Mesopotamian · Sumerian and Akkadian · c. 1800–600 BCE
Udug-hul (Evil Utukku)
Anonymous; canonical series of sixteen tablets
The largest surviving corpus of Mesopotamian material against harmful spirits, running to sixteen tablets in its canonical form and naming the classes of being it is aimed at — the utukku, the alu, the etemmu, the gallu. This project carries it as an object of study and quotes none of it: it is an operative text whose content is the procedure, and the standing rule at the foot of AGENTS.md applies whatever its copyright status. What it is, whom it names and how it is arranged are recorded here; how it is performed is not.
Read Udug-hul (Evil Utukku) in full at the linked edition →What this text attests · 6
| Name here | Rank given | # | Powers described |
|---|---|---|---|
ardat lilî = The Ardat Lili | Night spirit | — | Named among the night spirits the series addresses, characterised by coming upon the sleeping. Described here as the series characterises the class; nothing of its procedure is reproduced. |
asakku = The Asag | — | — | The name after the demotion. The monster Ninurta kills in Lugal-e is by this material an ordinary word for a class of illness, addressed in the same breath as the other afflictions the series is aimed at. A defeated adversary surviving as a medical term is the Resheph pattern in a second language. |
etemmu = The Etemmu | The ghost of the dead | — | Named among the classes the series addresses, and distinguished within it by being a dead person rather than a spirit that was never alive. |
gallu = The Gallu | A class of harmful spirit | — | Named among the classes the series addresses, alongside the utukku and the etemmu. |
lamassu = Lamassu | — | — | The protective spirit invoked to stand at a person's side in the exorcistic series — the same figure the colossal gateway sculptures represent, working at the scale of one household. Described and not quoted, as the series is throughout this corpus. |
utukku = The Utukku | Evil utukku | — | The class the sixteen-tablet series is named against, described by its effects and its haunts rather than by identity. Recorded here as the series characterises it; the series' own remedies are not reproduced. |