Dedicating magic: Neo-Assyrian apotropaic figurines and the protection of Assur
Carolyn Nakamura
Abstract
As counterpoint to conventional studies that evaluate ancient systems of magic against the logic ofrational thought, this paper situates magical practice as a mode of knowing and producing anteriorto such logic, engaged in the reproduction of society. The discussion converges on Neo-Assyrianapotropaic figurine deposits, which provided magical protection of a priest-house at Assur. It isargued here that apotropaic magic engages in a mode of secrecy that underwrites protective powerin the social field. These material assemblages, as mimetic expressions of myth and dedication,configure protection in a play on the public secret, the pathos of the real as really made up.Protective power, therefore, emerges in this process that compels the perception and experience ofa transformed and protected reality.
Keywords
Mesopotamia; Assur; magic; apotropaic figurines; mimesis; dedication; material practice; produc-tion of space.
Technologies of (re)production
Magic is a mode of relating to things in the world; and this mode, which engages materi-ality to negotiate the human experience of transcendent powers and supernatural beings,delineates a process of bringing forth that which is invisible, imagined and powerful intothe hard-core realm of human perception and understanding. Heidegger’s analysis of theGreek concept of techne finds particular relevance here; techne serves ‘to make somethingappear, within what is present, as this or that, in this way or that way’, it denotes a‘producing in terms of letting appear’ (Heidegger 1977a: 361, emphasis added). But technealso expresses a mode of knowing, the essence of which consists in the revealing of beings:‘to know means to have seen, in the widest sense of seeing, which means to apprehendwhat is present, as such’ (Heidegger 1977b: 184). Viewed as a technique or technology,
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magic belongs to both a knowing and a producing that foregrounds materiality. Themagical object (or substance) presents an imagined reality that is apprehended andexperienced as real. Here, magic takes advantage of the recursive exchange betweenconcept and experience, imagination and physical reality; its power resides in thisinherent instability of social life, unleashed in the ‘letting appear’, the bringing forth of theinvisible into the material realm. Magic, with this capacity to transform reality, serves asan ‘affective technology’ (Meskell in press) and engages in the reproduction of society.Viewed in these terms, the material practice of magic constitutes nothing less than areproductive technology.
Dedicatory practice joins and often converges with magic under this concept of techne;like magic, dedication forges and transforms networks of social relations, mediatingbetween worlds and beings, effectively reproducing society. The current discussionexplores certain modalities of techne in a ritual of Mesopotamian apotropaic magic: thestrategic burial of protective figurine deposits under house and temple floors during theNeo-Assyrian period of ancient Iraq (c. 934–610 BC). This practice engages magic anddedication to create or bring forth protection. And it is the material production of sociallypowerful space and object-beings that achieves this goal. I consider the apotropaicprocess in terms of how conceptions of dedication and mimesis, which trace back to themythic origin of humans, configure magical protection. I would suggest that the deposi-tion of these assemblages as dedicatory caches mimics the creation of world order andtraces out paths of magical agency such that social reality becomes transformed. What Ifind compelling here is the idea that the production of society hinges on a maneuver ofmetaphysical proportions – the simultaneous duplication and obliteration of humanselves at their origins – and how this ‘secret’ converges with material practice to form asocially powerful reproductive technology. As such, magic orbits around somethinganterior to reason, a way of knowing contingent upon a secret that configures the produc-tion of humans and their society.
The secrecy of objects
Something which is involved in the very nature of social relations, something which liesat the heart of these relations, which is part of the groundwork of society, and whichnecessarily and continuously entails negative consequences for part of society, cannotappear as such in the representations individuals and groups produce of their society.
(Godelier 1999: 173)
This ‘something’ that Godelier alludes to as a primary condition for the production andreproduction of society, is what Taussig names as the ‘public secret’: that which is generallyknown but cannot be articulated (1999: 5). And this ‘knowing what not to know’ providesa social skill essential to being a person, a social being, and is no less essential to societyitself (ibid.: 195). The secret, more than just a thing, is a process (Canetti 1984: 290; alsosee Taussig 1999: 144), a process which permeates and configures various reproductivetechnologies. In greater Mesopotamia, the public secret enshrouds the myth of humanorigins: the fact that humans create the gods or beings who ‘create’ human life and society.
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This imagined reality underscores a culturally mediated worldview – a secret or truthwithin – that inhabits and is sustained by social practice. Materiality is key in this dialectic:certain devoted objects confront a kind of ‘hard-core’ understanding of the world with theprocess of public secrecy, amounting to a participation between matter and spirit, appear-ance and essence, and ideal and real (Taussig 1999: 192). Such objects locate and presentthe synthesis of that which can and cannot be expressed or represented to society (afterGodelier 1999: 137); namely, the true nature of the relationship between humans and theirimaginary doubles.
Anterior to the division of mind and body, there is mimesis: the age-old and ratherprofound faculty that stands somewhere at the beginning of language, the beginning ofmemory and the mediation of experience in-the-world. In Mesopotamia, this mimeticfaculty merges with the public secret to reproduce and create social life; the originalsubstitution of gods for humans – that simultaneous duplication and effacement of humanselves at their origin – constitutes the secret whose possibility assures the possibility ofsociety ‘because this obliterating of real humans and replacing them with imaginarybeings, this repressing beyond consciousness of the active role of man in the origins ofsociety . . . is necessary in order to produce and reproduce society’ (Godelier 1999: 137).This social reality locates power in an ur-presence created by the miming of humans intooriginal being (the divine). This is Taussig’s ‘miming the real into being’ (1993: 105–6), asit were, writ large at the origins of human society. And this original mimesis of the self isnotable on two accounts: first, this self-miming is tantamount to self-obliteration at itsorigins; second, the copy not only assumes the power of the original, but magnifies thepower of the original.
Original mimesis, therefore, accomplishes the creation of a powerful, divine super-pres-ence through self-obliteration. By and large, humans truly believe in and experience thisdivine presence and being. This fact gets at the most provocative aspect of the publicsecret: that the original creation of absence – the absence of physical being (both humanand divine) – ensures, no less than produces, the presence of a powerful spiritual being thatis experienced and perceived as real. This reality of undeniable presence through absenceconfigures the public secret as social power; and this power emerges through a cunningreversal: the secret as made by persons in turn becomes the secret making persons(Taussig 1999: 121). ‘It is in this surrender to the thing made, to the creation taking overthe creators, that we find the pathos of the real as really made up’ (ibid.). The inviolabilityof this surrender to imagined, invisible divine beings configures sacred power, since thegods give back; they give back to humans their rules and customs as idealized and sacredrealities. In turn, humans constantly reproduce and reform these ideals through social andmaterial practice. It is this convergence of myth, power and materiality in public secrecythat I take as a departure point for understanding an ancient Mesopotamian reality inwhich clay figurines became magically powerful and powerfully real.
The apotropaic
In Mesopotamia, the Neo-Assyrians (c. 934–610 BC) devoted a significant amount ofthought and endeavor to their relationships with the ‘first beings’: the divine owners of the
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universe who gave them life and civilization. Not surprisingly, this primordial debt toimaginary, invisible beings figured profoundly in how humans made sense of their world.A relationship prefigured by the obligation of service and devotion to the gods probablyprovided an organizing principle for myth, magic, religion, state administration and kinglypower. Archaeologically, we can interrogate this phenomenon through material practice.
The early excavations of ancient Mesopotamian cities unearthed provocativeNeo-Assyrian deposits buried beneath room floors (Fig. 1): brick boxes often containingclay figurines portraying mythical beings – gods, animals and various hybrid types – foundsingly, in pairs or groups of seven. Notably, ancient humans placed these boxes underparticular areas: flanking doorways, along walls, in corners, thresholds and the middle ofrooms. These assemblages, found at Assur, Nimrud, Nineveh, Kish, Ur and Babylon,conformed closely to a practice recorded in various ritual texts (Gurney 1935; Smith 1926;Wiggermann 1992). These texts suggest that the ritual served to purify and protectindividuals and buildings from disease and evil forces, and entailed a protracted series ofelaborate ceremonies and acts performed by a trained practitioner.
Previous studies of these materials provide detailed figurine catalogs (Klengel-Brandt1968; Rittig 1977; Van Buren 1931), iconographic analyses (Ellis 1967, 1995; Green 1983,1986, 1993–7; Wiggermann 1993–7) and mythological and textual analyses (Wiggermann1992). Such studies, although rigorous and thorough, fall short of doing justice to thesophistication of this ancient practice. Particularly, the scholarship conspicuously omitsany account of these data in terms of social practice. These apotropaic assemblages areevocative precisely because they present a material imprint of human practice in spaceand time; moreover, ritual texts and a substantial corpus of research on Mesopotamiancultural history can add considerable depth and detail to the interpretation of this prac-tice. Modern scholarship, therefore, needs to theorize and contextualize various gesturesof apotropaic practice, drawing from multiple classes of data. With this goal in mind, Irevisit a case study from Assur (Andrae 1938; Klengel-Brandt 1968; Preusser 1954) andconsider how apotropaic deposits might be seen in terms of a reproductive technology,negotiating human–divine relations towards the localization and production of protectedspace.
Figure 1 Positions of brick capsules 1–16 in the Haus des Beschwörungspriesters (after Miglus andHeidemann 1996: Plan 132c).
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Of human origins: the gift that takes
The conception of world origins was debated over nearly four millennia in variousmythologies of diverse Mesopotamian cultures, peoples, and polities. Although variousmythologies constantly re-negotiated conceptions of world order and creation, certainideas of human origins and their place in the world endured throughout the region.
One of the most prevalent ideas maintained throughout the mythic tradition is thedivine creation of humans as servants of the gods. In most cases, the great god Ea/Enkiconceives humankind as a substitute to free the gods from having to labor the earth fortheir sustenance. The Atrahasis epic recounts the creation of humankind from a mixtureof clay of the apsu and the blood of a slain rebel god (Tablet I, 210–13). Other myths relatedivine human creation using only this clay (Enki and Ninmah, 24–6) or blood (Enumaelish, Tablet VI, 33). These materials of human creation are relevant to the mimesis ofprotective beings and will be discussed later on. But currently, I am concerned with howthis mythological theme delineates the creation of humankind in terms of eternal humanservitude to the gods. Humans are born servants. This fact prefigures the cunning humanability to make demands through the dedicatory gift, the giving that takes. The Mesopot-amian gods are the true owners of all things and possessions in the world, including thoseprocured from the earth. The divine gift of life establishes a primordial debt, which placeshumans in eternal obligation to labor and provide for the gods, but, in performing thisservice, humans simply return what rightfully belongs to the gods. Humans have nothingto give but themselves; from this position, they can only demand (Derrida 1992: 142). Andwhat they demand is that the gods give what they have to humans – give them theresources to live, produce and thrive – but also give by taking them, ‘by taking what theyare and by taking them such as they are’ (ibid.: 144). In other words, humans as servants(what they are) who have nothing (such as they are) demand to be taken under the careof the gods; this is the demand for protection.
Episodes from the Atrahasis and Gilgamesh epics depict how humans are able tonegotiate protection of their precarious existence (as both useful servants and annoyingover-breeders) through unanticipated gifts of devotion. In these stories, people narrowlysurvive scourges sent by the gods – first plague and then flood – with help from Ea and bypresenting offerings to win back the gods’ favor. After the flood, Utanapishtim (alsoknown as Atrahasis), the father of the only surviving human family, presents an offering tothe mass of remorseful, heartbroken and hungry gods:
Then I set out everything in all directions and sacrificed [a sheep].I offered incense in front of the mountain ziggurat.Seven and seven cult vessels I put in place,and [into the fire] underneath [or: into their bowls] I poured reeds, cedar and myrtle.The gods smelled the savor, The gods smelled the sweet savor,And collected like flies over a (sheep) sacrifice.
(Kovacs 1992: 102, lines 155–61)
This suppliant, more than obligatory, act of offering proves to be a highly effective methodof persuasion. Humans redeem their existence by fulfilling their original purpose: to
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provide gifts, dedication and devotion to the gods. And, with these acts, humans find theycan demand protection of their existence from the gods.
God-given protection ensures the reproduction of society, since the gods, those substi-tute beings who replace humans at their origins, ‘give [humans] back their own laws andcustoms, but in a sacred form, idealized, transmuted into the common good, into a sacredprinciple which brooks no argument, no opposition, which can only be the object ofunanimous consent’ (Godelier 1999: 174). The process of reversal in the dedicatory giftrecalls the uncanny exchange in the secret of origins: ‘the creation taking over thecreators’. This process, in which the categories of having, being, giving and taking merge,becomes a precondition of social being (following Derrida 1992: 144). The role of dedica-tion in the public secret, therefore, produces and configures the nature of protection.Techne inhabits dedication as the two-sided coin of creation/protection. Dedicationcreates in the sense that it reproduces necessary conditions of social life: the life andessence of the divine; and it preserves (protects) in that it makes this creation actual.Herein lies the public secret in the form of the gift that takes back, and what it takes backis power.
Dedicated mimesis
Say you the stone or wood, or silver is not yet a god? When then does he come to thebirth? See him cast, molded sculptured – not yet is he a god; see him soldered,assembled, and set up – still not a god; see him bedizened, consecrated, worshiped; hey,presto! He is a god – by a man’s will and the act of dedication.
(Minucius Felix, translated in Walker and Dick 1999: 117)
In the context of Neo-Assyrian apotropaic magic, dedication engenders a protectedreality by creating the presence of powerful beings in the material world; these areprotective deities and spirits that come to inhabit the world as a presence that is appre-hended as real. Neo-Assyrian magical figurines perform the fulfillment of the wish forprotection. More precisely, they manifest this wish. Dedicatory gestures, which animatethis magical practice, are not merely the obligatory acts of servants, but specific requests;they constitute the apotropaic, ‘the defense that goes on the offensive’ (Derrida 1992:142). In short, dedication takes a creative role in this context; it grounds the process thattransforms matter into being. Also essential to this transformation is the mimesis of divinecreation.
The ritual text, Sep lemutti ina bit ameli parasu, ‘to block the entry of the enemy insomeone’s house’ demonstrates the dedicatory mode that inhabits the entire creation ofthe protective figurine, from the consecration of the clay, dedication to the gods anddeclaration of being:
Incantation: Clay pit, clay pit, you are the clay pit of Anu and Enlil,the clay pit of Ea, lord of the deep, the clay pit of the great gods; you have made the lord for lordship, you have made the king for kingship,you have made the prince for future days; your pieces of silver are given to you, you have received them;
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your gift you have received, and so, in the morning before Samas, I pinch offthe clay NN son of NN; may it be profitable, may what I do prosper.. . . .[As soon as] you have recited this, you shall speak before Samas as follows: [statues] of Ea and Marduk, repelling the evil ones,[to] be placed in the house of NN son of NN [to] expel the foot of evil,I [pinch off] their clay before you <in> the clay pit.
(Wiggermann 1992: 13, lines 151–61)
These instructions recall the gift that takes: ‘your pieces of silver are given to you . . . yourgift you have received’. This consecration of ritual materials reduplicates the humanobligation of giving back that which already belongs to the gods; this in turn sets up therequest/demand for power: ‘may it be profitable, may what I do prosper’. These instruc-tions call for the re-enactment of creation itself – from the utterance of words to thepinching off of clay – all dedicated to Samas, the sun god (see Black and Green 1992: 54).In this dedicated mimesis, human creation assumes the power of original creationamounting to a demonstration that transforms reality (after Taussig 1993: 106). The claybecomes the clay of the deep – the original matter from which the world was created –fashioned into a powerful being with divine or supernatural powers and qualities. Thethick lime plaster which coats many of the figurines, often obscuring their distinctivefeatures, may be associated with divinity and protection (see Mallowan 1954: 87). Specu-lating further, it seems possible that this plaster represents melam, the luminous, visiblemark of the supernatural.
Provocatively here, the spirit of supernatural being comes to inhabit a physical realitythat presents a blatant sham for a double: miniature clay figurines dipped in thick limeplaster. But, with mimesis, the copy need not be a ‘good’ or accurate copy (Taussig 1993:13). I would suggest that this intentional creation of a humble copy constitutes a cunningdissimulation akin to what Taussig calls defacement, an act which produces ‘violated’representations such that they are no longer merely symbols, but come to life (1999: 30).The ‘poor’ counterfeit, like a built-in form of defacement, brings insides out, revealing apowerful presence through the labor of the negative. The power of the spirit spills forthinto a controllable presence through this very negation of the secret; the secret (thehuman creation of the divine) becomes articulated, performed, exposed, as if to propelthe figure beyond the mere status of ‘powerful object’ and merge into powerful being, butthis revelation becomes concealed immediately in the dedicatory gesture amounting tothe very creation of being in thing. And the ‘thingness’ of being is essential here. Humansmediate their relationships between worlds and beings materially, such that thiscommunication locates and structures a perceptible reality. Apotropaic figurines presenta palpable presence-in-the-world, as object-beings with the life of protective spirits and asa collective demonstration of a protected reality. By bringing the imaginary into the realmof direct perception, apotropaic assemblages mime a protected reality into being.
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Images of the underworld
The demonstration of protection involves further mimetic acts at the level of producingprotected space. By the Neo-Assyrian period, Mesopotamians conceived of an underworld,populated by various beings, both benevolent and malevolent: deities, dead gods, slain heroesand monsters, spirits of dead humans, and demons. Numerous sources locate the underworldunderground, beneath the surface of the earth (Black and Green 1992: 180; Bottero 1992:273–5). This idea follows from a traditional Mesopotamian conception of a vertical andbipolar universe where the earth, inhabited by living humans, separated the Heavens fromthe Netherworld (Bottero 1992: 273). Certain ritual practices reinforce this notion of anunderworld located underground, the most obvious being the burial of the dead in theground, thereby effecting their passage to their proper residence in the nether world.
The burial of apotropaic figurines may also reinforce a related conception of space.Most of the mythological creatures and gods depicted in apotropaic figures dwell in theapsu, the underground fresh water ocean. The placement of these powerful copies under-ground may act to channel or enervate their power, as they are brought forth to being intheir ‘proper’ realm. Notably, dedicatory practices often involve burial underground.Evidence of dedicatory caches and foundation offerings throughout various Mesopo-tamian cultural periods (Ellis 1968; Van Buren 1931) suggests that the gesture of burialhas certain and, perhaps, multiple meanings in ritual contexts.
The placement of apotropaic figurines underground is also interesting from theperspective of liminal space. The surface of the earth acts as a boundary that delineatesthe border between the underworld and the ‘living’ world of humankind. Many of the evilforces targeted in apotropaic practices – spirits, ghosts, gods and demons – find theirproper dwelling place in the underworld. But such unsettled or summoned beings are ableto leave this realm through cracks and holes in the earth and cause harm to humans. Thispermeability recalls Lefebvre’s notion of visible boundaries which ‘give rise to an appear-ance of separation between spaces where in fact what exists is an ambiguous continuity’(1991: 87). And this continuity locates potential; the surface of the earth, permeable toboth benevolent and malevolent beings from the underworld, presents potential forthreat and danger, but also for aid and protection. At the household scale, other liminalboundaries include corners, walls, thresholds, doors and windows. Indeed, one ritual textspecifically designates corners, doorways, windows, roofs and attics as areas in need ofprotection and purification (Wiggermann 1992: 17, lines 245–9). The door is both anentrance and exit; it keeps in, protects, secures, but also lets pass, invites and tempts(Bachelard 1994: 222). Similarly, corners are part walls, part door and designate spaces ofhiding, protection and immobility (ibid.: 136). Such liminal areas designate areas that are‘in-between’ or in transition at margins. As such, these areas could be regarded aspowerful since they locate potential.
Producing protection
The apotropaic assemblages from Assur offer roughly 117 clay figurines, thirty-fourdeposits and eight general figure types, two of which have subtypes (Table 1; for detailed
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catalog, see Klengel-Brandt 1968). The Haus des Beschwörungspriesters (Andrae 1938;Klengel-Brandt 1968; Preusser 1954), the best-known example at Assur, provides an idealcase for theorizing the deposition patterns of Neo-Assyrian apotropaic figurine assem-blages. This Neo-Assyrian house belonged to a priest family and probably accommodateda temple school during Sargonid times (Weidner 1937–9). The context is particularlyremarkable given that it not only provides material evidence of the apotropaic ritual, buttextual evidence as well. KAR 298 (Gurney 1935; Smith 1926; Wiggermann 1992), theinventory of figures which describes the production, use and placement of apotropaicfigurines, originates from this house along with many other literary and magical texts. Acontextual analysis of this practice, drawing upon material, textual and mythological data,will help illuminate certain Neo-Assyrian conceptions of protection.
Three different figurine types in sixteen known deposits are located in the priest house:the six-curled lahmu with spade (Type VIIa, Plate 2, thirteen figurines), the bird-apkalluwith cone and bucket (Type Ia, Plate 3, fifteen figurines) and the fish-apkallu (Type II,Plate 4, twenty-one figurines). The figures stand in brick boxes made from three or fourbricks placed upright about 35cm under floor level (Plate 5). Eleven of sixteen excavatedfigurine deposits occur in room 3, and have notable deposition patterns (Fig. 1). Withinthis room, capsules 1 and 4–8 contain pairs of Type Ia and VIIa; these deposits occurflanking the north-east doorway, in front of the NW door threshold, in the middle of theroom and in all corners except for the west corner, which Preusser suggests might havebeen robbed (1954: 58). Capsules 10 and 11 contain Type II in groups of seven and
Plate 1 Brick capsules in room 3 of the Haus des Beschwörungspriesters (after Preusser 1954: table28a).
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fourteen, respectively; these two deposits occur inthemiddle of room 3, oriented perpendicular to each other.Alternatively, capsule 10 could be viewed as positioned infront of south-east doorway, which would conform to theKAR 298 placement of the seven fish-apkallu guarding theentrance to the ritual chamber or bedroom (15–16). Inter-estingly, capsules 6, 10 and 11 do not cluster in the directcenter of the room but within the path between thenorth-east and south-east doorways.
Wiggermann’s reading of ritual texts suggests that,within this apotropaic ritual, the apkallu figurines act as‘purifiers and exorcists whose presence continuouslyprotects the inhabitants against evil influences’ (1992: 96).As such, he predicts that the apkallu figurines would beplaced in the private, more internal rooms of the house.
Furthermore, figurines of gods and monsters (Fig. 2),whose task is to defend against demonic intruders, wouldbe stationed in the outer entrance and at strategic pointswithin the house (ibid.: 97). However, the practice atAssur does not conform to this appealing analysis.Although, based on Preusser’s assumption that the doorinto courtyard 7 provides the entrance to the house(1954: 58), room 3 appears to be a well-enclosed interiorroom, the locations and types of deposits do not followtextual prescription. The fish-apkallu deposits do occur
Plate 2 Bird-apkallu, VA 4890,Ht 11.9 cm (after Preusser 1954:table 29c).
Plate 4 Fish-apkallu, VA 5484,Ht 11.7 cm )after Preusser 1954;table 29a).
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exclusively in room 3 of the house, but the lahmu/bird-apkallu deposits occur in interiorrooms 2 and 3 (capsules 1–11), near the house entrance (capsule 12) and in other areas(capsules 13, 14). Moreover, the lahmu/bird-apkallu pairing never occurs in the texts, andthe identification of lahmu as an apkallu figure is insecure, if not contentious (Ellis 1995;Wiggermann 1992: 147–52). This divergence supports Richard Ellis’s suggestion that therelation between apotropaic theory and practice at this time engendered a creativeintellectual endeavor, one that could compensate for the uncertainty, vagueness anddisagreement that characterized the process (1995: 164–5).
The histories and identities of apotropaic figures animate this practice with variousmythical and supernatural associations and therefore might contribute a certain dimen-sion to the meaning of protection in this context. In the Neo-Assyrian period, theseoften-divergent profiles come under the rule of Marduk (Green 1993–7: 248). The text Seplemutti ina bit ameli parassu locates the apkallu and lahmu as creatures of the apsu: ‘thestatues repelling the evil ones, of Ea and Marduk’ (Wiggermann 1992: 87, line 159).Various apkallu figures come to represent the Babylonian Seven Sages, mythologicalantediluvian beings who first brought the arts of civilization to humankind (Black andGreen 1992: 163–4; Wiggermann 1992: 75–6). Monsters, who previously engenderedvarious forces of life, death, peace and destruction that intervene in human affairs,become known as Tiamat’s creatures, the servants and defeated enemies of Marduk(Wiggermann 1992: 147–52, 1993–7: 229). As such, these supernatural beings providecomplexly appropriate figures of protection. Like humans, monsters are servants. Unlikehumans, monsters are not born servants; rather, they are born rebel warriors who become
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servants in their defeat. Their essential being as rebels completely overthrown, disarmedand acquired by the gods, monsters are reduced to mere pawns and extensions of divinewill and rule. As defeated enemies, monsters only serve; and, as apotropaic figures, theyserve protection: the embodiment of appropriated aggressive being and force controlledand redirected into defensive power. From this vantage, monsters seem well suited for theapotropaic: ‘the defense that goes on the offensive’. There is undoubtedly something ofthe public secret at work here, not only in the flip-flop of offense and defense, but in thedialectics of what is hidden and manifest in the hybrid physiognomies (Bachelard 1994:111). Although the issue cannot be further explored here, this point of hybridphysiognomy articulates well with the notion of liminality discussed earlier.
Suitably then, the apotropaic figures found in the priest house embody those beings withpowers suitable for protection. The bird and fish-apkallu carry various instruments thatpurify, effect release and remove sin: the mullilu (cleaner), banduddû (bucket) and libbigisimmari (offshoot of the date palm), respectively (Wiggermann 1992: 66–9). Lahmu – themonster embodiment of the preservation of life (ibid: 152) – becomes specifically associatedwith Marduk when carrying a marru (spade), the symbol of the god. The apkallu and lahmu,therefore, engender powers of purification and divine protection, respectively. In thecontext of the priest school, the pairing of purification (bird-apkallu) with the protection ofMarduk (lahmu) might find particular salience in terms of legitimizing the priestly powerunder the authority of Marduk; at the very least, this apotropaic team might provide anon-specific idiom of the apotropaic appropriate for general placement within the house.
Figure 2 Apotropaic figurine types found at Assur. 1. Drawing after Richards in Black and Green(1992). 2. The identification of the lahmu figure is controversial; it names both a cosmogonic deityand one of Tiamat’s creatures (Wiggermann 1992: 155–6), and also may represent an apkallu sage(Ellis 1995: 165; Russell 1991: 184, fn. 27).
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Considered collectively, the assemblage of Neo-Assyrian apotropaic figurines in room3 suggests linked conceptions of protection and dedication. The installation of variousbeings underground to guard dangerous liminal areas such as corners, doors, floors andthresholds delineates a protected space: a space of localized power and of a mythologicallocality. Notably, these assemblages also localize dedication in objects and space. Thecreation of powerful beings in apotropaic deposits engages the process of the public secrettantamount to the reproduction of certain social relations and realities: the priestly powerof purification, Marduk’s protection of humankind and a particular conception of beingand world order. The dedicatory mode anchors protective power, permeating the mimeticpraxis which creates the apotropaic: the miming of creation, being, world order andprotection. As such, apotropaic deposits engage the process of the public secret as dedica-tory gifts that demand protection and localize this power in designated spaces.
Concluding remarks
I have suggested that the efficacy of apotropaic magic emerges in the dedication ofmimesis: a constellation of mimetic gestures which create power in the process of publicsecrecy. From this perspective, the magical capacity itself, as a certain quality of ‘mimeticexcess’ tantamount to transformation, becomes operative in ancient social practice. And,if we follow the redoubled movements between dedication, protection and magic, weindeed find that ‘secrecy lies at the very core of power’ (Canetti 1984: 270).
While we can never know exactly how Mesopotamians conceived of apotropaic powerin their rituals, it is clear that their magic constitutes and engages in a particular mode ofknowledge, one that does not easily fit a Western paradigm. Consequently, the modernstudy of ancient life necessarily concerns the problematic task of transposing the views ofone culture to another. Such interpretation treads even more delicate terrain when itinvolves the articulation of ancient practice with contemporary theory and philosophy(see Asher-Greve and Asher 1998: 35). Despite these difficulties, such a project remains aworthy pursuit since it attempts to situate ancient life in terms that engage a modernaudience and have social resonance across a wider register. From this vantage, Mesopo-tamian magical practice emerges from the shadow of knowledge defined by modernreason and becomes salient as a socially reproductive technology.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Lynn Meskell for her support and encouragement of this project. I amalso grateful to Tom Aldrich, Robin Osborne and an anonymous reviewer whosethoughtful comments on earlier drafts helped clarify the ideas presented here. Needless tosay, all mistakes and misrepresentations remain my own. Research for this project wasfunded by a generous grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
Columbia University
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24 Carolyn Nakamura
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Carolyn Nakamura is a PhD candidate in the Anthropology Department at ColumbiaUniversity. Her main interests include social theory, magical systems and visual culture.
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