Lamashtu amulets and motherhood in Ancient Mesopotamia

Figure 1: Obsidian Lamashtu amulet from the early 1st Millenium BCE, found in modern Iran | The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By Rowan Hulitt, Second-Year Classical Studies

Apotropaic amulets were used throughout Ancient Mesopotamia to ward off the demon, Lamaštu. Used to prevent perinatal maternal and infant death and disease, these amulets help us understand motherhood in Ancient Mesopotamia. The primary amulet referenced in this essay is an obsidian Lamashtu amulet (Figure 1), dating to the 1st Millennium BCE. On the front is Lamashtu, with a lion-griffin head and an emaciated human body. Her arms are raised and bent at the elbows. She has long sharp talons. A puppy and a piglet are at her feet, and around her are ‘women’s’ tools, such as a spindle, comb, and fibula (pin). Cuneiform bordering this image is also on the reverse and is an Akkadian protective incantation. Sometimes these amulets depict Lamashtu in different ways or reference her nemesis, Pazuzu. Not all of them have writing, and some have pseudo-writing, indicating a ritualistic, epigraphic function beyond the need for literacy. The creation of such amulets continued for over 1500 years, suggesting a persistent need for a monster like her.

Although this amulet was technically not found in Mesopotamia, belief in Lamashtu went beyond linguistic, political, and geographical boundaries, and she is originally a Mesopotamian entity. We find Lamashtu amulets like this throughout the Fertile Cresent, and belief in Lamashtu can be traced back to Sumeria. She was known as Dimme in Sumerian but is better known for her Akkadian name, Lamaštu, although these names are often interchanged. Belief in demons like Lamashtu, and benevolent and malevolent magic, was part of the fabric of the religious Babylonian society, and religion played an integral role in daily life. The amulets’ usage by mothers is evidence of that.

Much of our knowledge about Ancient Mesopotamian motherhood is limited to our understanding of divine mothers, like Tiamat or Nisun. This is perhaps due to many records being written by scribes, or for impersonal purposes. Our main source of knowledge on ordinary motherhood comes from material remains, making these amulets invaluable.

The fact that Figure 1 is apotropaic supports our knowledge of motherhood and infancy being perilous in antiquity. The infant mortality rate was staggering, with at least 20% not reaching childhood, and 5% being stillborn. Maternal death averaged around 14% based on data from 1st Millennium BCE Ancient Greece, however, we cannot be certain it was identical in Ancient Mesopotamia at this time, as we have no relevant data from this location.

A woman’s value was tied closely to childbearing, so had high stakes. Not only was it physically dangerous, but it was also crucial to her social status.

These amulets provide insight into women’s anxieties, not only for their and their babies' physical safety; but also into their anxieties around being a good mother and thus, a good woman. The hope these mothers had in these amulets reaffirms scholars’ point about belief in magic being commonplace and also supports the idea that a woman’s success in childbirth and motherhood went beyond her obstetric health. However, how do we know these amulets indicate concerns about being a good mother and woman? We can begin to explore this by understanding Lamashtu.

In Ancient Mesopotamian Mythology, Lamashtu is the daughter of the sky god, Anu. She was demoted to demon status due to her desire to eat newborns and cause sickness, a perversion of nature. Locks will not keep her out. She is warded away by the demon, Pazuzu, a winged entity with animal features. He appears to be the main demon capable of combatting Lamashtu. He expels her to civilisation’s borders, either the desert or the sea, connecting her with monsters like the Lamia and the Gello, who are eradicated similarly.

Lamashtu, like many malevolent entities, is an amalgamation of predators. In earlier depictions, she has a wolf’s head, and later a lion’s or griffin’s. She has sharp talons, sometimes seven on each hand. She is emaciated, often the only indication that she is female is that she nurses dirty animals, like pigs or stray dogs. In Figure 1, she is flanked by a piglet and a puppy instead of nursing them, but the presence of these animals is part of her image. This contrasts with the ideal image of women and mothers, which depicts breasts and breastfeeding, demonstrating their femininity compared with Lamashtu’s breastlessness.

Essentially, Lamashtu is the inversion of motherhood. A good woman nurtures life, but Lamashtu poisons it. A good woman sustains life, but Lamashtu ends it. Most importantly, a good woman bears life – Lamashtu is incapable of doing so. She is an Anti-Mother, an anti-kourotrophos.

Like almost all monsters, Lamashtu is a scapegoat. A wealthy mother could accuse midwives and wet nurses of witchcraft when things went wrong. A peasant mother who nursed her own infants could accuse a demon instead. By blaming Lamashtu, she could be a good mother, for an Anti-Mother caused her misfortune.

It appears that the way to pacify Lamashtu is to surround her with symbols of womanhood, as though she is pleased by womanly things. In Figure 1, a comb, spindle, and fibula surround her; objects associated with domestic crafts like textile production. We could infer that Lamashtu is soothed by being perceived as a good woman, and possibly wants to be some kind of mother. Clegg argues that Lamashtu is a tragic figure because she does everything a mother does with the inverse effect. Of course, we cannot forget that she is primarily a malevolent entity, accursed due to her unnatural feelings towards the vulnerable. But again, that does not appear to be the only perception of her. Perhaps this tender view explains why she attacks mothers. Maybe, she is desperate to be one.

We can therefore venture and say that Lamashtu represents a harsh reality: infertility. She is a manifestation of the complex emotions that infertile women, as well as women who have experienced miscarriages or traumatic births, can feel. Lamashtu is the envy of capability.

This is supported by Clegg who says Lamashtu was eventually inseparable from a certain type of ghost, the lilitu: these are the ghosts of unmarried girls who died before they could experience intimacy and be mothers. These ghosts, ‘… murder infants (and their mothers) because they are filled with jealousy at living women who have children and husbands when they cannot.’.

However, Lamashtu is still more than that. Beyond child loss, infertility, birth trauma, and fear of maternal death, another phenomenon plagues mothers as Lamashtu does: postpartum mental illness.

Lamashtu is the monster women may have seen themselves as, a failed mother, as suggested by Wee. We know that perinatal mental health issues are common, with up to 27% of expectant and new mothers experiencing them in one form or another. We can only assume that Ancient Mesopotamian women struggled with the same feelings, but in a society that tended to treat both mental and physical ailments as the result of demonic possession. So, Lamashtu embodies the monster within, the darkness a mother can experience after such monumental changes in her life, and to treat this darkness, all she needed was a spell, an ašipu, and crucially for us, an amulet.

In this light, Lamashtu is a kindness to mothers. Despite reflecting on a mother’s darkest fears, Lamashtu became a diagnosis, an explanation for the tragedies science could not yet explain. Lamashtu could help a mother feel less broken.

Figure 1 tells us plenty about motherhood in Ancient Mesopotamia. It confirms the understandable fear and reality of maternal and infant death in Ancient Mesopotamia. It also tells us about gender roles, connecting the idea of womanhood with the ability to nurture life, by displaying a mother’s greatest enemy as a monster who inverts all maternal behaviour. It gives us insight into the psychological impact these heavy expectations had on women, through their cross-generational need to pin their birthing tragedies on a monster, displacing the stigma and pain of infertility, infant death, and mental illness, preserving their ‘goodness’ in a society that made their womanhood dependent on their motherhood.

Bibliography

 Books

Budin, S.L., Turfa, J.M. and Couto-Ferreira, M.E. (2016). Women in antiquity: real women across the ancient world. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Clegg, S. (2023). Woman’s Lore. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd.

Delgado Hérvas, A. and Rivera-Hernández, A. (2018). Motherhood and Infancies in the Mediterranean in Antiquity. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Journal Articles

Said, M. (2020). The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Publications 2020. Translated by W. Lambert. and Translated by Farber. Chicago Press: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Valk, J. (2016). ‘They Enjoy Syrup and Ghee at Tables of Silver and Gold’: Infant Loss in Ancient Mesopotamia. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient.

Wee, J.Z. (2021). The Lamashtu Amulet: a Portrait of the Caregiver as a Demoness. Harvard Library Bulletin.

Web Articles

Kulik, R.M. (2022). Pazuzu | Mesopotamia, Demon, & Description | Britannica.

National Health Service England (2018). NHS England» Perinatal mental health.

The Editors of The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1998). Lamashtu | Mesopotamian demon | Britannica.