Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Article

The Other Diagnosis

Learn More
The Other Diagnosis

Shurpu answers a different question from Maqlu, and the two together show a system of diagnosis at work. Maqlu asks who did this to me. Shurpu asks what have I done. The sufferer in Shurpu is bound by a mamitu, a curse or oath-sanction that has come into force because some obligation was broken, and the crucial feature is that he may not know which one. He is not being attacked. He has stepped on something.

The remedy is therefore comprehensive rather than targeted. The series recites the possible offences at length, so that whichever applies is named and released, and it is that list which has given Shurpu a readership far outside Assyriology. It runs from the plainly religious, contempt for a god, a broken oath, to the plainly social: moving a boundary marker, refusing a beggar, setting a son against a father, dividing a family, saying one thing with the mouth and another in the heart. It is not a law code and it is not a moral treatise. It is a list of the things a Babylonian expected might be silently held against him.

Erica Reiner's 1958 edition remains the standard, and her arrangement of the material is the one the literature cites. Her edition is in copyright, and this atlas describes the contents of the list rather than reproducing her translation of it.

Connections

Article On

Source Divinity Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition
Sources
Divinity Atlas Long-Form Articles, First Edition
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.