The incantation series inscribed in

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

Sumerogram A Sumerogram is the use of a Sumerian cuneiform character or group of characters as an ideogram or logogram rather than a syllabogram in the graphic representation of a language other than Sumerian, such as Akkadian, Eblaite, or Hittite. Th ...

s as ÉN SAG.GIG.GA.MEŠ, Akkadian: ''muruṣ qaqqadi'', “headache” (literally “sick-head”), is an ancient

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

n nine-tablet collection of magical prescriptions against the demon that caused grave disease characterized by a headache. Some of its incantations seem to have become incorporated into the later

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...

n work muššu’u, “rubbing”. It is listed on the ninth line of the KAR44, the work known as the Exorcists Manual, a compendium of the works of the ''āšipūtu'', craft of exorcism, prefixed by the gloss sa.kik.ke₄, a phonetic rendition of the series’ opening incipit, én sag-gig é-kur-ta nam-ta-è.

The text

Prescriptions against headache have a long tradition within Mesopotamian folk remedy. The

Kassite The Kassites () were a people of the ancient Near East. They controlled Babylonia after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire from until (short chronology). The Kassites gained control of Babylonia after the Hittite sack of Babylon in 1531 B ...

-era physician

Rabâ-ša-Marduk Rabâ-ša-Marduk, “great are (the deeds) of Marduk”, was a prominent physician, or ''asû'', from the city of Nippur who was posted to the Hittite court of Muwatalli II (c. 1295–1272 BC short chronology) in Anatolia in the thirteenth century ...

authored “Eighteen prescriptions for headache”. Like many of the other canonical collections of incantations and rituals, Sag-gig-ga-meš probably achieved its final form in the first millennium BC where it was copied down until the Hellenistic period. Its first five incipits are known from a fragmentary catalog. Tablet 8 describes a change in mental status (''ṭēmu'') that the person becomes detached from his body: "They (the demons) altered his mental state, so that he forgets his own flesh." In the ritual part of the text, a lamb is offered up for immolation as a substitute for the sick man.

Primary publications

* line art. * transliteration and translation * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sag-gig-ga-mesh Akkadian literature