During the XIXth century, the British Museum in London hosted thousands of tablets from Babylon. The ancient city was located in present-day Iraq, about 100 km south of Baghdad. If the tablets make it possible to imagine what life was like in the ancient city, they did not have no special attention. Yet in the heap is a particular tablet that has remained in the shadows until recently.
Irving Finkel, curator in the Middle East Department of the British Museum, is the first to pay real attention to the small tablet. She is held in one hand and has lost at least his half. Nevertheless, Finkel was able to discover that the cuneiform text was talking about ghosts. Cuneiform writing is an ancient writing system from the Middle East.
In fact, he only really analyzed the tablet when he started his research for his new book: The First Ghosts.
The oldest known ghost representation
The Babylonian tablet is in clay and 3,500 years old. On the object, a barely visible drawing represented a bearded figure, grumpy. According to Finkel, it is about oldest ghost illustration known to this day. The artefact represents a male specter tied by a rope to a woman who leads him to the underworld. Just below the graph are instructions for exorcising an unwanted spirit.
“I think this ritual was performed in the case of a persistent, probably familial, domestic ghost that was beyond the joke stage, and a lot of people were scared and didn’t want it to last. “
Irving Finkel
An unusual ritual of exorcism
The ritual would have consisted of make two figurines, those of a man and a woman, which we would have equipped with certain clothing and very specific objects. Once the preparations were completed, the figures were to be buried together at sunrise. In parallel, the exorcist recited a spell.
Because of the missing half of the tablet, the spell text is incomplete. Nevertheless, he would start with theinvocation of the sun god Shamash. This one was considered to be responsible for ghost migration to the underworld. The aim would be to send the ghost in a figurine to receive Shamash’s blessing.
Finally, at the last line is a warning : “Don’t look behind you”. According to Finkel, this message would be addressed to figurines as they enter hell. However, it is not certain. He assumes that the warning could also s’addresses to the exorcist at the end of the ritual.
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