Lamashtu

Lamashtu is a goddess's daughter who behaves like a plague. Anu is her father and heaven threw her out; the incantations say she takes the baby from the womb, counts the months of a pregnancy, and puts her hand on the belly of a woman in labour. What distinguishes her from the ordinary run of Mesopotamian demons is that she is not an instrument: other demons are sent, and she comes on her own. Against her, the household had a whole apparatus — incantations, plaques, a dog buried under the threshold, and above all Pazuzu, whose head is worked into the top of her plaques looking down at her. Setting one demon on another is not a contradiction in this system; it is the system.

Parentage

• Anu

Domains

• childbirth
• disease

Relations

• enemy: Pazuzu

Sources

• Reference treatments of Lamashtu: her descent from Anu, her attacks on mothers and newborns, her iconography and the apotropaic use of Pazuzu against her.