A lilu or lilû is the masculine Akkadian word for a spirit or demon. A female lilû was called a lilītu or ardat-lilî. Together, these were a class of demon that the ancient Mesopotamians believed emerged from the unfulfilled spirits of adolescents who died before marriage or conceiving children. "Lilû" and its root word lil- also show wider meanings linked to spirits, desolation, and wild creatures.
History
Scurlock and Andersen (2005) attribute the origin of "the lilû class of demons" (pg. 434) to treatment of neurological and
mental disorders as well as
such as
syphilis (pg. 95).
[Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian medicine: ancient sources 2005 "The reason for the attribution of this disorder to the lilu was probably that the majority of patients developed characteristic symptoms in adolescence or early adulthood. This pattern of onset is characteristic of some mental disorders" ] An abundance of
cuneiform text characterizes the lilû as "teenage demons". (pg. 273). As these demons were thought to afflict members of the opposite sex, lilû were often held responsible for illnesses afflicting girls (pg. 434). Scurlock and Andersen suggest an association with
Innara, although not necessarily positively, as one ardat-lilî was described as "mistreated by the hand of Istar" (pg. 434, pg.273).
In Sumerian and Akkadian literature
In Akkadian literature hlilu occurs.
[Deliver Me from Evil: Mesopotamian Incantations, 2500-1500 BC - Page 149 Graham Cunningham - 1997 "Partly or wholly bilingual incantations in the Old Babylonian period (continued)]
Text 313: Geller 1989 text An, Malluhi, Directed against witchcraft PBS 1/2 122 b Enki, Utu Features divine dialogue" (partly bilingual) In Sumerian literature lili occurs.
[Deliver Me from Evil: Mesopotamian Incantations, 2500-1500 BC - Page 177 Graham Cunningham - 1997 "This is particularly the case in Sumerian incantations, with only two of the daimons specified in Sumerian texts being mentioned in Akkadian incantations, Lamastu and to a lesser degree Ardat Lili. In contrast to the Sumerian attribution "] Dating of specific Akkadian, Sumerian, and
texts mentioning
lilu (masculine),
lilitu (female) and
lili (female) are haphazard. In older scholarship, such as R. Campbell Thompson's
The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia (1904), specific text references are rarely given. An exception is K156 which mentions an
ardat lili.
[Thompson p.XXXVIII] Heinrich Zimmern (1917) tentatively identified
vardat lilitu KAT3, 459 as paramour of
lilu.
[Akkadische Fremdwörter als Beweis für babylonischen Kultureinfluß. Leipzig, 1917][Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur - Page 76 James Alan Montgomery - 2011 "So in the Talmud they dwell in the beams and crevices, the cesspools, etc.,52 even as in Greek magic demons 45 Acc. to Zimmern, KAT3, 459 = paramour of lilu. Better Thompson. (Devils, etc., i, p. xxxvii, Semitic Magic, 65), who regards the ..."]
A cuneiform inscription lists lilû alongside other wicked beings from Mesopotamian mythology and folklore:
Sumerian King List
In the
Sumerian King List the father of
Gilgamesh is said to be a
lilu.
[Raphael Patai, p. 221, The Hebrew Goddess: Third Enlarged Edition, ]
'Spirit in the tree' in the Gilgamesh cycle
Tablet XII, dated , is a later
Akkadian translation of the latter part of the Sumerian
Epic of Gilgamesh.
[George, A. The epic of Gilgamesh: the Babylonian epic poem and other texts in Akkadian 2003 p. 100 Tablet XII. Appendix The last Tablet in the 'Series of Gilgamesh' ] It describes a 'spirit in the tree' referred to a
ki-sikil-lil-la-ke. Suggested translations for the
Tablet XII 'spirit in the tree' include
ki-sikil as "sacred place",
lil as "spirit", and
lil-la-ke as "water spirit".
[Roberta Sterman Sabbath Sacred tropes: Tanakh, New Testament, and Qur'an as literature and culture 2009] but also simply "owl", given that the
lil builds a home in the trunk of the tree.
[ Sex and gender in the ancient Near East: proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2–6, 2001, Part 2 p. 481]
The ki-sikil-lil-la-ke is associated with a serpent and a zu bird. In Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld, a willow grows in Inanna's garden in Uruk, whose wood she plans to use to build a new throne. After ten years of growth, she comes to harvest it and finds a serpent living at its base, a Zu bird raising young in its crown, and that a ki-sikil-lil-la-ke made a house in its trunk. Gilgamesh is said to have killed the snake, and then the zu bird flew away to the mountains with its young, while the ki-sikil-lil-la-ke fearfully destroys its house and runs for the forest.[Hurwitz (1980) p. 49]
Relationship to Hebrew Lilith and lilin
Judit M. Blair wrote a thesis on the relation of the Akkadian word
lilu, or its cognates, to the
Hebrew word
lilith in Isaiah 34:14, which is thought to be a night bird.
[Blair J. M. De-demon. ising the Old Testament: An Investigation of Azazel ] The Babylonian concept of lilu may be more strongly related to the later
concept of
Lilith (female) and
lilin (female); ). In
Jewish mythology,
Lilin is a term for night spirits.
In the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch,
lilin come from the desert and they are similar to
shedim.
Samuel Noah Kramer (1932, published 1938)[Kramer, S. N. Gilgamesh and the Huluppu-Tree: A Reconstructed Sumerian Text. Assyriological Studies 10. Chicago. 1938] translated ki-sikil-lil-la-ke as Lilith in "Tablet XII" of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Identification of ki-sikil-lil-la-ke as Lilith is stated in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (1999).[Manfred Hutter article in Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst – 1999 pp. 520–521, article cites Hutter's own 1988 work Behexung, Entsühnung und Heilung Eisenbrauns 1988. pp. 224–228] According to a new source from Late Antiquity, Lilith appears in a Mandaic language magic story where she is considered to represent the branches of a tree with other demonic figures that form other parts of the tree, though this may also include multiple "Liliths".[Müller-Kessler, C. (2002) "A Charm against Demons of Time", in C. Wunsch (ed.), Mining the Archives. Festschrift Christopher Walker on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday (Dresden), p. 185] A connection between the Gilgamesh ki-sikil-lil-la-ke and the Jewish Lilith was rejected on textual grounds by Sergio Ribichini (1978).[Ribichini, S. Lilith nell-albero Huluppu Pp. 25 in Atti del 1° Convegno Italiano sul Vicino Oriente Antico, Rome, 1976]
See also
Notes
