Items related to Semitic Magic; Its Origins and Development
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ...carrying a dead body should go without shoes, "for it may happen that a shoe be torn and he be interrupted in this religious duty." the savage tabus on all circumstances connected with birth exist among the Arabs, Syrians, and Hebrews; it should therefore be no difficult thing to prove the same superstitions in Assyria. Indeed, the extraordinary thing would be if the law of the unclean tabu were not the same in all the Semitic tribes. With regard to the woman in her courses, the tablet, S. 491 throws some light on this tabu. It is a lexicographical text, evidently describing ghosts, and there are mentioned therein (a) ardat lilt ina apti ameli izzika (b) ardatu la simta (c) ardatu sa kima sinnisti la arihatu (d) ardatu sa kima sinnisti la nakpatu. "(a) The ghoul (lilith) works harm in the dwelling of a man, (J) the maid (who has died) before her time,2 (c) the maid who cannot menstruate as women do, (d) the maid who hath no womanly modesty (?)." The word in (c) is probably to be connected with arhu, 'month.' Now, although nothing is said of any tabu here, it is clear that in (a) a spirit is meant, and hence (b), (c), and (d) will all be ghosts of some kind. As a matter of fact they come into the same category as the ghost of the nursing mother, the sacred courtesan, and the others mentioned on p. 19; they are maidens dead through some peculiarity. Hence some mystical significance was clearly attached to the absence of this monthly function, or there would have been no mention of the girl in such a list of ghosts. There is, as a kind of cumulative evidence, the incantation that mentions the "woman with unwashen 1 Text quoted Bezold, Catalogue, 1376. See also p. 67. 2 La Simta appears to be an apocopated phrase....
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- PublisherTheClassics.us
- Publication date2013
- ISBN 10 1230291148
- ISBN 13 9781230291147
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages108
- Rating
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