Asipu: Exorcist of Mesopotamia
The asipu of the ancient Mesopotamian cultures most resembles the later exorcist. The asipu was a respected member of professional society, whose venues of service included the royal courts in Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the ancient Near East.
There are three principal contexts for physical and psychic disturbances in asiputu (the practice of the asipu). These are instances in which gods or demons afflict the patient by reason of some transgression committed by the patient, or by reason of their own maliciousness, or by having been persuaded by witchcraft to forsake or to afflict the victim. The handbooks Surpu, Udug-hul, and Maqlu attend to each of these categories respectively, and serve as important reference materials for defining the activities and persons involved with ancient Near Eastern conjurations.
A hallmark of the Mesopotamian cultures was divination through observation of the natural world.
Wrongdoing, then, was perceived as one cause of illness in ancient Mesopotamia, and part of the healing process included a “confession” of one’s infractions.
The asipu serves more to appease the divine wrath than to exorcise it.
Surpu Tablets 5-6 describe an affliction as follows:
An evil curse like a gallu-demon has come upon (this) man,
dumbness (and) dace have come upon him,
an unwholesome dumbness has come upon him,
evil curse, oath, headache.
An evil curse has slaughtered this man like a sheep,
his god has left his body,
hid goddess, usually full of convern for him, has stepped aside.
Dumbness (and) daze have covered him like a cloak and overwhelm him incessantly.
Objects such as an onion, a bunch of dates, a piece of matting, a flock of wool, goat’s hair, and red wool) are unpeeled, undone, etc., by the sufferer, and cast into the fire.
The afflictions are the dimitu-disease, which attacks from heaven, and the Ahhazu demon, who comes up from the ground. Symptoms include paralysis of hands and feet, afflictions of one’s skin with scabs, fear, cough and phlegm, filling the mouth with spittle and foam, and afflicting with dumbness and daze.
The magician must wipe the patient with coarse flour, remove it, spit on it, cast a spell on it, place it under a thorn-bush on the plain, and thereby:
entrust his “oath” [to] the Lady of the plain and the fields,
may Ninkilim, lord of the animals, transfer his grave illness to the vermin of the earth…
Tablet 2 says:
release it, exorcist among the gods, merciful lord, Marduk…
Source: “Possession and Exorcism in the Ancient Near East” in Sieback, Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity
