Montgomery, Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur, p. Zadok, “Nippur in the Achaemenid Period: Geographical and Ethnical Aspects” (dissertation, Hebrew University, 1974), pp. Davies and Louis Finkelstein, The Cambridge History of Judaism Volume 1: The Persian Period, p. 14, 2014.Ĥ. Michael David Coogan, “Jews at Nippur in the Fifth Century B.C.”, The Biblical Archaeologist Vol. Fossey, La Magie Assyrienne, Paris: 1902.ģ. Janet Howe Gaines, “ Lilith: Seductress, Heroine or Murderer?”, Bible History Daily, Sept. Sweeney, Isaiah 1–39: With an Introduction to Prophetic Literature, 1996, p. The usage of Lilith in Isaiah 34 - as a nature spirit that haunts ruins and roams the uninhabited wilderness - might lie somewhere between its earlier stage as a Babylonian wind deity and its later stage as a mischievous demon that would haunt people’s homes and oppress them.ġ. Marvin A. “The supreme declaration of Second Isaiah that the gods are naught and nothing, unfortunately was not sustained, and even onetime beneficent gods, when banished, returned as demons to vex the faithful.”⁷ Jewish incantation bowl from Nippur with depiction of Lilith This can be seen as an example of how “the religion of yesterday becomes the superstition of today”, as J.A. These bowls, written in Aramaic, Mandean and Syriac by Jews and Mandeans, would be kept in people’s homes to ward off Lilith and Lilu as well as other evil spirits derived from the Babylonian religion.
Jewish records from this time are almost nonexistent, but a large number of incantation bowls from the fourth to sixth centuries CE have been excavated from Nippur. Excavations conducted in 1893 revealed some 800 tablets - the records of a local banking family - dating to the reigns of Artaxerxes I and Darius II (mid-to-late 5th century).⁴ Some eight percent of the names in those records are Jewish,⁵ and 28 of the 100 or so settlements around Nippur were Jewish.⁶ During this period, a major Jewish community apparently became established in Nippur, a city on the Euphrates southeast of Babylon. The Jews came into contact with Babylonian religion and mythology about Lilith in the centuries following the Babylonian conquest. A protective amulet from Syria, dated to the seventh or eighth century BCE, reads:īe off with you this instant, this instant, Lilith. They are associated with the wind, and they are believed to seduce adults and poison children. Lilith appears frequently in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian incantations as one of a trio of spirits or lesser deities: Lilu, Lilith, and Ardat Lilith.² The first is described as being male and the other two as female. Adam, Eve, and Lilith (in the middle) depicted at Notre Dame Cathedral Here, we are dealing with a much older Mesopotamian myth. Of course, this Medieval assimilation of Lilith to stories from the Bible about Adam and Solomon is not at all what the author of Isaiah 34 had in mind. The Zohar, a Jewish Kaballistic work from the late 13th century, developed the origins of Lilith further and cast her as an immortal seductress who had even attempted to seduce King Solomon as the Queen of Sheba. After a brief fight, she left Adam and flew away, becoming a demon queen who preys on men and children to this day. In this text, Ben Sira explains to Nebuchadnezzar how Lilith was the first woman created for Adam, but that she had refused to submit to him. Many people who are casually familiar with the name “Lilith” have probably heard the Medieval tales about her as Adam’s original wife - a legend first attested to in the eighth-century Alphabet of Ben Sira. The context is a little more violent, with imagery related to destruction and desolation:Īnd I, the Instructor, proclaim His glorious splendor so as to frighten and to te all the spirits of the destroying angels, spirits of the bastards, demons, Lilith, howlers, and and those which fall upon men without warning to lead them astray from a spirit of understanding and to make their heart and their desolate during the present dominion of wickedness… She appears in an apocryphal work found at Qumran, known as Song for a Sage or the less descriptive 4Q510. Let’s take a closer look at the latter.įirst of all, it’s worth pointing out that this is not the only appearance of Lilith in Jewish scriptures. Verses 12 through 16 describe the desolation of the land:Īll its princes will be brought to nothing.Īlong with this bestiary of wildlife, we encounter some interesting mythical creatures - satyrs and Lilith. This apocalyptic poem, which scholars now believe was a late addition to the book, appears to describe the destruction of Edom by the Nabateans in the 5th century BCE¹. Anyone who has read through Isaiah has come across the hauntingly beautiful poetry of Isaiah 34.
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