The Ritual of Substitution
The perception of the royal image as the uncanny double of the
king can be better understood in light of the Assyro-Babylonian belief in
imitative or homeopathic magic. The practice of making substitute figurines for
use in the cult or in black magic rites is well documented. Small bitumen, wax,
wood, or clay figures were used to signify a person. Figurines made of wax,
bitumen, and wood were burned, those of clay dissolved in water, in order to
procure a specific effect on the person represented. The figurines were also pierced, buried, or subjected to other maltreatment in order to harm the
intended victim. They could be buried to suppress the sexual potency or
virility of a man. Alternatively, images of the beloved could be used in the
case of unrequited love in a ritual at the temple of the goddess of love,
Ishtar, in the hope of gaining the affections of the person in question and
might even be used for the improvement of one’s sex life.
The ultimate expression of the belief in imitative magic was the ritual
of the substitute king. When danger to the king’s life was predicted in the
omens, a living person was made his double and became the king’s substitute
through an elaborate ritual. He was given the king’s name, his clothes and
insignia, and was placed on his throne while the king went into hiding. Then
the substitute bore the wrath of the gods and suffered the evil that had been
intended for the king, leaving the real king unharmed. The living substitute is
referred to in the texts by the Akkadian term ṣalmu.
The use of substitute effigies was not limited to occasional black
magic. To the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, what we see as a distinction
between magic, theological, or ontological thought was blurred and at times
converged also with the field of science or medicine. Thus, following a prescribed
treatment of an image could produce a beneficent as well as maleficent result,
depending on what was required, and such rituals could fall under the expertise
of priest, physician, witch, or warlock.
An integral part of all substitution rituals was the act of
naming. The image was first fashioned and then given a specific person’s name
in order to function as a valid substitute for the person in question. Physical
resemblance was not always required. The utterance of the name was the main
factor that also inscribed onto the image. The name was no consequential
because Babylonian theological thought held the basic doctrine that the naming
of a thing was tantamount to its existence and that a thing did not exist
unless it was named. Thus, the opening lines of the Babylonian Epic of Creation
describe the act of naming with creation made the power of naming indispensable
in substitution and imitative magic. This association of the name with
existence explains the standard curses concerned with the removal of the name.
The means of obliterating the identity of the named person. Similarly, the firm
belief in substitution led to seeing the damage to a person’s image as a means
of harming the person. The removal of the name from the image could also
invalidate that image as an immortalization of the represented.
The destruction or damage of the image, therefore, was not feared
as a political act that merely brings disgrace to the ruler through his
portrait. The image became a substitute, and the portrait’s destruction became
an uncanny embodiment of death’s threat to the ruler. (Zainab Bahrani, The
Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria [Philadelphia:
University Pennsylvania Press, 2003], 173-74)
Further Reading
Notes on ṣalmu ("image") from Zainab Habrani, The Graven Image (2003)
"ṣalmu" (image) in The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute
