Volume 14, Issue 1

This essay provides a general introduction to demonology in antiquity as well as a focus on ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. It is also meant as an introduction to those papers which were originally presented at the international conference titled “Evil Spirits, Monsters and Benevolent Protectors: Demonology in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia,” held on April 23, 2012 at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World of New York University, contained in the first section of this volume. Questions of the definition and function of demons in ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations are raised and discussed in light of a comparative approach to the study of ancient religions.

In this paper, a working definition and examples of “demonic paraphernalia” are provided, as well as methods of recognition. Besides being of interest in and of themselves, these types of objects provide clues as to the nature of the demons, thus helping us in our quest for a taxonomy and “demonology” of Ancient Egypt. More specifically, this paper focuses on the use of Late Bronze Age clay cobra figurines as a case-study for the broader exploration of Ancient Egyptian “demonic paraphernalia”.

The Underworld Books provide a unique perspective on divine taxonomy, juxtaposing gods with large, formal cults with gods whose existence is predicated on their membership within constellations of other netherworldly divinities. Examination of the ontological status of deities within the “Catalog” of the Book of Amduat and the Great Litany of the Book of Adoring Re in the West (a.k.a. The Litany of Re), including their use in non-funerary contexts, reveals a new definition for daimones within Egyptian theology.

In diesem Artikel wird eine medico-magische Bildkomposition aus dem ägyptischen Neuen Reich in ihrer Bedeutungsvielfalt diskutiert und kulturell verortet. Dabei zeigt sich ein hohes schöpferisches Potential und zugleich eine tiefe Verwurzelung in den Vortstellungs- und Darstellungsmustern der altägyptischen Kultur.

Drawing on a range of apocalyptic and magical texts from Roman and Byzantine Egypt, this paper argues that the Coptic Christian depiction of vicious underworld demons, so often cited as evidence of “Egyptian survivals,” in fact owes more to Jewish apocalyptic literature than ancient Egyptian mortuary texts - that scribes only recalled Egyptian traditions in the course of reutilization and interpretation of para-biblical apocalyptic traditions. Secondly, the paper attributes the development of this Coptic underworld demonology to the creative agency of scribes in late antique Egyptian Christianity, in whose own subcultures and practices any model of demonological syncretism must be situated.

The monsters and daimons (demons) of Mesopotamia belonged to a constellation of Zwischenwesen - interstitial beings with supernatural qualities or capacities - that occupied the space between humans and their gods. As the “Other,” if not always the enemy, their alterity was not only inscribed in their bodies but also reflected in their social alienation and geographical isolation. Strikingly imagined, where depicted or described, as morphologically anomalous or miscegenated (Mischwesen), the monsters and daimons lacked the kinship affiliations of both citydwelling humans and their gods and properly dwelt at the wild and inhospitable margins of the known world. This study explores their definition, functioning, and classification in a cosmos in which the overarching conflict was between order and chaos rather than good and evil, in which divinely organized and guarded civilization was ever threatened by the pressing and savage forces gathered in the wilderness beyond the city walls.

“Demon” is a generic term that hardly fits the various Mesopotamian beings, which according to modern scholars are grouped under this category. Despite the evolution of demonic imagery through different periods and sources, these beings share a series of common features such as their origin, position and role in the pantheon, liminality, actions and powers, hybridity, and aerial form. In my paper I will analyze these features so as to argue that incompleteness constitutes the main aspect of their nature.

A large corpus of terracotta plaques bearing the image of the demon Humbaba/ Huwawa, a major character in the Gilgamesh epic, have been excavated from late third and early second millennium BCE contexts at numerous sites in Mesopotamia. This essay explores the motif of Humbaba’s severed head within its ancient Near Eastern context in order to demonstrate that the head differs from other images of decapitation, as a representation whose supernatural power is unaffected by death. It concludes that the terracotta plaques were interpreted in sophisticated and multivalent ways by ancient audiences: as visual narratives representing a key moment in the epic; as apotropaic images displayed to guard transitions; and as important omens recorded in the past, which had the potential to reappear in the present.

On the basis of the preserved evidence, corpse daemons were practically employed in two specific fields: in love magic and in chariot racing. In this respect, the material of our sources seems significant: in Egyptian papyri the daemons are primarily used in erotic magic, whereas in lead tablets they are meant to manipulate chariot races. The study examines all known occurrences of nekydaimones, analyzing their functions and names, whenever referred to in the sources.

The daimones associated with the mystery cult of Samothrace have been interpreted as the distant memory of prehistoric smiths or dismissed from investigation altogether because of their absence from the epigraphic record. Anthropological models of metaphor formation offer a more nuanced approach to understanding their functions in the cult. The daimones’ ethnicity suggests a response to cultural interactions and economic production in the region; their metallurgical skills provided a key metaphor articulating a range of concepts which defined the rites, including secrecy, regional identity, and cosmological speculation.

In his Letter to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius of Antioch condemns his opponents to a “bodiless” and “daimonic” afterlife, and also quotes an apocryphal resurrection tradition wherein the risen Jesus eschews the label “bodiless daimon.” Ignatius, therefore, defines both Jesus’ and his opponents’ physiology in terms of the ‘daimonic’; but what would such an existence have entailed in antiquity? In what follows, I explore the rhetorical functions of Ignatius’ daimonic terminology by situating it within larger discourses surrounding daimonic physiologies. I contend that Ignatius’ daimonological terminology not only caricatures the docetic belief in a bodiless risen Jesus, but also condemns Ignatius’ opponents to a morose afterlife that runs directly counter to their anticipations. When contextualized within his letters more generally, Ignatius’ derisive rhetoric solidifies his construction of ‘docetic’ Christians: they are evil, sub-human, and daimonic, the epitome of the ‘other,’ doomed to inhabit the cosmic and societal margins, and unworthy of interaction with Ignatius’ fellow ‘orthodox’ Christians.

This essay examines two hagiographical accounts, each features a Christian holy man performing an unusual, though not aberrant, ritual action: casting a daimon onto or into a person. I argue that the priest Innocent in Palladius’ Lausiac History and Abba Daniel in John Moschus’ Spirituale Pratum acted in accordance with their late antique role as ritual experts and “charismatic ombudsmen” and, thus, they could manipulate power relations between the daimon and human to cleanse, protect and/or punish a human, sinful body. To grasp fully the hagiographers’ explorations of a holy man’s charismata-his power over daimones and what kinds of bodies that creates, I situate these narratives within a particularized context of contemporary and earlier Greek demonologies (Plato, Plutarch and Greek Magical Papyri, especially katadesmoi or binding spells), which reveals variant daimon/human relations through time and the consequential material, moral, and intellectual transformations relevant in these hagiographies.