Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
First Advisor
Frahm, Eckart
Abstract
The categories of gods, demons, and monsters in ancient Mesopotamian cultures remain a popular topic in scholarship, whether in surveys of Mesopotamian religions, collected studies on demonology, or monographs devoted to individual gods and demons. Yet certain divine beings exhibiting characteristics of both gods and demons—thereby eluding easy classification—have yet to be the subject of their own in-depth studies. One key example is Namtar (“Fate” in Sumerian), who operated both as a minor god in the Underworld and as a demon responsible for plagues and illnesses. This dissertation is the first monograph-length study to focus on Namtar, charting his place in the Mesopotamian divine cosmos and situating him between the categories of “god” and “demon.” The evidence used in this study is the wealth of textual sources available to modern scholars on cuneiform tablets, spanning from the third millennium BCE down to the end of the first millennium BCE. To frame the approach to this textual material, the first chapter of this study delineates a theoretical model for distinguishing between gods and demons in Mesopotamia based on two criteria: First, a being’s position within the divine social system, and second, the modes by which humans interact with that being. The study continues with a philological analysis of the cuneiform texts that mention Namtar, to ascertain the ways he is presented, the roles he fulfills, and how he relates to the two criteria for distinguishing between gods and demons. The chapters divide the textual sources by genre. Chapter Two concerns the part Namtar plays in narrative texts and focuses on his role as a literary character. Chapter Three analyzes the numerous references to Namtar in incantations and ritual texts, most of which describe Namtar’s effects on humanity and his role as a demon of plague (though some of these texts indicate that Namtar could be invoked against other evil forces, such as witches). Chapter Four concentrates on other text genres in which there are only a handful of mentions of Namtar—such as hymns, prayers, god-lists, proverbs, and divinatory texts—and examines evidence for the worship or veneration of Namtar. The fifth and final part of this study synthesizes the various texts in which Namtar figures, weaving them into a diachronic picture of Namtar’s divine “career” through the millennia. It then endeavors to situate him in the model for distinguishing gods and demons outlined in the introduction. Ultimately, I argue that Namtar is a paradox: though he is a god in terms of his status within the divine social system, the functions he performs are akin to those of a demon, as are the modes with which humans interact with him. So he is a god by the first criterion outlined in Chapter One, and a demon by the second criterion. The dissertation ends with two appendices editing several first millennium incantations against Namtar that have not previously been given a modern critical edition. Not only does this dissertation provide a profile of an important Mesopotamian Underworld god and disease demon, it also has wider implications for the conceptualization of divine beings more generally. By studying Namtar’s liminal position between gods and demons, we can test and challenge approaches to mapping out the Mesopotamian pantheon within Assyriological research, arriving at more precise ways to describe ancient Near Eastern divine beings.
Recommended Citation
Beltz, Jonathan, "Namtar: Deity, Demon, Agent of Fate" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 944.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/944
