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Liber II · Ancient Magic

Liber II · Ancient Magic · Chapter VI: Mesopotamian Magic

Maqlû: The Assyrian 'Burning' Ritual Against Witchcraft

Maqlû, the Mesopotamian 'Burning' ritual, explained: tablets from Nineveh, figurines of witches burned by night, the exorcist's role and how scholars read it.

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Maqlû, Akkadian for "Burning", is the longest and most systematic Mesopotamian ceremony against witchcraft. Known chiefly from tablets copied in the seventh century BCE for the libraries of Nineveh and other Assyrian cities, it records around a hundred incantations and a ritual tablet for a single nightlong rite in which an exorcist burned and destroyed figurines representing the unknown witch who was believed to have harmed a patient.

Witchcraft in Mesopotamian Thought§

In ancient Mesopotamia, illness and misfortune could be explained in many ways: the anger of a god, a broken oath, the touch of a demon, a restless ghost or the hostile acts of a human sorcerer. Witchcraft (kišpū) belonged to this last category. The witch, usually imagined as a woman (kaššāptu) though men (kaššāpu) also appear, was thought to work in secret, using figurines, potions, dust, hair, food and drink, and above all harmful words, to bring sickness, impotence, quarrels, social disgrace and death.

Witchcraft was illegitimate magic, unlike the officially recognised work of priests and exorcists. Mesopotamian law codes treated it as a crime: the Code of Hammurabi, in the eighteenth century BCE, prescribed a river ordeal for anyone accused of sorcery without proof, and Middle Assyrian laws punished a proven sorcerer with death. Yet in practice the witch of the incantations is almost always unnamed. The sufferer did not know who had bewitched him; the ritual's task was to identify and destroy the witch symbolically, without public accusation.

The professional who handled such cases was the āšipu (also read mašmaššu), a learned exorcist trained in a large written corpus of incantations, rituals and diagnostic omens. His work is described more generally in Mesopotamian Magic, and the gods he invoked are introduced in Mesopotamian Religion.

The Tablets of Maqlû§

The standard version of Maqlû survives on clay tablets from the first millennium BCE. Most come from seventh-century libraries at Nineveh, including the collections assembled under King Ashurbanipal, while others come from Assur, Nimrud, Sultantepe and later Babylonian sites. Together they preserve eight tablets of incantations and one tablet of ritual instructions that pairs each incantation with an action. This ninth tablet made it possible for modern scholars to reconstruct the ceremony as performed.

The text was first edited by the Finnish Assyriologist Knut Tallqvist in 1895 and re-edited by Gerhard Meier in 1937. The definitive modern edition is by Tzvi Abusch, whose work over several decades established the structure of the series, the history of its growth and its ritual setting. Abusch argues that Maqlû developed from a much shorter rite into the elaborate standard form, probably in the early first millennium BCE, with later redactors adding incantations and arranging them in a deliberate dramatic sequence.

A Ceremony of One Night§

According to Abusch's reconstruction, Maqlû was performed during a single night and the following morning, at the end of the month Abu (roughly July–August). Mesopotamian texts associate this time with the passage of ghosts between the underworld and the land of the living, and with rites for the dead; it was thus a fitting moment to send the witch, too, down to the underworld.

The ceremony opens with an appeal to the gods of the night—the stars and the deities of the sky—before whom the patient lays a formal complaint, as in a lawsuit. The witch is accused, and the gods are asked to judge. Much of the night is then occupied with incantations addressed to the fire god, Girra (Gibil), and to Nuska, the god of the lamp, who are asked to burn, melt and consume the witch's figurines. The texts describe the witch's own spells being turned back on her: her knots are untied, her words reversed, her images destroyed as she tried to destroy her victim.

Toward dawn the ceremony changes character. Further incantations accompany the destruction of figurines in water and the protection of the patient's house, and in the morning the patient is washed and purified, with appeals to the sun god Shamash, the divine judge who sees everything. The structure thus moves from accusation through punishment to release and restoration of the sufferer.

The ritual details recorded on the tablets are evidence for an ancient religious practice and its symbolism; they are described here historically, as scholars have reconstructed them.

Two features stand out in Maqlû. The first is the use of figurines. The ritual tablet calls for images of the witch made of many substances, including clay, dough, tallow, wax, bitumen and wood. Each material allowed a different form of destruction: melting, burning, crumbling or dissolving. The figurines stood for the witch but also, by a logic of reversal, for her own magical images, so that destroying them both punished her and undid her work. Similar ideas about images and binding appear in many ancient cultures, as discussed in Maleficium, Curses and Protective Magic.

The second feature is the courtroom imagery. The patient presents his case before the divine judges; the witch is cast as a criminal; the gods deliver a verdict and execute the sentence. This judicial framing gave the exorcist's work the authority of cosmic law. It also reflects the Mesopotamian conviction that the gods were guarantors of justice, and that a victim of secret harm could appeal to them as to a king.

The incantations themselves are among the literary highlights of Akkadian magic. They use repetition, parallelism, wordplay on the names of materials, and vivid imagery of witches who prowl through the streets, enter houses and seize the victim's "mouth", or speech. Many end with a formula that sends the witch's evil back upon her.

Maqlû and the Wider Anti-Witchcraft Corpus§

Maqlû was not the only Mesopotamian rite against witchcraft. Dozens of shorter rituals, often designed for specific symptoms, survive and have been collected by Abusch and Daniel Schwemer in their Corpus of Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Rituals. The series should also be distinguished from Šurpu, another "Burning" series, which deals with sin and the consequences of broken oaths rather than with witches. Medical texts sometimes diagnose witchcraft as the cause of an illness and refer the patient to such rituals, showing that exorcism and medicine were complementary professions.

What makes Maqlû exceptional is its scale and design. It gathers material from different sources into a single ceremony with a clear dramatic arc, and its incantations were copied and studied by scholars over centuries. It is effectively a compendium of Mesopotamian thinking about the witch.

Why Maqlû Matters Today§

For historians of religion and magic, Maqlû is a key document. It shows an early, highly literate tradition of counter-magic, in which the witch was a figure of hostile secret power and the remedy was ritual performed by trained specialists under divine sanction. It provides some of the oldest evidence for the use of figurines in both harmful and protective magic, and for the idea that magic can be "returned" to its sender.

Comparisons with later European witchcraft must be made carefully. Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rites targeted an anonymous figure through symbolic action and did not involve the trials and mass persecutions of early modern Europe, described in The European Witch Trials. Yet the shared fear of the hidden human enemy who harms through spells links Maqlû with a long history of beliefs about witches, surveyed in What Is Witchcraft? and What Is Ancient Magic?.

Frequently asked questions§

What does Maqlû mean?§

Maqlû is an Akkadian word meaning "burning". It refers to the central action of the ceremony, the burning of figurines that represented the witch and her magic.

When was Maqlû written?§

Its incantations draw on older traditions, but the standard series was probably shaped in the early first millennium BCE. Most surviving copies date from the seventh century BCE, from Assyrian libraries such as Nineveh, with others from later Babylonian sites.

Was a real person burned in Maqlû?§

No. The ceremony burned and destroyed figurines representing an unknown witch. The witch was not identified or publicly accused, and the ritual worked symbolically through images, incantations and appeals to the gods.

Who performed the Maqlû ritual?§

It was performed by an āšipu, a trained exorcist and ritual specialist, on behalf of a patient who believed he or she had been bewitched. The patient took part in the ceremony, speaking or repeating some of the incantations.

Sources and further reading§