Two Magic Bowls: New Incantation Texts from Mesopotamia

Abstract

The Babylonian Collection at Yale University owns a number of terra-cotta bowls adorned on their inside surfaces with texts written in alphabetic characters. The entire group consists of ten inscriptions, none of which has hitherto been published. Although I have so far been able to examine more closely only six of the inscribed vessels, it is very safe to say that in all of them we have to do with the wellknown species of inscriptions designed to serve the purpose of practical magic, that is, with incantation texts of one kind or another. Certainly by the type of Aramaic alphabet in which they are written, less certainly by their dialectical differences, the six bowl inscriptions just referred to divide themselves into three classes: (a) in four of them the writing is of the particular category of Aramaic generally known by the somewhat misleading name of Square Hebrew; (b) one bowl is written in Mandaic script and language; and (c) one bowl is inscribed with a peculiar type of Syriac estrangelo-a type that previously had been known to me only from facsimiles given in Professor Montgomery's celebrated volume Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur, published by the University of Pennsylvania Museum in 1913.1 In fact, the forty bowl inscriptions published in that volume