Antiquity. Syncretism could have a negative aspect.
That is syncretism might not only involve using, adopting, or copying aspects
of some other religion in a positive sense; it might also involve reversing
the value or meaning of some borrowed aspect and creating a mirror image
of the other religion.
Otherwise, genuine ancient Mesopotamian demons survived as such in
the incantation texts. The most well-known is the lilith that haunts men at
night as a succubus and is dangerous to their wives and children (Yamauchi
1967, pp. 23–4). There is a very highly developed demonology with proper
names that defy deciphering and references to 60 male temple spirits, 80
female Ištars, and 360 tribes and amulet spirits belonging to Ištar (Yamauchi
1967, pp. 229, 273, 277). Iranian demons (divs) are simply incorporated as
dEws (Juusola 1999, p. 83).
Demons and dEws alike are sealed by the seal of Solomon in Syriac, Jewish
Aramaic, and Mandaic texts (Naveh & Shaked 1993, p. 140; Juusola 1999,
pp. 83–4). Otherwise, the Judaic content of these texts consists of
invoking the Holy Name and various angels to adjure the demons. The
Tetragrammaton (YHWH) and its derivatives (Yah, YHYH, Yahbeyah,
YYY, etc.) are used (Segal 2000, p. 26); invocations occur in the form ‘in
your name I am acting, Yahwe the Great God’ or ‘in the name of Yahwe
Sebaoth, the God of Israel’ (Juusola 1999, p. 87). Demons are expelled in
the name of Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Ariel, Abiel, Heniel, Jasdiel, Barqiel,
Shamishiel, Shalitael, Metatron, etc. (Gordon 1993, pp. 144–5; Shaked 1999,
pp. 190; Segal 2000, p. 26). Texts often end with ‘Amen, Amen, Selah’.
On one particular bowl the lilith is driven off by ‘the mighty one of Abraham,
by the rock of Isaac, by Šaddai of Jacob’ and by I-am-who-I-am, holy angels,
and the great angels cAzriel, Qabqabqiel, and cAqriel (Shaked 1999, p. 181).
Otherwise, liliths and even male demons are expelled according to Judaic
law by serving them with a bill of divorcement (ge{) given by the legendary
Rabbi Joshua son of Perahya, who is said to have lived in the first century
BCE. (Gordon 1993, p. 145; Naveh & Shaked 1998, p. 17; Shaked 1999,
pp. 177–82; Levene 2003, p. 19. On R. Joshua ben Perahya, see Gager
1992, pp. 229–31; Maier 1978, pp. 117–26; Schäfer 2007, pp. 34–40).
Levene points out that for the ge{ to be effective it assumes that something
like a marriage existed between a human and a demon. This is why Shaked
(1999, p. 176; 2001, pp. 66–8) has preferred to see the use of the ge{ against
demons as a metaphor, a form of sympathetic magic, or an absurd ‘fake legal
situation’ rather than taking it literally.
The Judaic content in the incantations also includes an awareness of Bible
stories, the use of biblical and nonbiblical Hebrew phrases, and the quotation
of actual Bible verses from Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel,
Psalms, Song of Songs, Daniel, Isaiah, Amos, Zephaniah, and Zachariah
(Shaked 1999, pp. 186, 195; Segal 2000, p. 26). The most popular verse is
Zach. 3:2 ‘The Lord rebuke you, O Satan, even the Lord who has chosen
Jerusalem rebuke you,’ that appears so far in at least six bowl texts and a
Palestinian amulet according to Yamauchi (1996, p. 53) and Naveh and
Shaked (1993, p. 25). There is nothing unusual about this. Bible verses have
been used in all sorts of Jewish magic, and some verses have been designated
for magical use. Bible verses are also quoted in the liturgy, so the magicians
might have quoted them from the liturgy rather than directly from the Bible,
and the use of Bible verses in incantations could be because of their
prominence in the liturgy. The boundary between prayers and spells is not
always clear (Naveh & Shaked 1993, pp. 22–31; Levene 2003, p. 11).
Liturgical material from the daily prayers is also used in the incantations
(Segal 2000, p. 26), and Shaked (1995, p. 205) sees this as a natural extension
into the realm of magic to employ ‘the power of the religiously sanctioned
prayers for the magical effort’.
There appears to be a connection between some incantation texts and
the mystical Hekhalot texts in Hebrew believed to have been composed
between the fourth and seventh centuries CE. Boustan (2006) cautions against
using these affinities to retroject full-blown Hekhalot literature back to the
period of the incantation bowls and argues for dating the emergence of
Hekhalot literature as a distinct class of texts to the early Islamic/geonic period
(ca. 650–950 CE). The Hekhalot texts use magic methods to obtain secret
knowledge about the heavenly world, while the incantation texts use the
supernatural powers of that world to achieve a particular goal (Naveh &
Shaked 1993, pp. 17–20; Shaked 1995, pp. 197–8).
According to Shaked (1995, p. 203), the angelic names used in the bowl
texts and in Hekhalot literature ‘come from the same type of mystical–magical
preoccupation with the production of holy names, and represent the same
literary tradition.’ There are traces of Hekhalot in the magic of Palestinian
amulets and in some incantation bowls, but this is not typical of Jewish
magic in general during Late Antiquity (Shaked 1995, pp. 198, 206).
Nevertheless, Levene (2003, pp. 14 –5) considers bowl texts to be ‘the only
material evidence for magical practices that are implied in the Hekhalot
texts.’ He also sees Late Antiquity as a very creative period in composing
incantations (p. 10).
The Judaic content of these incantation texts has been used mainly
to establish the religious identify of the writers. It could also be used to
understand how this kind of magic was a dimension of Jewish religious life.
Much the same can be said of the Mandaean content in the Mandaic
incantation texts. But the only way we can recognize it is by reference to
the Mandaean literature that began to be written down during the seventh
century CE. The earliest collections are the Ginza (treasure, Lidzbarski 1925)
and The Book of John (the Baptist, Lidzbarski 1915). Mandaeans definitely
existed by the seventh century and had emerged as a distinct religious
tradition from the gnostic milieu of Late Antique Babylonia with roots in
Judaism, Zoroastrian, and Christian influences, ideas drawn from Marcionites,
Manichaeans, and Kantaeans, and rituals that emphasize immersion in living
(i.e. running) water (Mayer 2004, pp. 141–2, see also BeDuhn 2000). But
the exact origins and antiquity of this religious group remain controversial
[for a general introduction, see Rudolph (1960–1961); for an excellent
description of the modern Mandaeans, see Drower (1962)].
The doctrinal content involves the usual gnostic myth of the creation of
the material world by a demiurge, the entrapment of light in darkness, and
the rescue of light from darkness. The names of the main actors are specific
to the Mandaean tradition and can thus be recognized as such in the Mandaic
incantation texts where these figures function in the same way as Judaic
figures: to bind and expel demons. For instance, texts with Mandaean content
often begin with the invocation:‘In the name of Life!’ as do the sections of
the Ginza and conclude with ‘Life is victorious’ (Montgomery 1913, p. 252;
Yamauchi 1967, pp. 169, 251, 263, 281; Müller-Kessler 1999, p. 202; Segal
2000, p. 26). Demons are also suppressed by the power of Manda d
Hiia (Knowledge of Life), the Mandaean Savior (Yamauchi 1967, p. 251;
Müller-Kessler 1999, p. 204; Segal 2000, p. 26; Mayer 2004, p. 146), and
by 366 supernatural messengers and intercessors (called Uthras) such as
Yawar, Kbar Ziwa, Ziawar Uthra the son of Light, the righteous, armed
Hibil, etc (McCullough 1967, pp. 49, 50 –1;Yamauchi 1967, pp. 249, 251,
281; Müller-Kessler 1999, pp. 199–200; Segal 2000, p. 26). There are also
references to Ptahil, who built the House (the Mandaean demiurge), to the
‘assembly of Ptahil’ (i.e. the souls of the recent dead), and to a celestial river
called the Great Jordan of Life (Yamauchi 1967, pp. 209, 253; Segal 2000,
pp. 23, 25) that are known from Mandaean literary sources. It is said that
the ‘seven masters of the House’ (presumably the planets) accept the name
of Nbat ‘because of the brilliance of the three Uthras who dwell on the
Great Jordan’ (Yamauchi 1967, p. 189).
There are also some anomalies. The seven planets and the 12 signs of the
Zodiac are normally considered to be demonic by Mandaeans (Yamauchi
1967, p. 40). But in one Mandaic incantation text, a magic knot is
strengthened by the pure Yošamin, by Abatur (the Third Life in the
Mandaean emanation system), and by Ptahil, who built the House, and also
by Šamiš in his brilliance, Bel (Jupiter), Nebo (Mercury), Nergal (Mars),
Kewan (Saturn), the Moon, Dlibat (Venus), and Daniš (Knowledge)
(Yamauchi 1967, pp. 39, 253). In others, Azdai, Yazdun (or Yazrun),
Yaqrun, the great Prael, Urpael, SahDiel, and Raphael are said to have seized
the raging, cursing women by the hair of their heads, broken their high
horns, and bound them by their tresses to make them dissolve their curses
(Yamauchi 1967, pp. 183, 173, 177, 223, 267), which does not appear to
reflect anything in Mandaean literature. There is also one Syriac bowl text
that seems to have Mandaean content according to Montgomery (1913,
pp. 242 –3) because of a reference to AlahA, the name of the Light king in
later Mandaean religion, and to the ‘mystery of heaven of the assembled
waters and of earth’ that resembles ‘the Great Mystery’ that helps Hibil-Ziwa
in his descent to hell in the Ginza.
As it has been noted above most of the demons in the Mandaic incantation
texts have an older Mesopotamian or Iranian background. These include
male and female liliths, ancient Mesopotamian gods and goddesses, and
Zoroastrian supernatural beings (Müller-Kessler 1999, p. 208). Demons also
came from rival religions. The official polemic in Mandaean literature against
Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Islam served to establish boundaries
for the Mandaean community (Yamauchi 1967, pp. 33 –4). An example of
this would be the reference to a Mešiha demon dwelling in a church in
Qrabul in a Mandaic incantation text (Müller-Kessler 1999, p. 208).
Otherwise, the relations of Mandaeans with other religions in the
incantation texts seems somewhat inconsistent or perhaps ambivalent.
Antipathy to Judaism may be reflected by identifying Adonai as the king of
the demons, but the names of Jewish angels, the words amen and selah, and
the legal terminology of the Jewish divorce to drive off the lilith, are all
found in Mandaic incantations (Yamauchi 1967, pp. 45–7, 64; Müller-Kessler
1999, pp. 202, 204). Adonai Yorba, the leader of all the temple spirits and
chariots of darkness is used in a positive role in one text to remove curses
(Yamauchi 1967, p. 155). Another text, repeated on two bowls, that describes
four (Uthras?) standing guard on the great crown of brilliance at the north,
south, west, and east gates who grasp demons by the legs and hurl them into
the black infernal depths (Yamauchi 1967, pp. 198, 193) appears to echo
the Hekhalot literature (Shaked 1995). With regard to Iranian content,
Abugdana is the king of the devils (Yamauchi 1967, p. 231), while Spenta
Armaiti and Anahita, two powerful female supernatural beings in
Zoroastrianism, occur as the demons Ispandarmid-Lilit and Anahid-Lilit in
Mandaic incantations (Müller-Kessler 1999, pp. 206–7). The name of a

female demon, Yazd-ndukh, means ‘daughter of God’ in Persian (Shaked
1997, p. 110). But the opposition of light to darkness reflected in the phrase
‘turn back the light on the darkness’ to reverse a curse (Yamauchi 1967,
pp. 64, 205) may merely be dualist. The word for personified Knowledge
(Daniš) that occurs in a positive context (Yamauchi 1967, pp. 38, 253) is
Persian, although Shaked (1985) argues that this would be an inappropriate
name for a demon and associates it with a Manichaean Middle Persian word
for ‘affliction’.
Müller-Kessler (1999, p. 208) recognizes a continuation of an older
Babylonian magical tradition in parts of the Mandaic magic texts of Late
Antiquity. Together with Kessler (1999, pp. 65, 85–6), she collapses the
difference in time by looking at the changes in late Babylonian religion
during the Seleucid and Parthian periods. They note that Babylonian deities
have already become demons in the latest cuneiform texts as they are in the
earliest Mandaic texts. They use Geller’s (1997) argument that cuneiform
writing lasted until the second or third century CE. to suggest that the temples
could also have survived that late, making contact with the ancient temples
the source for the astronomical omens in the Ginza. They also make the
second and third centuries, when the cult of the region of Babylon, Borsippa,
and Kutha was taken over by Mandaeans, the terminus post quem for the
oldest Mandaic texts. This early dating for Mandaeans is speculative and
perhaps too neat. It is just as likely that Mandaeans emerged out of a generally
gnosticising pagan milieu in third-century Babylonia or later.
In all of this, there is an emphasis on long range continuity from antiquity
to modern times. Müller-Kessler and Kessler (1999, pp. 67–8) compare
Mandaic incantation texts to twentieth-century short Mandaean incantations
written on paper to show the long-term continuity of ideas. Mayer (2004,
p. 143) is more aware of the possibilities of change in the Mandaean religion
over time.
Compared with the Judaic and Mandaean content there is hardly any
Christian content in the incantation texts. Two Syriac amulets dated to the
sixth or seventh century begin with ‘In the name of the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit’; one Syriac bowl ends that way. There are no quotations
from the New Testament or early Christian literature (Harviainen 1993,
pp. 35–6; 1995, p. 55; Juusola 1999, p. 76).
There is also very little Zoroastrian content in the Jewish Aramaic,
Mandaic, or Syriac bowls (Shaked 2001, pp. 71–2); Iranian religious content
is not necessarily Zoroastrian or is a different kind of Zoroastrianism
unknown in the Zoroastrian literature. Apart from the demons of Iranian
origin already noted, there are dozens of Iranian names among the clients,
many of which are theophoric and thus provide some indication of the
popular piety encountered by the Muslims in Iraq where this otherwise
unknown Iranian religious heritage survived fortuitously because of its
‘persistant existence in the syncretism of popular religion in Sasanian
Mesopotamia’ (Shaked 1997, pp. 113 –4). The religious significance of the

Iranian names among the clients of incantation bowls would be a fruitful
subject to pursue systematically.
It is clear that there is more religious information about Jews and
Mandaeans than about anyone else in these texts. It is also clear that there
is much more to Judaism and Mandaeanism than appears in these texts (see
articles on Judaism and Mandaeanism).
Given the combination or mixture of content from different religious
traditions in the same dialect of Aramaic and sometimes in the same text,
syncretism continues to be an overarching theme in this field. Indeed,
Harviainen (1993, p. 34) has remarked that syncretism has been emphasized
at the expense of confessional identity. One of the first to attempt an analysis
of the ‘complex religious-cultural syncretism’ of the incantation texts was
Obermann (1940), who identified two main components: (i) ‘Chaldaean’
witchcraft and astrology, and (ii) Iranian eschatology and demonology grafted
onto Jewish monotheism. More recently, Harviainen (1993, p. 37; 1995,
p. 53) has explained syncretism by horror vacui. The magicians wanted to
cover all the bases by appealing ‘to all the protective powers to overcome
all the adversaries which were known to them.’ The syncretistic features of
incantation texts reflect a society where the members of different religions
living side by side shared many ideas and practices on the level of popular
beliefs and customs that were not necessarily accepted by the leaders of those
religions. For Harviainen, ‘syncretism did not imply independence of
religion; it was solely an additional instrument with which people tried to
strengthen the protective system provided by their native religion.’ For
Müller-Kessler and Kessler (1999, pp. 74 –5), Mandaean syncretism was an
adaptation of the syncretistic tendencies of the latest cuneiform texts. Levene
(2003, pp. 21 –2) notes that cross-cultural exchange was common in Near
Eastern magic during Late Antiquity and reports Harvainen’s horror vacui
thesis (for a discussion of religious syncretism in Late Antique Egypt, see
Frankfurter 2003).
It tends to be assumed that the syncretism of the incantation texts operated
at the level of ‘popular’ religion, and that the latter was in some fashion
distinct from a religious tradition that is considered to be ‘official’, ‘mainline’,
‘high’ (Harviainen 1993, p. 33; 1995, pp. 53, 54), ‘conventional’ (Naveh &
Shaked 1993, p. 34) or ‘mainstream’ (Shaked 2001, p. 62). In contrast, what
appears in the incantation texts is considered to be ‘mass’, ‘popular’, or ‘folk’
religion (Harviainen 1993, pp. 34, 37; 1995, p. 54; Shaked 1997, p. 103).
Shaked (1997, pp. 104, 106–7, 110) has actually given a definition of this
‘popular’ religion as a rudimentary monotheism with a supreme deity served
by powerful subordinate beings, a belief in a fundamental dualism of good
and evil spirits and the ability of malevolent spirits to cause harm, and a
tendency to blur the distinction between deities and demons.
There has also been some recognition that the boundary between magic
and religion is difficult to draw. Harviainen (1993, p. 37) has argued that
‘the confessional formulae testify that even magic was not outside the realm
of religion – in this respect the incantation texts are not interconfessional.
The magicians (and obviously their clients as well) were fully aware of the
religious groups inside which they were born and within which they were
living and acting.’ According to Naveh and Shaked (1993, p. 34), ‘The
magic texts themselves contain an enormous amount of material which is
also used in conventional religion, and the normal order of service in the
synagogue (and in the church as well, for that matter) is full of formulae that
are also used in magic.’ More recently, Shaked (2000, p. 74) has noted that,
although Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians have all condemned magic, the
practices contained in the texts under discussion here were not considered
to be magic by those who performed them but to be pious acts of invoking
holy names to achieve positive aims. ‘Magic’ was used to describe the
reprehensible acts of the followers of other religions.
Future directions in this field depend on the publication of the rest of the
texts. As Shaked (2001, p. 61) puts it ‘the only way to do justice to this
material is to edit as much of it as possible in a systematic manner and to
make it properly available to the public.’ In this process it would be useful
to establish a computerized data base of these texts. Although it would be
premature to attempt a synthesis at this point, it is to be hoped that in editing
the remaining texts scholars will not only pay attention to the issues outlined
above but will be open to new issues that are likely to emerge from the
texts.
Short Biography
Michael Morony is mainly interested in the social and economic history and
historiography of western Asia from Late Antiquity to the early Islamic
period. His interest in the incantation bowls is mainly as a source for social
history. His main monograph Iraq after the Muslim Conquest (Princeton 1983)
examined patterns of historical continuity and change from Sasanian to early
Islamic Iraq. Recent work includes two edited volumes on Production and
the Exploitation of Resources (Ashgate/Variorum, 2002) and on Manufacturing
and Labour (Ashgate/Variourm, 2003) and articles on ‘Magic and Society in
Late Sasanian Iraq’ in S. Noegel, J. Walker, and B. Wheeler, eds., Prayer,
Magic and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World (The Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2003); ‘Economic Boundaries? Late Antiquity and
Early Islam’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 47.2 (2004);
‘History and Identity in the Syrian Churches’ in J. J. Van Ginkel, H. L.
Murre-Van Den Berg, and T. M.Van Lint, eds., Redefining Christian Identity.
Cultural Interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam (Peeters, 2005);
and ‘For Whom Does the Writer Write?: The first Bubonic Plague Pandemic
According to Syriac sources’ in L. Little, ed., Plague and the End of Antiquity.
The Pandemic of 541–750 (Cambridge, 2007). He has taught in the History
Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, since 1974. He
holds a BA in Near Eastern Languages from the University of California,

Berkeley, and an MA in Islamic Studies and a PhD in History from the
University of California, Los Angeles.
Note
* Correspondence address: Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles, 6265
Bunche, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1473, USA. Email: morony@history.ucla.edu.
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Religion and The Aramaic Incantation Bowls: Michael G. Morony

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Religion Compass 1/4 (2007): 414–429, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2007.00029.

Religion and the Aramaic Incantation Bowls

Aramaic magic incantations written in ink on pottery bowls or inscribed on

bowls are 13– 20 cm in diameter and 3– 8 cm in depth. They are either

of edited bowl texts continues to increase as new material from private

to unlearned scribes who more or less wrote as they spoke.’ According to

as Dilbat/Libat (Venus) as well as Bablita (B)ltia, the consort of Bel), Mulit

Mandaic incantations (Müller-Kessler 1999, pp. 206–7). The name of a

Mesopotamia’ (Shaked 1997, pp. 113 –4). The religious significance of the

holds a BA in Near Eastern Languages from the University of California,

© 2007 The Author Religion Compass 1/4 (2007): 414–429, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2007.00029.x

© 2007 The Author Religion Compass 1/4 (2007): 414–429, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2007.00029.x

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