Demons in the Ancient Near East

As Milgrom notes, Israel’s neighbors had a robust demonology. One of the most important demonological works, the sixteen-tablet book known as Udug-hul (Evil Demons), shows how early and widespread was the belief that the demonic world could possess people. This work contains materials dating from the Old Akkadian (2300-2200 BCE) to the Seleucid period (300-200 BCE), thus demonstrating the long-standing fears that many people in the ancient Near East had of the demonic. For instance, one apotropaic text from the composite work states,

Do [not say, “let me] stand [at the side].”

[Go] out, [evil Udug-demon,] to [a distant place],

[go] away, [evil Ala-demon], to [the desert].

Here we see, like in Leviticus 16, the association between the demonic and the wilderness, as well as a spell to exorcise the demonic presence. Another text portrays the possession of a man and the rite needed to remove the demon from the man’s body:

Go, my son, Asalluhi,

Pour water in an anzam-cup,

And put in it tamarisk and the innuš-plant.

(He cited the Eridu [incantation]). Calm the patient, and bring out the censer

and torch for him,

so that the Namtar demon existing in a man’s body may depart from it.

Yet another illuminating text describes the nature of the demonic in the following terms:

Neither males are they, nor females,

They are winds ever sweeping along,

They have not wives, engender not children,

Know not how to show mercy,

Hear not prayer and supplication.