Piotr Michalowski

SUMERIAN MAGICAL TEXTS

Meetings: Tuesday, 2-5 pm, 2068 FB.
Office hours: Tuesday 1-2 and by appointment (piotrm@umich.edu), 2068 Frieze.

The course will concentrate on reading Sumerian incantations of the third and second millennia BC.  We will begin by reading Old Babylonian magical charms and then move back in time to work with Ur III and Early Dynstic texts.  The philological study of these compositions will be augmented by discussions of the ritual use of the texts and the role of incantations in the early Mesopotamian literary tradition.

Background readings:

Graham Cunningham, Deliver Me from Evil: Mesopotamian Incantations: 2500-1500 B.C. Studia Pohl. Series maior 17.  Rome: Pontificio istituto biblico, 1997.

Adam Falkenstein, Die Haupttypen der sumerischen Beschwörung literarisch untersucht. Leipziger semitistische Studien nf. Bd. 1. Leipzig, J. C. Hinrichs, 1931.

Markham J. Geller, Forerunners to Udug-Hul: Sumerian Exorcistic Incantations. Freiburger altorientalische Studien 12.  Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag, 1985.

Manfred Krebernik, Die Beschwörungen aus Fara und Ebla : Untersuchungen zur ältesten keilschriftlichen Beschwörungsliteratur. Texte und Studien zur Orientalistik 2. Hildesheim: Olms, 1984.

Piotr Michalowski, "The Early Mesopotamian Incantation Tradition," pp. 305-326 in Pelio Fronzaroli, ed., Literature and Language at Ebla. Quaderni di Semitistica 18. Florence: Dipartimento di linguistica, 1993.