Cursing in the Ancient Near East

By Anne Marie Kitz

Background

All families fight and sometimes what sound like harsh words are used. But what is really meant when someone asks their deity to “inflict a curse and evil”?

In the ancient Near East curses and blessings were a fundamental aspect of the relationship between human beings and their deities. These interactions were lively and dynamic, and mirrored human relationships among family members, between business partners, as well as subjects and their monarchs.

Even though the divine/human rapport was immensely unequal, it did not prevent mere mortals from bargaining with their deities or negotiating deals by arguing positions with the fervor of a legal advocate. In the process, promises, and threats, were made, in the form of blessings and curses.

The ancient attitude toward curses

It is not surprising to find that curses and blessings formed an important component in all ancient Near Eastern societies including ancient Israel. Curses directed against enemies were well known, for example in Egyptian Execration Texts that labeled foreign cities, and which were ritually destroyed to ensure victory.

But curses also found their earliest context in judicial settings. Legal proceedings were rooted in oaths that formalized contracts of all types, from sale documents, estate settlements to property disputes, and even the Covenant between Yahweh and his people (Deuteronomy 28:15–45): “But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee…”

Oaths required petitioners to call upon the deities to punish them should they lie or be unfaithful to the terms of a contract. Such conditional self curses were not taken lightly. This was especially the case because people were typically made to swear on a weapon that purportedly belonged to the deity. Should an individual violate the oath, the weapon would be used to execute the penalty, usually death, as an expression of divine judgment. A curse from the Old Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1792 to 1750 BCE) illustrates this custom: “May the god Nergal… have him beaten with his mighty weapon and shatter his limbs like those of a clay figure.” Clearly such outcomes made oaths both solemn and extremely frightening.

The expression of curses

Curses and blessings are nothing other than prayers uttered by mortals to the divinities. They are neither commands nor demands and there is certainly no assumption on the part of the speaker that either will have instantaneous effect. In the end they are little more than strongly articulated wishes. Deities, on the other hand, articulated curses differently. As supreme beings they did need not invoke a higher power to enact a malediction. Their curses were commands that mortals believed had immediate consequences.

Human beings expressed curses in three ways: through words, acts, and/or a combination of both. The treaty between the Neo-Assyrian king Aššur-nerari V with his vassal, Mati’ilu, king of Arpad, (ca. 755 to 745 BCE) preserves a horrifying curse that unites word with act to articulate the penalty of decapitation without actually saying it. “This head is not the head of a spring-lamb it is the head of Mati’ilu… If Mati’ilu should sin against this treaty, just as the head of this spring- lamb is cut off… so may the head of Mati’ilu be cut off.”

In addition, the above malediction clearly suggests that the animal was slaughtered in Mati’ilu’s presence. Since such acts were often a feature of curses, we may consider them ‘performed.’ This, of course, acknowledges the ritual character of maledictions.

The point of these types of curses was to instill such terror in the underling that it would restrain him from violating any part of the treaty. Some treaties and other types of contracts expand the number of curses to relentlessly reinforce the inevitable outcome as a consequence for disobedience. The Code of Hammurabi concludes with over thirty curses, while the Neo-Assyrian king, Esarhaddon (ca. 681–669 BCE), closes his succession treaty with over one hundred.

Some of these curses included rather personal threats to life and limb: “May Šamaš, the light of heaven and earth, not judge you justly. May he remove your eyesight. Walk about in darkness!” and “May Kubaba, the god[dess of] Carchemish, put a serious venereal disease  within you; may your [urine] drip to the ground like raindrops.

A scholarly misunderstanding

Perhaps the greatest impediment to the accurate understanding of curses in the ancient Near East was their unfortunate association with magic. This emerged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when some of the most important archaeological discoveries, such as the city Nineveh, were made.

Since all scholars at the time, regardless of their discipline, were first trained in the Bible, the religions of the ancient Near Easterners were often treated as false and inferior because they worshiped many deities, unlike the Israelites who worshiped only one. Consequently, many early Assyriologists evaluated texts with the presumption that the Babylonians and Assyrians practiced magic while the writers of the Hebrew Bible practiced religion.

This position became more difficult to defend when Biblical scholars began scrutinizing the oft-repeated phrase found in the Hebrew Bible: “Cursed are you!” (Deuteronomy 27:15–26). How was its use to be understood when human beings uttered it? Was the speaker commanding Yahweh to do something? Certainly that would not be very respectful. Or did the speaker utter the curse with the assumption that the words would take effect immediately? If so, would that not betray an Israelite belief in magic?

Resolution

A solution to this problem can be readily found in the way we express a blessing when someone sneezes. Our response is typically just two words: “Bless you.” In reality these words developed from a longer phrase “May God bless you” > “God bless you” > “Bless you.” The gradual shortening of the blessing produces certain unwanted effects. When “May” is eliminated the petitionary character of the request is lost. Now it sounds as though we are ordering God to do something, regardless of how he may stand on the issue. When “God” is removed, the agent of the blessing disappears. “Bless you” then becomes a command and unintentionally gives the impression that we confer the state of blessedness as soon as we utter the words. If this were the intention, then we would be practicing magic.

It is likely that the ancient form “Cursed are you!” also developed from a longer phrase. In this case, the fuller expression was shortened out of reverence for the Divine Name so as to prevent its inappropriate use.

People of the Ancient Near East were very respectful of their deities and saw their relationship as one based on reciprocity. In most cases the average person used curses to gain divine justice in an otherwise unjust world. This is not magic. It is their religion.

Anne Marie Kitz received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Cursed are you! The Phenomenology of Cursing in Cuneiform and Hebrew Texts.

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