Ancient Near East & Levant · c. 6000 BCE – 650 CE

Lamashtu plaques

Meaning

Lamashtu, daughter of the sky god Anu, is a lion-headed, donkey-toothed demoness with bird talons who kills unborn babies, infants and nursing mothers. On plaques she is shown suckling a pig and a dog, carrying combs and spindles as the gifts she is offered, and being driven away across a river on a donkey.

Intent

The plaque was hung in the room of a woman in labour or a newborn, with the spell inscribed on it, to banish Lamashtu. Pazuzu's head often peers over the top as her enemy. The ritual texts tell how she should be sent away with gifts, like an unwanted guest.

Significance

Lamashtu plaques are the most detailed surviving birth amulets of the ancient Near East, joining image, spell and ritual in one object. Infant and maternal death was so common that the demon was among the most feared in Mesopotamia.

History

Lamashtu is named in texts from the Old Babylonian period (c. 1800 BCE), but most plaques date to the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods (c. 900–539 BCE). Around 90 are known, from Assur, Nineveh, Babylon, Carchemish and even Samos in Greece.

Making yours

6–13 cm tall with a loop at the top. Low-relief cast bronze or carved stone, with a registered composition.

Ancient Near East & Levant: the tradition

Mesopotamian protection grew out of a world crowded with named demons, each with a job: Lamashtu killed infants, the utukku haunted, fever demons struck. Exorcists (ashipu) wrote incantation series such as Maqlû and the Lamashtu texts, and amulets put those texts and images to work. Carved stone animal seals of the Uruk period (c. 3500 BCE) are among the oldest amulet-seals anywhere. In the first millennium BCE, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian households hung Pazuzu heads and Lamashtu plaques. Phoenician traders spread Egyptianising amulets and glass faces across the Mediterranean, and in Sasanian Mesopotamia Jews, Christians and Mandaeans buried inscribed incantation bowls under their floors.

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Amulet with a Lamashtu demonca. 7th–6th century B.C.

Amuleto de Lamashtu, British MuseumAssyria · 800-550 a.C.

Lamashtu plaque 9162

Lamashtu plaque h9168 h9168

Amulet with a Lamashtu demonca. early 1st millennium B.C.

Lamashtu plaque h9174

Plaque de conjuration AO 8184

Babylonian religion and mythology (1899) (14780133724)

Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin 025

Amulett neuassyrisch Slg Ebnöther

Lamashtu amulets

Stone amulet. The demon Lamashtu stands on a donkey and suckles a wild pig and a jackal. Lamashtu preyed on women during childbirth and on their newborn babies. There is an incomplete Akkadian cuneifo

Basrah Museum-Assyrian Gallery-Stone Lamashtu plaque

Bronze plate, several Mesopotamian deities or creatures ward off evil spirits. From Iraq. 9th-7th century BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul

Plaque de protection contre Lamashtu

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