A wise woman who turned fish eggs into beasts: meet an ancient witch from Mesopotamia

Ancient evidence tells us that belief in witchcraft – and feat of witches – is more than 4,000 years old.

Queen of the Night, c 19th–18th century BCE, Mesopotamia. © The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SAThis Halloween, trick-or-treaters the world over will don pointy black hats and drag along a broom as they trawl the neighbourhood in pursuit of lollies.

This typical representation of the “witch” originates from medieval European witch trials, where many innocent women, girls, and men were violently killed through religious persecution – often by being hanged or burned to death.

Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, The Witches in Macbeth, c 1841–42.
The Wallace Collection/Art UK, CC BY-NC-ND

But the concept of witchcraft is much older than this, with textual evidence of witches and sorcerers dating back to ancient Mesopotamia, more than 4,500 years ago. Mesopotamia is a historical area primarily comprising modern-day Iraq, as well as parts of Iran, Turkey and Syria.

Many different cultures and empires arose from this region over thousands of years, including the Sumerians, Akkadians and Babylonians. It is also where the earliest known writing systems emerged, more than 5,000 years ago.

The earliest account of a witchcraft battle

The earliest known text to demonstrate witchcraft as we know it comes from a Sumerian epic called The Tale of Enmerkar and Ensuḫkešdanna, written around 1900 BCE.

Two kings called Enmerkar and Ensuḫkešdanna are fighting, as Ensuḫkešdanna demands Enmerkar to become his subordinate. Both kings send an agent to act on their behalf.

A “wise woman” named Saĝburu fights on behalf of Enmerkar, while an unnamed sorcerer fights for Ensuḫkešdanna. Their battle is one of epic proportions.

Both Saĝburu and the sorcerer use magic to turn fish eggs into different animals by throwing the eggs into the Euphrates River. First, the sorcerer creates a giant carp, which battles against Saĝburu’s giant eagle (who decidedly eats the carp).

A Mesopotamian demon-headed amulet, c 2900–2700 BCE.
Metropolitan Museum of Art

This exchange occurs five times, with Saĝburu consistently creating larger, more deadly animals than the sorcerer: a wolf versus a lamb and its ewe; a lion versus a cow and its calf, a mountain leopard versus an ibex and sheep; and a lion and tiger versus a gazelle.

By the end of the battle, Saĝburu seizes the sorcerer and throws him into the Euphrates River, killing him.

What makes this story particularly fascinating, are the words used in both the original Sumerian script, and English translations. Saĝburu is referred almost exclusively by name and the title of a “Wise Woman”. She is never described as as the Sumerian equivalent of a “witch” or “sorceress”, sibsib or ušzu.

In contrast, the unnamed man is only ever referred to as a sorcerer, maš-maš.

Witchcraft and the law

The next major text which directly speaks to witchcraft comes from the Codex of Hammurabi. Hammurabi was a king of Babylon whose reign lasted from about 1790 to 1750 BCE.

This codex, found by archaeologists in 1901, is the world’s oldest complete legal code, although broken fragments of earlier law codes exist. It features 282 laws, with a prologue and an epilogue. It is also thought to be the origin for the concept of an “eye for an eye”.

The second law details what should happen when accusations of witchcraft are made. Specifically, anyone accused of practising witchcraft should be taken to a river and must enter the water willingly. This is called the “divine river ordeal”.

If the accused survives, the gods have deemed them innocent. But should they die, the gods have declared them guilty of witchcraft.

Sele of the Hammurabi Codex, featuring Hammurabi standing before the sun god Šamaš, c 1793–51 BCE.
Louvre Museum/Wikimedia Commons

This is more forgiving than the inverse logic employed during the water trials that took place much later in European witch hunts.

In these European trials, it was believed that if you survived, you were a witch (as a witch could use their magic to save themselves), whereas an innocent person would drown. So those who initially survived these water trials would usually be hanged to death.

The Hammurabi law also extended to events following divine river ordeal. Should the accused survive, they took the house that belonged to their accuser. But if they perished, the accuser took their house.

This law suggests accusations of witchcraft were not something to joke about.

The fear of witchcraft and how to fight it

By the start of the 1st millennium BCE, we see a spike in texts across Mesopotamia documenting a very real fear of witchcraft.

As a consequence, a kind of “handbook” called the Maqlû was created for a specialised type of priest known as the ašipu. The ašipu priest would fight against witchcraft and purify a bewitched victim.

The Maqlû, which translates from Akkadian as “burning”, was a set of ritual instructions and incantations that would be conducted over a single night, returning any malevolent spells or magic on a victim back to their bewitcher.

Cuneiform tablet detailing Maqlû rituals and incantations, c 700-600 BCE.
© The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA

The ašipu priest would create a figurine of the bewitcher, which was then burned in a crucible. This would supposedly cause the death of the bewitcher.

There is no archaeological or textual evidence that suggests this ritual coincided with the immolation of a suspected individual, so it’s possible this was a “spiritual death”.

The burning of bodies held a lot of religious symbolism in Mesopotamia. Burning served as a ritual cleansing process that was overseen by the sun god Šamaš.

But burning was also considered the worst possible thing that could be done to a body, as it prohibited that individual from going to the netherworld. As such, the Maqlû procession provided both a cleansing ritual and the utter destruction of the bewitcher.

Though they may not realise it, those who choose to dress up as witches this Halloween are extending an ancient belief passed down over almost 4,000 years – reinterpreted in as many different ways as there are cultures.
Genevieve Le Ban received funding from the Australian government through the Research Training Program (RTP) Stipend Scholarship from 2021–25.

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