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Document Details : Title: The Fly, the Worm, and the Chain Subtitle: Old Babylonian Chain Incantations Author(s): VELDHUIS, N.C. Journal: Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica Volume: 24 Date: 1994 Pages: 41-64 DOI: 10.2143/OLP.24.0.583442 Abstract : Some poetic forms are disseminated all over the world, crossing boundaries of time, language, and culture. One of these almost universal devices of popular poetry is the chain. The English ‘The House that Jack built,’ the Dutch ‘In Holland staat een Huis,’ and the Aramaic ‘ḥad gadj&257;' (‘an only kid,’ included in the Passover haggadah) are just arbitrary examples. In cuneiform literature there is not much what we could call popular. By their very nature the written texts are learned and often solemn. It has long been recognized, however, that at least in one place we can expect to find traces of this ‘lower’ literature. This place is the incantation. Patterns of popular poetry, like the chain, were transmitted over centuries of cuneiform writing thanks to their inclusion in New Assyrian ‘canonical’ collections of incantations. Some Old Babylonian incantations testify to the use of the chain in even remoter times. These will be studied in this contribution. Two of them, not yet adequately edited, will be presented in transcription and translation in the first two paragraphs. |
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