Namburbi, the ritual of release

Frequently asked questions

What is a namburbi?

A Babylonian ritual that releases a person, a household or the king from the evil announced by an omen. Performed by an exorcist, typically at dawn on a riverbank before the sun god Shamash, it transferred the portended evil onto a substitute object and disposed of it in the river. Around 140 such rituals survive in cuneiform.

What does the word namburbi mean?

It is a Sumerian term taken into Akkadian meaning the undoing or release of a specific evil, literally the loosening of what the omen had bound. The name states the doctrine: an omen tied a threat to a person, and the ritual untied it.

Which omens could a namburbi undo?

In principle any portended evil. The surviving corpus answers celestial signs including eclipses, and a wide catalogue of everyday omens: snakes or lizards falling on a person, a dog fouling him, strange birds, fungus in the house, malformed births and ominous dreams. Universal namburbis against any evil whatever covered the cases no specific ritual named.

Who performed the ritual?

The ashipu, the exorcist, whose profession was one of the five scholarly disciplines of the Assyrian court and whose canonical corpus, traditionally organised by the ancient editor Esagil-kin-apli, included the rituals of release alongside diagnosis, medicine and incantation. Exorcists served kings, temples and ordinary households alike.

How did the ritual work, step by step?

After purification, a reed altar was set on the riverbank before dawn with offerings for Shamash, Ea and Asalluhi. At sunrise the threatened person appeared before Shamash as before a judge, the omen's evil was loaded by prayer onto a figurine of its bearer or onto the ominous object itself, the plea was spoken, and the substitute was thrown into the river to be carried away.

Why was a figurine used?

Substitution was the ritual's engine. The evil announced by the omen needed a bearer, and a clay image of the snake, dog or other carrier, or the ominous thing itself, was made to stand in for the person. Once the transfer was spoken and enacted, the evil belonged to the substitute, and disposing of the substitute disposed of the threat.

Why was the evil thrown into a river?

Running water removed things from the human world. The river was the element of Ea, god of the deep who presides over purifying craft, and the current carried the loaded substitute downstream, away from city and household, back toward the cosmic deep. Water served as the ritual's executioner of verdicts: what it took, it did not return.

Could a namburbi undo an eclipse omen?

Yes. Namburbis against the evil of eclipses existed and were performed for the king, with the court letters scheduling them and restricting the king's movements until they were done. For the gravest reading, an eclipse portending the king's death, the court escalated to the substitute king ritual, which follows the same logic of transfer with a human stand-in.

Did the ritual have a deadline?

Effectively yes. The scholars assigned an omen's evil a term, the adannu, a window within which the sign held force, and reports note how long a given omen remains valid. The release had to be performed while the case was open, which is why the court correspondence treats namburbis as urgent scheduled business.

Where can the namburbi texts be read today?

The tablets come chiefly from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh and the exorcists' family library at Assur. Richard Caplice edited and introduced much of the corpus in the 1960s and 1970s, and Stefan Maul's edition and study is the standard modern account of the rituals, their staging and their theology.