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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2014
Babylon has been associated with incantation bowls since the first discoveries in the mid-nineteenth century. The “Rawlinson” collection of eight incantation bowls (seven were written in Aramaic and one in Mandaic) was accessioned on 9 October 1851 by the British Museum and, according to Trustees Minutes, had been “found in a tomb at Babylon”. Austin Henry Layard does not seem to have been privy to this provenance information when three of these incantation bowls were transcribed and translated in his book, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. Instead he claimed that the bowls from the “Rawlinson” collection were “obtained at Baghdad, where they are sometimes offered for sale by the Arabs; but it is not known from what sites they were brought.” This misinformation has been perpetuated and no further information has come to light on the unusual findspot.
Amongst the vast collections of the Iraq Museum are numerous incantation bowls from Babylon, to which IM 9726 can now be added (Fig. 1). The entry in the Register of the Iraq Museum, dated 1927/1928, is scant, not even mentioning the script of the bowl: “Bowl with Incantation Text. Baked clay 12.5 × 6.5 [cm]. Presented by Mey Marian”. Thirteen years later, Cyrus Gordon included IM 9726 in his resumé of international collections of incantation bowls that appeared in the 1941 issue of Orientalia. It was one of the eleven incantation bowls Gordon recorded from the Iraq Museum collection, which he noted “has increased considerably since my last visit to Baghdad in 1935” and which he correctly predicted “should eventually become the largest and the best”. However, Gordon, who noted that IM 9726 had nine lines of Aramaic, only presented excerpts of its text. He did not supply any photograph or drawing of this incantation bowl nor any other information.
The author thanks the British School of Archaeology in Iraq for financial assistance in order to research the collection of incantation bowls in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad; also the erstwhile Director-General of the State Organization for Culture and Heritage, Republic of Iraq, Dr Mu'ayyid Sa‘id Damerji, for his generous assistance at all times; and finally, Professor J. B. Segal for his advice on the reading of IM 9726.
1 British Museum, Trustees Minutes 1848–52, 362–3.
2 See Layard, A. H., Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (London 1853) 514–19Google Scholar, for Texts II (BM 91716), III (BM 91720) and IV (BM 91726).
3 Layard, op. cit., 509.
4 Montgomery, J., Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur (Philadelphia 1913) 16 Google Scholar. Also Geller, M., “Eight incantation bowls”, Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 17 (1986) 104 Google Scholar, where he states “purchased in Baghdad”.
5 Montgomery, op. cit., 13–14, noted their occurrence in the ruins of houses at Nippur, but mentions that, at least in one case, bowls were found in connection with a cemetery. Quoting the account of Professor John Peters, the leader of the University of Pennsylvania expeditions to Nippur in 1888–9, Montgomery writes, “we found ourselves in a graveyard … It was interesting to find, between one and two metres below the surface, in immediate neighbourhood of slipper-shaped coffins, inscribed Hebrew bowls.” He may have confused the stratigraphy of Nippur. Area WG, the source of the forty incantation bowls which Montgomery translated, is contiguous to the Parthian “Villa with a Court of Columns” complex which was investigated in 1889 by the University of Pennsylvania expedition. The slipper-shaped coffins would appear to be Parthian, whilst the chronology of incantation bowls is Late Sasanian. To date there is no excavated evidence for the usage of incantation bowls in a funerary context. For incantation bowls from the eighteenth season of excavation at Nippur (WG area) see Hunter, Erica C. D., “Two Mandaic incantation bowls from Nippur”, Baghdader Mitteilungen 25 (1994) 605–18Google Scholar. The tenth season of excavation at Tell Baruda by the University of Turin Centro Scavi discovered several incantation bowls buried in a courtyard. See Ricciardi, R. Venco, “Trial trench at Tell Baruda”, Mesopotamia 8–9 (1973/1974) 19 Google Scholar. The texts have been published by Franco, Fulvio, “Five Aramaic incantation bowls from Tell Baruda (Choche)”, Mesopotamia 13–14 (1978/1979) 233 Google Scholar.
6 Gordon, Cyrus, “Aramaic incantation bowls”, Orientalia 10 (1941) 116–41, 272–84, 339–60Google Scholar.
7 Ibid., 348.
8 All of ll. 1–2 and 9 and parts of ll. 3–5 and 8: ibid., 348–9.
9 Naveh, J. and Shaked, S., Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantation Texts from Late Antiquity (Leiden 1985) 132–45 (Bowl B), specifically 136Google Scholar.
10 Geller, op. cit., 102–5, together with a photograph (Plate IV). The author examined the Pearson bowl at the headquarters of Church's Ministry among Jewish People on 29 June 1999. She thanks Mr James Stedeford for his assistance in viewing the incantation bowl and also Dr Irving Finkel, Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, British Museum, for supplying the address of this society.
11 Sigla: {n}=dittography, 〈y〉 = supra-linear character, [yt] = reconstructed text.
12 See Juusola, Hannu, Linguistic Peculiarities in the Aramaic Magic Bowl Texts (Helsinki 1999) 153 Google Scholar, for reference to instances of the Hafel and Afel in incantation texts.
13 Macuch, R., Handbook of Classical and Modern Mandaic (Berlin 1965) 82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Both forms appear to have survived in Mandaic.
14 Drower, E. and Macuch, R., A Mandaic Dictionary (Oxford 1962) 31 Google Scholar.
15 Jastrow, M., A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, 2 vols. (New York 1951) 238 √GYL and 1332 √QYMGoogle Scholar.
16 Naveh and Shaked, op. cit., 144.
17
See Drower and Macuch, op. cit., 301 √NKR, √NKRA;
Smith, R. Payne, A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Oxford
1902) 340
Google Scholar entry 
; Jastrow, op. cit., 911.
18 Montgomery, op. cit., 291.
19
Cf. Jastrow, op. cit. 579 
II, 
Drower and Macuch, op. cit., 192 √YLL I wail, howl, lament; Payne-Smith, op. cit., 192 
howl.
20 Rossell, W., A Handbook of Aramaic Magical Texts (New Jersey 1953) 135 Google Scholar, and Isbell, C., Corpus of the Aramaic Incantation Bowls (Missoula 1975) 168 Google Scholar.
21 Gordon, C., “Aramaic magical bowls in the Istanbul and Baghdad Museums”, Archiv Orientálni 6 (1934) 323 Google Scholar.
22 Montgomery, op. cit., 81; Gordon, op. cit., 323.
23 Assemani, S. E. (ed.), Acta Sanctorum Martyrum Orientalium et Occidentalium in duas partes distributa adcedunt Acta S. Simeonis Stylitae, 2 vols. (Rome 1748) II, 243 Google Scholar.
24 The author wishes to thank the Rev. Professor William Horbury (Divinity School, Cambridge) for discussion on this point.
25 Cf. Montgomery, op. cit., 30; Naveh and Snaked, op. cit., 32; Rossell, op. cit., 14, 20; and most recently Juusola, op. cit., 44.
26 A second hand has added the incorrect description, “?Prayer for the Healing of the Sick 600 BC”.
27 Pearson, L., Through the Land of Babylonia (London 1939, 1951) 83 Google Scholar. A plate of the bowl is on the facing unpaginated page.
28 Geller, op. cit., 102, quoting Pearson.
29 Koldewey, R., Das wieder erstehende Babylon (Leipzig 1914) 242 Google Scholar.
30 Reade, J., “Rassam's excavations at Borsippa and Kutha, 1879–1882”, Iraq 48 (1986) 112 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 For the relationship of incantation bowls to Sasanian pottery, see the discussion in Segal, J. B. (with a contribution by Hunter, Erica C. D.), Aramaic and Mandaic Incantation Bowls in the British Museum (London 2000) 170 Google Scholar.
32 See the Appendix, Figs. 5–6.
33 Palaeographic samples are found in the Appendix. See Yardeni, A., The Book of Hebrew Script History, Palaeography, Script Styles, Calligraphy and Design (Jerusalem 1997) 206–8Google Scholar, for the script of incantation bowls from the “Byzantine period” and a chart of stylized letter-forms.
34 For further discussion of the “inner” and “outer” circles and their application in incantation bowls see Hunter's contribution in Segal, op. cit., 173.
35 Harviainen, T., “An Aramaic incantation bowl from Borsippa. Another specimen of Eastern Aramaic ‘Koiné’”, Studia Orientalia 51:14 (1981) 23 Google Scholar.
36 Montgomery, op. cit., 30; Naveh and Shaked, op. cit., 32; Rossell, op. cit., 14, 20; and Juusola, op. cit., 44. Cf. IM 9726 dklt': Pearson dklyyt' “daughter-in-law”; rḥqt': rḥyqt' “the distant one”; qrbt': qrbyt' “near one”; qyym': qym' “standing”; šqph: šqyph “struck”; ṣpnh: ṣpwnh “north”; mydnh: mydnhy' “east”; blyly: bylyly “by night”; bnghy: bynghy “at daybreak”; qdmyn: wqdmynn “in the presence”; šlwm: šlm “peace”.
37
Maḥlapta is a name common to both Aramaic and Mandaic incantation bowls. See
Hunter, Erica C. D., “Two Mandaic incantation bowls from Nippur”, Baghdader Mitteilungen
25 (1994)Google Scholar, for a female client named Maḥlapta and n. 11 for the name in other Mandaic specimens. Aramaic incantation bowls with the name Maḥlapta include Montgomery, op. cit., Texts 17, 19 and 24. Naveh and Shaked, op. cit., 135, cite what appears to be the male counterpart, Maḥlepa 
, although this appellation has been incorrectly listed in the volume's index as 
.
38 Scribal improvisation also occurs in a group of duplicate Aramaic incantation bowls from Nippur, particularly in their opening and closing formulae; see Hunter, Erica C. D., “Combat and conflict in incantation bowls: Studies on two Aramaic specimens from Nippur” in Geller, M. J., Greenfield, J. C. and Weitzman, M. P. (eds.), Studia Aramaica: New Sources and New Approaches (Oxford 1995) 61–75, esp. 64–5Google Scholar.
39 Hunter, Erica C. D., “A scroll amulet from Kurdistan”, ARAM 5 (1993) 246 Google Scholar, details scribal errors in an amulet dated to the nineteenth century AD, where the client's matronym has been substituted throughout the entire text.
40 For further discussion of Refrain A see Erica C. D. Hunter, “Excursions in Refrain A”, BSOAS (forthcoming).
41 Gordon, Cyrus H., “The Aramaic incantation bowls in historic perspective” in Fishbane, M. and Brettler, M. (eds.), Minhah le Nahum. Biblical and Other Studies Presented to Nahum B. Sarna in Honour of his 70th Birthday (Sheffield 1993) 142 Google Scholar. The author wishes to thank Professor Gordon for sending her an offprint of this article.
