Walter Farber

Lamaštu was one of the most important Mesopotamian demons, playing a dominant role in the magico-religious and magico-medical beliefs and practices of ancient Mesopotamia for nearly two millennia. Yet, she has never been the subject of a scholarly monograph dedicated to the textual and visual evidence for her, her activities, and the measures that ancient magical specialists took to counter her. This volume also falls short of this description, because it covers only one part of the material: it is an edition of the textual record only, which is, however, collected here as completely as seems possible today. Walter Farber, who has studied these materials for decades, presents a comprehensive collection of all of the known texts, the texts of the primary incantations in a “score” format, and transliteration and translation of a number of ancillary texts. This much-awaited volume will fill the void in the literature on this aspect of the life and thought of ancient Mesopotamian peoples regarding the character of this malevolent creature and the means of warding off the threat that she posed.

An Edition of the Canonical Series of Lamashtu Incantations and Rituals and Related Texts from the Second and First Millennia B.C.

Lamaštu

Martha Tobi Roth

Matthew Stopler

Robert D Biggs joined the staff of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) in 1963 after receiving his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. In June 2004, he celebrated his 70th birthday and retired from the University of Chicago as Professor of Assyriology in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations; his service to the CAD, however, will continue until the final volume appears. To acknowledge and honour his forty-one years of extraordinary service to the Assyrian Dictionary as collaborator, associate editor, and editorial board member, contributions from some of his former and current CAD colleagues are assembled into the volume. It is fitting to revive this series, as the first volume, From the Workshop of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary: Studies Presented to A Leo Oppenheim , appeared forty years ago, in June 1964, and Biggs's contribution there was his first published article.

Walter Farber

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