The Old Assyrian archive from Kanesh, dated to ca. 1950–1850 BCE, has yielded a letter that refers to the consultation of the spirits of the dead (
eṭemmū), thus making it the world’s oldest actual attestation of necromancy. However, whereas the immediate
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The Old Assyrian archive from Kanesh, dated to ca. 1950–1850 BCE, has yielded a letter that refers to the consultation of the spirits of the dead (
eṭemmū), thus making it the world’s oldest actual attestation of necromancy. However, whereas the immediate context mentions the
šā’ilātum, ‘the women dream interpreters’, and the
bāriātum, ‘the women omen interpreters’, a necromantic professional is lacking in relation to the questioning of the
eṭemmū. Earlier studies have explained this discrepancy by suggesting that necromancy was part of the skill set of the aforementioned female professionals, or that the communication with the spirits happened directly, without the immediate involvement of a skilled specialist. The present article rather argues that the term
eṭemmu, ‘spirit of the dead’, had a wider semantic range than hitherto held. In rare cases, it could also designate a necromancer. This proposal is supported by an identical semantic phenomenon in another ancient Semitic language. The biblical Hebrew terms
ʼōbôt and
yidde‘ōnîm not only refer to the spirits of the dead but also to necromancers. The same might be argued for the apparent Hebrew cognate of Akkadian
eṭemmū, the
hapax legomenon ’iṭṭîm in Isaiah 19:3. On the strength of the findings presented in this study, it is concluded that the fleeting blending of the spirit with the necromancer lies at the heart of this semantic merger.
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