Aetiologies of Illness
Illnesses are not strictly related to demonic attack. In fact, literary compositions offer a wide repertoire of different aetiologies. These go from the “natural” (for instance, seasonal diseases or the consequences of excess food and alcohol consumption) to the “unnatural” causes?6 In a letter sent to the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, one of his exorcists (asipu), Marduk-sakin-sumi, reassures the king about his cold, stating that this is caused by seasonal illness.
Concerning the chills about which the king, my lord, wrote to me, there is nothing to be worried about. The gods of the k[ing] will quickly cure it, and we shall do whatever is relevant to the matter. [It is] a seasonal illness; the king, my lord, should not [wor]ry (about it)?7
Among the “unnatural” causes, as we have seen, the abandonment of the individual by the personal or main god constitutes the necessary premise that leaves the victim unprotected. Apart from the “mechanical” transmission of disease through contact with dirty or “polluted” substances,[154] the unnatural causes involve the active intervention of harmful agents, human (witch, sorcerer, evil-doer) as well as supernatural, such as demons and ghosts, but also gods.1[155] This active harmful intervention is usually expressed with the locution “touch/hand of... (agent's name)”.
If a man has vertigo, his limbs are ‘poured out', he continually suffers from depression (and) fear, (then) there is ‘hand of mankind' against him.[156]
If a burning pain is firmly established in his abdomen on the left/right side and he vomits blood: hand of Istar, he will die.
If his ears make strange noises: hand of ghost.21