MATERIALITY AND PLACEMENT: MONSTERS IN LITTLE HOUSES UNDERGROUND?

In this section, I will discuss two general traits pertaining to this magi-cal practice: First, the monstrosity or animal hybridity of the figurines, which is perhaps part of the reason why many assume that they cannot be small deities. Secondly, their placement in little boxes underground, inside the house and in the gate, which is also puzzling since once they

have been installed, the figurines remain out of sight of humans, out of sight of the inhabitants of the house. I will not delve further into the possible patterns of placement of different figurine types in the house, although such a pattern in all likelihood did exist, as it is not consequen-tial for the present argument. As for the material form of the figurines, the monstrous figurines made of unbaked clay are often damaged, and the wood figurines are not preserved or are in fragments. Almost all of the clay figurines were found covered in gypsum, with details added with red or black paint (eyes, beards, fish scales, etc., Rittig 1977, 225–226).

Often, monstrosity is understood in negative terms. In many anthro-pological analyses, the emphasis is on the monsters as dangerous and inimical beings; the monster is ascribed hybrid traits in order to stand for, and often marginalize, the other, the alien, the stranger, whom the culture in question tries to suppress, overcome, or kill (Cohen 1996).

Yet, I find that this understanding of monster form is not adequate for interpreting the functions of monsters in some religious discourses, such as the Mesopotamian Mischwesen. Our contemporary perspective on the monstrous as predominantly evil and scary may impede our un-derstanding. Instead of understanding the hybridity of these monsters solely as fearful and scary, we might consider that the category of the monstrous may carry a broader signification. Above all, monsters are liminal beings. It is worth recalling that liminality always has both a benign, generative, creative side, and a negative, inimical, and dangerous side (van Gennep 1909; Turner 1969), and that conceptually, liminality can be understood as a much broader category than a phase in a ritual:

liminality may be expressed also in space, action, and person categories (Endsjø 2000; Feldt 2003).

Monsters in religious symbolism often thematize different spaces and their relations, or, in other words, the relations between humans and the strong, transformative forces and powers of ‘the other world’ (Feldt 2003). Monsters may therefore be presented as benign, friendly helpers and as malign, dangerous enemies, because they embody access to the strong powers of the other world. So, instead of seeing the monstrous as embodying only danger and fear, we should perhaps focus more on the fundamental ambiguity of monsters – on their power as ambiguous, just as ritual power may be seen as fundamentally ambiguous (Frankfurter 2006): the monstrous may bring blessing as well as curse. Qua their monstrosity, their hybrid bodies, monsters belong to two worlds, two orders – this world as well as the other world.

Monsters may thus be seen as commuters between, or media for communication and exchange between, the other world and this world, the world of supernatural beings and the everyday world of human life.

Of course the value ascription of some monsters may become culturally entrenched over time, but monsters may also be simultaneously benign and malign, just as they may be only benign. In a word, monsters are, as hybrids, liminal – and this is their most significant feature. As we can see on illustration 1 and 3, and in conjunction with the textual evidence, the present material indicates that it is the benign, creative side of lim-inality that is in focus here. The material appearance and treatment of these small ‘monsters’ point in the same direction as the texts. Indeed, we may conclude that the word ‘apotropaic’ reflects a too narrow under-standing of what these figurines ‘do’; here they secure the presence of the benign powers of the other world, as much as ‘ward off’ – or, they ward off by securing the presence of benign powers.

The other very remarkable trait is the placement of these monster figurines in little boxes right underneath the floors.⁴³ Figurines were buried in several different types of containers made of brick and sealed, most commonly, with bitumen; however most of the Neo-Assyrian tainers are of the same type (Rittig 1977, 219–223). These boxes or con-tainers are not mentioned in the ritual texts, apart from the reference in Text 2 (KAR 298, rev. l.10) that two figurines are to be placed and buried in a container (fig. 5).⁴⁴

How should this be understood? As is well known from the temple cult as well as from mythology (Dick and Walker 2001); and e.g., the Atrahasis-epic (Lambert and Millard 1989), deities in Mesopotamia live in houses (Oppenheim 1977). The production of the figurines, which resembles the production of the divine statues in the temples on sev-eral counts, as detailed above, leads me to suggest that the boxes could be understood as the houses of these minor divine beings.⁴⁵ It is a very

43 A few were not buried directly underneath the floors, but underneath the foundation – these are probably to be seen as a different type (Rittig 1977, 219–223). I will not delve into the specific placement of individual figurines inside the house. But as Wiggermann notes, there is a tendency to place for instance the dogs in the outer gate and the ‘sages’ (apkallū) in the interior of the house (Wiggermann 1992, 58–59).

44 The text specifies that the container was of the comparatively large kannu-type.

45 That the boxes may be houses is also suggested by Nakamura (2005, 38).

basic idea in religion in Mesopotamia that divine beings live in houses and may be accessed by humans there; it is a fundamental method for ensuring the nearness of the gods, without which enemies would at-tack successfully, fertility would decline, people would fall ill, etc. Their placement underground at floor level does thus not necessarily signi-fy burial.⁴⁶ For while it is true that humans were often buried under the room floors, and that the underworld could be accessed through the ground (Scurlock 1995), a more plausible reason for placing their houses underground and not over the ground and more accessible to human interaction, we could speculate that the spaces in which they are so carefully placed are seen as entry points for demons and other evil beings (Lambert 1974, 296; Bottéro 1980, 29–31). Indeed, the floor level is in a basic way the boundary of the house. Placed underground, the Mischwesen are not subject to the human gaze, or direct daily human interaction. We may only speculate whether they were, once installed, thought to function as ‘automata’, or whether humans indeed did in-teract with them, perhaps even feed them through tubes or channels in

46 Although this is of course the other connotation that comes to mind (for funerary customs, see Scurlock 1995).

5 Brick box number 11, with fish-cloaked sage (apkallu) figurines, from the ‘Haus des Beschwörungspriesters’, Aššur

the ground.⁴⁷ The time frame during which the ritual was thought to be effective according to Text 2 (KAR 298, rev.l.40), namely one year, can perhaps be taken to suggest that once installed, the figurines functioned of their own accord. By being installed at such sites, by living there, as it were, these minor deities could repel evil before it even entered the house. As suggested above, these minor deities repel evil by being present. As we see in Text 2, their presence entailed the ‘bringing in’ of blessing: life, abundance, prosperity, etc.

8 CONCLUSION

Approaching the monster figurines from the perspective of materiality and ritual practice has meant that I have paid attention to what the figurines do (or, are construed as doing) in their synchronic materi-al-textual context, favouring the ritual actions with the figurines over the communicative links to, for instance, mythology. While it is certainly interesting and relevant that most of the names of the monsters of these two ritual texts also appear in Enūma eliš and other narrative, mytholog-ical and epic literature, I hope to have made it clear that these figurines have separate synchronic functions in these rituals for the protection of houses; functions for which mythology cannot be used as an answer book.⁴⁸ While Enūma eliš is indeed an important mythological source, in comparison to other narrative texts, Enūma eliš was neither as ‘canonical’

or culturally disseminated as often assumed (cf. Veldhuis 2003) nor is it the only source offering information about the mythology of monsters

47 Such practices are known from human interaction with the ancestors (see Scurlock 1995), and there is also a Neo-Assyrian NAM. BUR.BI-in-cantation lending plausibility to the idea that offerings could be made to the small gods of the present rituals – which Scurlock (2003) interprets to speak of the house gods, by which she does not mean the gods referred to in our ritual, but a set of different ones. Even if the gods of our rituals are not the house gods, I still find that the incantation analysed by Scurlock lends some suggestive support to the idea that that offerings may have been made to the gods of the present rituals. Why would the food offerings to the house gods, mentioned in Scurlock’s namburbû, be buried, if those gods were present in statues above the ground?

48 Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, the monsters of the narrative literature are not always negative and inimical beings (Feldt 2006, 2010, 2011, and Feldt forthcoming).

(cf. Feldt 2006, 2010, 2011, Feldt forthcoming).⁴⁹ As pointed out above, the ritual for the opening of the mouth of the divine statue in the tem-ple is as pertinent a context to consider with regard to the functions of these figurines, since they are used as media for the presence of benign supernatural beings.

The figurine and text assemblage presented here attests to an an-cient Mesopotamian mode of ritualizing that focuses on the production of charismatic materiality for pragmatic ends – the pragmatic purpose here being (primarily) the aversion of evil demons that cause illnesses.⁵⁰ It is also a magical practice and a magical materiality that intersects with and lends efficacy from broader, culturally entrenched discourses about ritual efficacy, statue use, and divine presence in ancient Mesopotamia and consequently there is nothing marginal or illegitimate about the practices and materialities analyzed here.⁵¹ As is clear, I fully agree with those researchers of magic who take an etic approach and argue that we need to retain word ‘magic’ as a history of religions-term. Yet, this piece calls into question the use of ‘religion’ as one of the obvious models of contrast to magic, a criticism earlier raised by Jan N. Bremmer (2002b, updated 2008, 347–52) as well as Jesper Sørensen (2007). Certainly, in ancient Mesopotamia, ‘magic’ was official and legitimate, ‘magic’ was

‘religion’.

Much suggests that materiality generally is effective more by what it does than what it communicates (Bynum 2012, 293 n.32). Similar-ly, magic may be effective not by what it communicates, but by what it does – a doing that involves a ‘materiality’. This is not to say that magic does all its communication purports to do, but to say that the proof of the pudding is indeed, in this case, in the eating. The ‘reality’,

49 We should also regard the functions of the monsters in Enūma eliš as an empirical question open to investigation. Even though they clearly occupy the narrative role of the enemy or opponent, it cannot be ruled out – pen-ding a detailed analysis – that they too have some ‘creative’ connotations.

50 But indeed, the multiplicity of purposes also lends support to the idea that these ritual practices enable divine presence in the house – simply because divine presence was seen as having not just one, but several, ge-neral benign ‘effects’.

51 Bailliot explains the efficacy of the magic analyzed there in a similar way – it works not because of some kind of private cathartic drama, but because the ritual expert, the client/performer, and the targeted individual all operate within a common system of symbolic limits (Bailliot 2010).

functions, and importance attributed to transempirical beings in reli-gion and magic depend fundamentally on mediation and materiality.

Ritual practice and the manipulation of objects are some of the most important preconditions for the representation of superhuman beings as active agents. The burial of monster figurines with inscriptions cer-tainly tell of the production of material charisma enabling superhuman presence, of figurines thought to enable the presence of minor divine beings out of sight of humans; a practice made all the more plausible because it connects to more general patterns of action and lines of reli-gious thought in Mesopotamian society in the first millennium. These monster figurines are not just representations of transempirical beings, for the rituals labour to produce a charismatic materiality, to transform the figurines into media for the presence of the minor divine beings that protect the house. This Mesopotamian example illustrates beautifully how the materiality of magic is an important way in which the distance between the human world and the invisible world of the superhuman beings is bridged in religions worldwide (Meyer 2008; Morgan 2012).

It also interestingly illustrates how gods and other superhuman beings as mediated in religious thoughts, practices and materialities invariably involve a measure of transgression of standard cognitive categories, or in other words, some measure of monstrosity.

PHOTO CREDITS

Fig. 1 ©Trustees of the British Museum. Museum number 91839 Fig. 2 Reproduced after Preusser 1954, table 28a

Fig. 3 ©Trustees of the British Museum. Museum number: 91836 Fig. 4 ©Trustees of the British Museum. Museum number: 30005 Fig. 5 Reproduced after Preusser 1954, table 28b

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