The Ancients - Lilith: Mesopotamian Demoness

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

Perhaps a name better known for recent appearances in horror films - Lilith is a woman who's origins go far beyond that of the Hollywood screens. Often blamed for illnesses, ailments, and male embarrassment - Lilith is force to be reckoned with. So just where does Lilith come from, and can ancient Mesopotamia help shed some light on this misunderstood figure?Sarah Clegg, author of the new book 'Woman's Lore' joins Tristan on the podcast today, to help unravel the myth and mystery surrounding Lilith and her counterparts. Looking at ancient incantation bowl, family's of exorcists, and Lilith position in modern Feminism - what can we learn about Lilith across history? And more importantly, what can we learn from this formidable woman?If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's episode, we'll get this, we're talking all about demonic women,

female demons from antiquity. Because our guest today is Sarah Clegg, the author of a new book called Women's Law, which explores the stories and evolution of these mythical demonic women in antiquity, like the Sirens, but also figures who we're going to be focusing in on today, but also figures who we're going to be focusing in on today, such as Lilith, the seductive first wife of Adam, Lamashtu in ancient Mesopotamia, and so much more. It was a pleasure to interview Sarah all about this in London a few weeks back, and I really do hope you enjoy. Sarah, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. You're more than welcome. Now, I don't think we've ever done demons on the podcast before. We've done werewolves quite a long time ago now,

but Lilith, this extraordinary figure and the evolution of her story over the past two millennia, it was a story that I didn't really know until researching this. It's extraordinary. She's a monstrous figure, but her story, the evolution of it especially, is just remarkable. Absolutely. The first thing I do is stretch that two millennia to at least three, maybe four, depending on where you put her beginning. You mentioned beginnings there. So let's go straight into the origins and the beginnings. I'm imagining that it's probably quite murky, but where do we think a figure of Lilith originates from?

So in ancient Mesopotamia, there is a child-snatching demoness called Lamashtu. She has the head of a lion, feet are the talons of a horrible bird. She has horribly long fingers that she uses for plunging into babies' bellies and pulling out babies before their time, which is the most unpleasant image there could possibly be. And she is around from sort of the second millennium BC in ancient Mesopotamia. And she is an incredibly popular demoness. We have spells and incantations against her from all levels of society and across Mesopotamia and actually outside of

Mesopotamia as well. There is also another demoness in Mesopotamia called Lelitu or Ardat Lili. And these are the ghosts of girls who died before they were married while they were still virgins and before they could have children and they are these very sad spirits you read the incantations about them and they're more sympathetic than fearful it's almost the opposite of a Lamashtu incantation talking about girls who never saw a city feast, who, and this is my personal favourite line, who no nice young man ever undid their garment clasp. They are so sweet and so heartbreaking because these girls had died and their demonic activity was to return in the night and cause wet dreams in men that they would try and have after death what they couldn't have had in life.

Now, Lamashtu and Litu seem about as far apart as it's possible for them to be. But over the course of the first millennium, they start to blend into each other. So Lamashtu is occasionally referred to as Lelitu. Lelitu has wings. The dead of Mesopotamia tend to have wings. And so Lelitu does as well because she's a ghost. And Lamashtu starts to have wings and so Lilithu does as well because she's a ghost and Lamashtu starts to have wings as well and a demon called Pazuzu who is normally used to drive away Lilithu

is also used to drive away Lamashtu. Some people might actually have heard of Pazuzu he's one of the few Mesopotamian demons people occasionally have heard of because he is the antagonist in the exorcist which is monstrously unfair on Fazizi, who in ancient Mesopotamian tradition spends his whole time protecting women and children from the horrors of Lamashtu and Lelitu. Anyway, by the end of the first millennium BC, Lelitu is murdering children, their mothers, and also seeking out men to have sex with in the night. She is this complete blend of Lamashtu and Lilithu, which I would say is her origin and the origin of Lilith. Before we delve into the story, therefore, of Lilith, talk to me about

the Jewish Lilith and the Mesopotamian Lilith and how they very much are combined together. So, end of the first millennium BC into the second you know Mesopotamia is constantly being conquered by outsiders you've got Rome coming in you've got Iran coming in and in about 7th century AD you get these objects called incantation bowls turning up and the idea of them is you take a normal horrible domestic bowl like the cheapest you can find. Occasionally you draw a picture of the demoness in it, in the centre, and then you write an incantation around the outside and turn it upside down, sort of almost if you're trapping like a spider to take it out of the house, and then bury it.

And you find these in houses all over Mesopotamia during this period. You get Jewish variants of them, as well as variants of them belonging to other religions that are in Mesopotamia at that time. It is this real melting pot of sort of different faiths. You've got people who still believe in sort of the old Mesopotamian gods and goddesses like Shamash. You've got people who are Christian. You've got people who are Jewish. But of course, there's also a whole load

of different sects as well and Christianity and Judaism is still working through a whole load of things, they're not in their modern forms. And people are sort of converting between different religions as well quite freely and in Mesopotamia incantation bowls are being used across religious groups, they're written in different languages they invoke different gods and goddesses and a huge portion of them are being used to defend against Lilith both as a child killer and as a seductress. I would actually kind of like to go back to that Mesopotamian link a little longer before focusing on the original story because in regards to the source material of learning about figures like Lilith and these other demon figures, all the way back in the first, second,

maybe third millenniums BC, what sorts of sources do you have available to try and learn more about it? We've got some lovely sources. So the best incantations in ancient Mesopotamia come from the Library of Asabanapal. Just as a footnote, when I say library, think of it as the private collection of the king. It's not something that's public. It's not something that's very accessible for anyone. But they have beautiful Lamashtu incantations, which obviously incorporate

bits of Lolita into them as well. We also have, oh, there's a wonderful tablet from a family of exorcists. And they've got sort of an abbreviation of the incantation, which people think is probably for when they were out on the job and just needed to quickly refer to their notes. We've got sort of little texts scattered all over the place with individual incantations written on them. And we also have some absolutely wonderful amulets as well. And they cross the social spectrum.

So we've got beautiful beautiful delicately carved bronze things and bronze in ancient Mesopotamia is worth an absolute fortune because there's really nothing of it in Mesopotamia itself covered in incantations stunningly decorated and then we've also got sort of scrappy bits of clay there's sort of a few lines scratched on them and then you get these things called pseudo incantations so a collection of symbols that are meant to imitate writing and they're made by or for illiterate people and very much a sign that this is sort of the lower end of society who are still using them and who still you know you should have an incantation on your lamash to the amulet because that's so interesting into how figures like lilith and

these other figures who they were perceived by in these ancient Mesopotamian societies. As you say there, it's not just the elites or potentially those who could write or whatever. It's potentially all levels of this ancient society. That is fascinating in its own right. And actually Lilith is like that for her entire history. She is a demon who the elites are often very willing to take very seriously, and also who has this persistence in folklore pretty much right up to the present day. Well, there you go. We'll definitely delve into that legacy when we get to that. But what are the main aspects of her person that these figures were trying to protect themselves from? that these figures were trying to protect themselves from.

So she is fundamentally a girl who died while still a virgin and is now a ghost. In fact, it might not even be helpful to think of her as one girl. She's more sort of, if a girl dies while she is still a virgin, when she's unwed, there is an idea that she might become a Lilitu and might go around harassing men in their sleep by causing them to have wet dreams which is fundamentally thought of as her having sex with them while they're asleep because she missed out on some life and so she wants it in death. She is occasionally blamed for illnesses where one of the symptoms is sort of a continuous erection or some sort of erectile dysfunction but broadly she is thought to be the cause of wet dreams and I should say as well there is a male version who gets a lot less attention called Lily who is exactly the same but a man so he's a man who never had sex

so in death he will come and haunt women like I say say, he gets much less attention, much less interest, and he sort of hangs around in the incantation bowls and then fades out. And the Lilith of the incantation bowls starts seducing women as well, occasionally appearing as a man to seduce a woman and occasionally just turning up as a woman. Oh, interesting. And that's less focused on than the other side of the Litu.

Absolutely. Which is so interesting and so right. It's almost the evolution of her story in ancient Mesopotamia as the centuries go on. Yeah. And therefore, so let's focus more on these incantation bowls then, because they do look absolutely fascinating, aren't they? Oh, they're wonderful.

Are they one of your favourite sources, I'm guessing? They really are. And come on then. Well, let's go in. There must be so many different sorts of incantations that are mentioned that mention Litu. Have you got any personal favourites you'd like there must be so many different sorts of incantations that are mentioned that mention Leetu. Have you got any personal favourites you'd like to start off with in regards to these incantations? So, it is difficult to tell who wrote the incantation bowls.

Most of them are written in the third person. So we can see who commissioned them because it says, oh, drive Lilith away from this person. But who's the one who's written them? Who's the one who's doing the incantation and practicing it? But a tiny number of bowls are written in the first person. And of those, we can see that a majority of the people writing the incantation bowls were women, which is wonderful. There was originally the idea that because it's writing, this is going to

be mean but it's it's not very good writing um they're full of mistakes and if you read sort of people who are trying to translate them you get very snippy comments about sort of ignorance i think they get a free pass there i think absolutely but because they were sort of written so you've still got a certain level of education, then it was thought that probably it wasn't women who were writing them. But you have these bowls that are written in the first person and that are by women and they are fascinating. And a couple of them are used to drive away Lilith, which I find wonderful. wonderful. There is also a story that ends up being told about Lilith, where there is a woman who has all of her children snatched by a horrible monster. And she is pregnant again, and she decides she's had enough. So she goes and makes a sanctuary of metal and hides herself there when she has her

final child. And her brother turns up and says, let me in. And she says, no. And he says, I'm your brother. What harm could possibly come of it? So eventually she lets him in. But the child killing monster is hidden somewhere about the brother's person, possibly as a spider. At one point, it's a hair in his beard, possibly as a fly landing on the tip of his spear.

And he brings the monster inside. And the monster takes the child and runs to the sea to try and get away with it. And the brother chases down the monster and saves the child and forces the monster to reveal to him all of the monster's names so that the monster can be driven away. And this story actually seems to originate in Greece where there is a version of Lamashtu called Lamia, who combines with another child-stealing monster called Gelu. And they have this story forming about them. Lamia is very connected with the sea, which is why the demon runs to the sea to try and get away. The demon also tends to shapeshift, and Lamia is very connected with shapeshifting, as is Gelu.

way the demon also tends to shape shift and lamia is very connected with shape shifting as is galoo and this story so lamash who starts in mesopotamia goes to greece and then this legend that is told about the greek version comes back to mesopotamia and in the incantation bowls you have this moment where the two haven't quite rejoined again yet where this story charm because the idea of it is that you tell the story and functionally you're performing the charm, you're reminding the demon of its promise, you're listing the demon's names, which it says, you know, if you recite these around me, then I won't be able to harm any child. And yeah, in the incantation bowls, it's just not come back. Lith hasn't quite absorbed that story again. And she will.

Within sort of a couple of hundred years, that story becomes a fundamental part of Lilith's myth. But in the incantation bowls, the two are just separate. And those incantation bowls are written by a woman, which is lovely. I tell you what, Sarah, there's so many different rabbit holes we could go down after that.

But it is so interesting. I love that looking at, when you look at ancient cultures, whether it's Mesopotamia or Greece, or even, in one case, indigenous Australia. And you can see similarities, parallels, comparisons. But with the Mesopotamia and the Greece example there, it's that wonderful example of how stories would have travelled

between the Near East and ancient Greece, then would have come back. And I guess that's potentially one of the key ways that these stories therefore do evolve over time, over those centuries. And you can kind of see that pattern, can't you, in Lilith? Absolutely, yes. And the way she sort of picks stuff up

and sort of almost cannibalises other myths and draws them into herself, it is fascinating. And there is an element of her that childbirth was a horribly risky business in the ancient world. It's still a pretty risky, traumatizing business now, but it was even more so in the ancient world. And the early years of infancy were also fraught with horrors. So having a demoness who you could, if you're in a horrible pregnancy and something's going wrong, at least you can say an incantation and clutch an amulet. something's going wrong, at least you can say an incantation and clutch an amulet. If your child is sick and dying in front of you, at least you can tell the story charm about Lilith and make

an incantation bowl and maybe that will help. And it's one of the reasons that these stories are so long lived is that people use them to try and get themselves through these horrible, horrible periods to try and give themselves sort of a sense of control. I mean, I say people, women use them for this. And it's one of the reasons why they're so persistent within folklore. And we can get onto the sexy side in a minute. Because that is very much part of the folklore, but not of as much interest to women, of much more interest to sort of elite men. But this child mother killing side of her means she really hangs on people take her seriously i think i'm really glad you said that to highlight the context and how figures like lilith and i'm guessing other demonic figures to lillith it's not just the demon is just a demon

you know there is a story behind it and that is why they're so long lived and highlighting that very high risk during child birth so that you have these figures as you say they endure i'm kind of repeating what you say but i think it's so so interesting to highlight in the fact that the story endures because there's a meaning behind it it's a scary story but there is a meaning behind it why you've got to take care almost i guess absolutely that people are determined to keep her story alive and to make amulets against her and to know how to drive her away

because driving her away is so vital and so important. There is an absolutely incredible incantation against Lamashtu in Mesopotamia, which just, it feels like it could have been written in the modern day by any woman who was pregnant and had difficulty. So it's, I was pregnant, but I was unable to bring my child to term.

I gave birth, but did not bring my child to life. May a woman who can grant success release me. May I have a straightforward pregnancy. And that is an incantation against Lamashtu. And it just feels so raw. And you can feel the pain in it. And it's still a pain that is felt by far too many women today. And that is the sort of the basis of these demons.

That is why women are so invested in telling these stories, in performing incantations against them and making amulets against them. That is what they're up against. Sarah, these sorts of sources that you have available, whether it's cuneiform or it's the incantation bowls, where you can actually see the stories of these figures that aren't just elite men writing the histories,

which you also often have in ancient Greece and Rome, it is such a wonderful, different perspective into the life and struggles of these people who are living two to three thousand years ago isn't it i guess that must be also one of the real fascinations of researching a book like this you start to find people like this who would otherwise definitely be lost to the depths of ancient history absolutely i mean even just the horror of childbirth and infant death and how that impacted women, that is something that is not talked about very often in history.

I mean, increasingly so now. But even 50 years ago, there was this theory called the maternal indifference hypothesis, which was that women didn't actually mind very much if their children died because they sort of knew you've got a 30 percent chance of them dying before they reach 10. So they probably weren't very attached to them, which persisted for sort of decades. It's astonishing. I mean, it's certainly no longer held now. And you had classical writers, Cicero said, you know, women shouldn't get too upset when their children die. And for ages that was taken as like, well,

they probably weren't then, as opposed to Cicero once again talking nonsense. And to actually have these stories and the sort of attempts women were making to try and keep themselves safe is incredible. And of course, these are just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, even the incantation bowls, they're women who can read and write. So you have to assume there is a whole load of women who don't have that, but who can at least, you know, mutter an incantation and tell a story. They're writing all of this down. But did they have any idea of what's Lamashtu, what Lilithu, what Lilith looks like? Do we have any depictions of what they thought this demon looks like?

Yes. How far back do you want to go? We can go to Mesopotamia. Let's go all the way back to Mesopotamia. This is the ancient, so we can go as far back as ancient as you want. What a treat. So Lamashti we have some fantastic images of. She tends to have a lion's head. She tends to have these incredibly long fingers. She's very often holding a snake. She tends to be completely naked and facing sort of aggressively out. So she has sort of heavy, sagging breasts, a very, very clear vulva and talons of a bird. Often they're said to be the talons of an Anzu bird, which is like a horrible, mythical bird in Mesopotamia, sort of a hideous monster as well.

She's often suckling animals at her breasts too. There is actually a degree of sadness to Lamashtu, a vague suggestion that maybe, like Leliti, she wanted to be a mother as well. She does suckle animals. She also suckles children, but her breast milk is poison, so they tend to die. And she wraps babies after birth, but any child touched by her will die. She's often placated as well by being given sort of traditionally feminine items. So you can try and drive her away by offering her a comb or a spindle. So there is this sort of vague feeling that she's almost like this horrible parody of womanhood

and a parody of a mother that can start to feel incredibly sad, especially when she's blending with Alitu. And she's got this thing of a woman who desperately wanted to be a mother but isn't. On Gone Medieval from History Hit, we set out to solve the biggest mysteries of the Middle Ages. So many of these travellers who went out looking for Prestor John, what did they think they were hearing? We explore cutting-edge research. Genetic signatures found in present-day Jewish populations were shared by the genetic ancestries

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So Sarah, when we go forward and we do see Lamashtu and Lilitu melding together and we get Lilith, do we see any depictions by those who wanted to ward off Lilith as well? Do we see Lilith depicted in ancient art? So she does appear in incantation bowls. I'm going to read about incantation bowls again. They're wonderful objects, but they are very sort of poorly made. And the images that are drawn of the demons that they're trying to ward off are a sign of how difficult it is to paint on a curved surface. But you can see she has loose hair. She has loose wild hair. She has, again, very heavy breasts, but she doesn't have as much animal imagery connected to her. She's not sort of got

the head of a lion anymore. It's just the head of a woman. And she doesn't have sort of the horrible talons for her feet. Fundamentally, fundamentally she looks like a woman but with extremely exaggerated breasts and exaggerated vulva and this incredibly wild loose hair and the odd thing about the hair as well this is a tangent stop me if it's too much okay that's dangerous you should see the size of my footnotes. Anyway, so in ancient Mesopotamia, Lamashtu also has this wild hair. And in sort of the Lilithian incantation bowls, it has this element of, it's because she's a wild monster. You know, Lamashtu is a demoness who belongs out on the steppe. Once Delito is a ghost, she should be out in the steppe, out in the wilderness as well. She shouldn't be in the cities. And having this wild, untamed hair is a sign that she lives in swamps and

this sort of thing. And you get an element of that with the Lilith of the incantation bowls. But at the same time, you've got rabbinic sources that are starting to come in and that are starting to say, actually, loose hair on a woman is pretty sexy. And, you know, if a woman goes out with her hair uncovered, then her husband can divorce her because without any penalties, because, you know, bit much really. And it's very interesting to watch as this hair, which was wild and horrible and sort of unpleasant, you know, it's unw unwashed unkempt hair suddenly starts to become you loose and flowing and very appealing because you're worth it yeah exactly absolutely well therefore i mean come on let's delve into that part of this so we talked about the child killing part of lilith that horrible part of the demon what is this seductive sexy part of lilith's story that we also see very much attached to this demon in antiquity.

So obviously Lilith is one of the creatures that is bringing that in as Lamashtu is there, this horrible child killing monster. And you've got Lilith who's this sad virgin ghost, but who does want to seduce people. And by the time you get to the incantation bowls, she is seducing men and she's seducing women. Sometimes she appears to the woman as a man and to a man as a woman. And sometimes she seems to appear to women as a woman herself as well. And to some extent, there are two very, very sad bowls made by the same married couple that are trying to drive away Lilith so that the husband can have proper love for his wife and can have affection for his wife. This sort of idea that maybe it's Lilith that's stopping this.

Maybe Lilith is the reason why you don't like me very much and why you're not in love with me as you should be. And it's very much a shared concern for both of them I mean it's heartbreaking and also sort of a desperate hope that maybe this is something you can solve by blaming it on a demon and then driving the demon away and then Lilith starts to get picked up by a more scholarly Jewish element and that very much comes with a male tag and perhaps unsurprisingly there is much less interest in the child and mother killing side of her which obviously is not a primary concern for a lot of these men and a lot more concern with the sexy side of her so she goes almost it's so interesting with this different writers almost people dictating her story she she transforms very much from that child killer to

Sir Dark Tress. And there's almost a reflection of what they were fearful of. Absolutely, yes. And you see it with Lilith. She maps on so closely to medieval Jewish concerns about sex, well, specifically male medieval Jewish concerns about sex. So medieval Judaism from someone raised in a Christian culture seems astonishingly sex positive. There was occasional discussion about contraception, there was a definite acknowledgement of female pleasure in sex, there was an idea that you should go forth and multiply and that means having sex. But it was sex within a proper context. So sex between a husband and wife. It was thought of as a bad thing to have sex with your wife if you were angry with her,

if you were thinking of another woman. It was terribly frowned upon to masturbate, quite frowned upon to have wet dreams, and extremely frowned upon to have illegitimate children. Interestingly enough, Lilith fits in perfectly to these fears. One of the most fascinating things that happens with her is she is this child-killing monster. She has her origins in a woman who desperately wanted to have children but never had the opportunity to. And and suddenly she is having children left right and center that one of the main concerns about her is that she is going to steal your semen and impregnate herself with it and then turn up with a whole load of illegitimate

offspring which is a complete reversal of everything that Lilith was about previously but clearly shows kind of exactly where she fits almost along these sort of fault lines, these worries about sex. Suddenly she's slipping into those. So she said as well to give men sort of improper thoughts, especially when they're having sex with their wives, which again is sort of exactly where the fault line is, where you're not meant to be doing it. Suddenly Lilith is there and she's the one causing it. And it is partly sort of to get over these fears and partly to sort of give these fears a face. The other thing I think it would do, I think it does, is sort of remove some of

the responsibility for sexual conduct with men. So, you know, you had horrible thoughts about your wife while you were having sex with her. Well, it know, you had horrible thoughts about your wife while you were having sex with her. Well, it's not. It's not super your fault. Lilith was there. There is a fascinating story told about her. It's another one of these kind of story charms where it's with the prophet Elijah. And Lilith turns up and says, oh, we have loads of children. He goes, no, we don't. And he says, yes, yes, we do. I i i've stolen loads of your semen and i've used it and you know even a prophet has this problem it's it's really not your fault if you have lots of illegitimate children it is so weird but so fascinating and interesting to hear you say all that and how these people particularly men i guess from what you're saying you know blames lilith for

things sometimes almost outside of their control with sex. I mean, wet dreams just seems like the absolute clear one. Of course. Something completely out of your control. And they think, oh, it must be a supernatural kind of thing. Yeah. There must be some sort of reason to, you know, why this is happening. And I guess that contributes to why Lilith's story continues

down for centuries into the medieval era, you know, when we get this dominant Christian world in modern day Europe. Absolutely. So if we want to get into Christianity. I think we've got to go down this route. We've got to get into this. Okay, so my book is not just about Lilith. It is about a whole family of these interconnected, child-snatching, seductive demonesses who all have their root in the Mashtu.

connected, child-snatching, seductive demonesses who all have their root in Lamashtu. And Christianity, they have their own seductive demoness who fits right into the cracks of exactly where male worries are. But she's not Lilith. She is another child of Lamashtu who's just taken a different route. So Lamashtu turns up in ancient Greece as Lamia. Lamia, like Lamashtu, is very connected with snakes and is also a child-snatching, mother-killing monster who ends up being quite sexy. And on the one hand, you have stories about her where she's stealing children and you have to drive her away. And on the other hand, you have stories where she is snake-tailed, sitting by the sea, bare-breasted, tempting in sailors because she's bare-breasted, and then eating them as soon as they're within reach.

And these stories about Lamia combine with the stories about the sirens so the singers in the odyssey who draw men to them the sirens in the odyssey not sexy their song is not sexy at all it is a song of I mean what they sing to Odysseus is that they will tell him everything that happened at Troy they will give him lots of knowledge it is not sexy whatsoever their appearance is described that is not what draws them in. Lamia is the one who is there flashing sailors and then eating them when they turn up. But the siren sort of lends Lamia, or blends with Lamia, and she turns into the mermaid. The sirens as well, they're bird-bodied, they're not fish-tailed, and we have quite good, we can trace quite well how Lamia originally has a snake tail.

And then that becomes sort of more of a fishtail, but it's got this sort of reptilian turn to it. So actually the tail of mermaids originated as sort of a snake tail and then ended up becoming thought of as a fishtail because that worked much better in a watery environment. love is a fish tail because that worked much better in a watery environment. The siren mermaids of the medieval Christian church are where men are placing a lot of their worries about women. The medieval Christian church had a lot more hang-ups about sex than medieval Judaism. Obviously, not everyone, but there were extremely high-profile churchmen who insisted, above all things, on chastity, who thought that men should remain virgins. You get high profile churchmen throwing themselves into streams and patches of brambles because they passed a woman in the street or, God forbid, remembered that one time they passed a woman in the street. a woman in the street. You've got men refusing to sit with their sisters because they're worried that it might excite them. There's a man called Peter Damien who got very cross about sirens and who was very high up in the church. And he thought you should scourge yourself if you had any thoughts

about women at all. You know, it's very odd stuff. He goes into a lot of detail about masturbation as well. It's extremely odd, but really obsessive. And the idea is you really shouldn't be having any sexual thoughts whatsoever. You shouldn't be married, you shouldn't be having sex, you shouldn't be looking at women. And that is what the Siren Mermaid of the medieval church becomes. She is this monster who she desperately wants to seduce you and if you go near her then she will kill you and that's just it and what is fun well i think it's fun lilith ends up blending with the snake in the garden of eden and it gives her a snake tail and that's how she's depicted in an awful lot of medieval art especially medieval christ Christian art, actually. So if you go to the Sistine Chapel,

then Michelangelo's depiction of the fall, Lilith is there handing the fruit to Eve and she has the tail of a snake and she looks exactly like a mermaid. If you take these Liliths out of the Garden of Eden, then they look the same as their sort of mermaid sisters is probably too close, cousins because michelangelo's painting is such an evocative one especially talking about lilith and that depiction of

the snake in the garden of eden because as time goes on there's that link with lilith and the garden of eden not always as the snake but that does seem to emerge isn't there absolutely so the best known story about lilith in the Garden of Eden, and also the first story we have written down about Lilith in the Garden of Eden, is incredibly important, incredibly interesting. And if anyone has heard one story about Lilith, it's likely to be this one, which is that God created Adam and Lilith at the same time out of the same clay in the Garden of Eden to be husband and wife. And at some point, Adam said that he wanted sex with him on top. And Lilith was not keen on this idea. Lilith says very firmly, we're made of the same clay, we're equals. I should get a say in

this. And when Adam doesn't agree, she flies away, runs to the sea, is chased there by three angels who extract from her a promise that she will not harm children if the angels' names are spoken, which I don't know how long a memory your listeners have, but that is the exact same story or a variation of the story that was being told in Incantation Bowls, a monster being chased to the sea by figures who incidentally have the same names. So these angels are called, well, they're called names with lots of S's and N's in them. And these S's and N's have chased these monsters. So they turn up in the sort of late Mediterranean versions of this story. And fascinatingly, and this may be even more of a tangent, they seem to be connected with Pazuzu. So SNS is the name that Pazuzu seems to end up

being called. So actually, this isn't sort of a new monster. These angels who chase Lilith out of the Garden of Eden and get this promise from her are Pazuzu, thousands of years later, still hounding them still trying to drive these monsters away from women and their children so this story in itself has its origins thousands of years beforehand absolutely these tablets cunair form tablets absolutely yes that's brilliant when you see stuff like that isn't it it's once again that example of how these mesopotamian stories from distant ancient history, they're almost regurgitated, recycled in later Jewish traditions. And Lilith is a good example of that.

Yeah, Lilith has her origins in every way in ancient Mesopotamia, in cuneiform, and it's fantastic. I think the Pazuzu connection is one of my favourite pieces. Pazuzu is absolutely fascinating. I think you have to forgive my my slowness perhaps near the start as I was trying to get my head around all these things but as you put more pieces together you can now start to really

see that evolutionary story it has this figure of Lilith appears and evolves almost kind of thrives in the medieval world that is dominated by the Jewish and the Christian traditions and then even into the Renaissance, Michelangelo and further on historian Jews the medieval world that is dominated by the Jewish and the Christian traditions. And then, even into the Renaissance, Michelangelo, and further on, historian Jews too. How does it

endure in what sorts of forms? So in the Victorian era, there was a real interest in fundamentally most of the demons in this demonic family. So Lamia, mermaids and Lilith are all run back together again by Victorians in literature and in art. If you have a painting of a woman with sort of a vague snaky reference near a body of water, then it's likely to be one of them and it could be any one of them. You have the Pre-Raphaelites who obsessively painted these sort of watery, seductive women. There was a point where Burlington House, where the RA was exhibiting, was called Cavern of the Mermaids by a critic because there were so many paintings of watery, snake-tailed, seductive women on display. You find Lamia referenced in a lot of

literature. There are sort of literary figures who are called Lamia sort of threading their way throughout. And it might actually be surprising to a lot of people because Lamia doesn't have much name recognition in the present day, but she had a lot in Victorian England. You know, people could just reference her in passing and know what was being referred to. And you know, Waterhouse could paint nymphs and then he could paint a lamia and everyone knew what he was representing. And a lot of that, again who is again this sort of very sexy woman who will draw you in and then suck your blood or murder you in some way. And we see that really, really nicely in Dracula, where obviously Dracula is the antagonist and the main vampire, but he has three seductive wives. And we hear from Harker that being seduced by them is more horrible to him than anything that Dracula has done.

And most importantly, you have Lucy as well, who shifts and changes. One of the things that they are really interested in is how these monsters can sort of shapeshift or hide their true selves, how they can appear as beautiful women but actually they're hiding a monster underneath so you get that especially with lamia who's supposed to be able to shapeshift between beautiful women and sort of serpentine monster or who sort of buries her tail in the sand so that sailors can't see it you get it in mermaids as well this idea again that they can keep their tail buried beneath the water and you can't see that they're actually horrible into it till it's too late and to some degree you see it with Lilith as well Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair is constantly referred to by Thackeray as a mermaid and he draws

her as one as well and at one point he finally says I mean I'm paraphrasing but if you just peep below the waterline you can see our horrible tale writhing under the surface. But we've kept the camera, well, kept the focus of this story above the waterline where everything is sort of all polite and pleasant and not a problem at all. And vampires end up tying into this with the idea that it is a beautiful woman who is sort of shapeshifted into something monstrous and horrible and ties again into this serpentine nature. And Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, is obsessed with this, not just with his vampires and with Lucy in Dracula, who is sort of a wonderful, shy, demure woman who suddenly becomes this sort of monstrous temptress with a heaving breast running around

crypts in a nightdress trying to seduce her previous lover. But also in other stories he tells as well, there's one where there's a beautiful woman who is actually secretly a horrible white worm tying back in sort of that snaky myth. And there seems to be a lot feeding into this. Obviously and inevitably there is the Victorian ideas about sex and especially sexuality and women. This really wasn't something that women should be exhibiting and it would be terrible. There is also sort of an idea that men are perhaps losing the upper hand. In the same year that that critic called the RA the cavern of the mermaids, there'd been sort of a big push for women's suffrage.

Women had just started being awarded degrees. There'd been a vote for women's suffrage that had come perilously close to passing in Parliament. There were all these figures. The new woman who was supposed to be free and liberated and also very sexually free and liberated as well. And you can sort of see that reflected in these monsters. And then you can also see male fears about sort of losing their masculinity, about women getting this upper hand, and where does that leave men? Are you just

a vampire's victim? Are you just the fool who's been dragged down by a mermaid to the depths because he wasn't able to see the danger that was there and weirdly enough as well there is also this idea of like the collapse of empire that vampires especially are really tied into this idea that the empire is falling apart and that this is a real worry for men in this time as well and you get these monsters representing all of this and there's a real obsession with them especially from a male point of view and then there's a brief period where no one cares very much about Lilith sort of a brief respite um sort of early 20th century well mid 20th century people have sort of forgotten about her sort of moved on from her and then in the

1970s a Jewish scholar as in a scholar of Judaism and is Jewish herself called Judith Plaskow wrote this story called The Coming of Lilith retelling of the Garden of Eden myth involving Lilith but from a very feminist perspective so in it Lilith flees the garden when she is denied equality with her husband and Adam is given Eve made out of his ribs so that there can be no dispute about who is superior Adam obsessively wants to build the wall of the garden higher and higher to try and keep Lilith out because he's always conscious of the fact that she's just on the other side right okay and in order to get Eve to help him he tells her these stories about how Lilith will actually steal her children and kill her in childbirth which is again tying back into those older myths yes it's harkening back almost full circle to the

original yeah yeah I mean very very intentionally you know Jesus of Glasgow knew of this and knew what she was doing at one point Eve catches sight of Lilith and realises that she is just a woman like herself. And when Adam isn't looking, Eve climbs over an apple tree, leaning against the wall of Eden, meets Lilith, and they sit together and they talk and they share stories and they laugh and they cry together. And then they return to the garden, both of them. And the last line is, God and Adam were both expectant and afraid. And it's beautiful.

It's so well told. I mean, I really would urge everyone to go out and read it as opposed to listening to my terrible rehash. And you get this idea. Well, Judith Plaskow was doing it with a real focus on Jewish history. She wrote a lot about how it was really important that a lot of the story of Judaism was the story through men. And when you only have that story, then you're missing half of it.

50% of people aren't represented and that history needed, that Jewish history especially, needed that 50% returned. And you can see that within this story, that an idea of sort of rising and imbalance. Because God at the end is expectant and afraid, but he is also a bit worried that Adam has gotten a bit too high and mighty and that perhaps he shouldn't have kicked Lilith out in the first place. There is this idea of sort of order being restored by bringing Lilith back

into the garden and by making her a person again. But there is also something wonderful. During a period where, you know, second wave feminism, women must have a place outside the home. Women shouldn't be defined by husband and family. Something about the story of a woman saying, I am not inferior to you. I am not going to have sex with you however you want. I am going to leave fundamentally my home and my marriage to just go and do something else on the outside of the garden wall. And that gets picked up on as well, wonderfully. And you have things like Lilith magazine, which is still going, everyone should go read it. But it is sort of a feminist

magazine founded in the 1970s. You have people writing essays about her. The other joy of her is that she is also sexually liberated. So she's also sexually liberated, but in a way where it's very clear that she is having sex because she enjoys it. So she refuses sex with Adam because she doesn't want to. And then she will go off and have sex with other men, with demons. It's fine. She is in control of her own sexuality. And there is something so joyous about that. And people pick up on that part of the myth as well. And you see it again and again within sort of second wave feminism within the 1970s, that Lilith recurs and recurs. There is a fantastic book as well by Octavia Butler that again, everyone should go and read as opposed to listening to me

make a hash of the story. But it's called Lilith's Brood. And one of the things that happens with Lilith in the 1970s and in second wave feminism is, so Judith Plaskow very much writes Lilith and Eve together. Eve is just as important. Eve is, you know, she's no fool. She is a self-possessed woman in her own right who's just been lied to. But increasingly there's sort of this idea of Eve as Lily Revlin, who was another Jewish scholar writing about Lilith, calls her the enabler in chief. You know, she is a symbol of all the women who don't want freedom, who stand in the way of women who want it, who reinforce sort of patriarchal values. You say you should have a husband, you should have children, you shouldn't have a career and all this kind of thing. And Octavia Butler writes this wonderful story.

It's science fiction. It is about an African-American woman living in 1970s America called Lilith. And the entire human race is abducted by aliens. And Lilith finds herself in their ship. And it is like a garden. So it has sort of that Garden of Eden theme to it. And the aliens are a bit like snakes, or at least they have sort of serpentine appendages. So you've got that sort of running through it as well. But the principal difference for her Lilith is that her Lilith can't leave. Her Lilith is desperate to break free of

the aliens. She's desperate to try and help humanity in general in any way that she can, but she cannot get off the ship. And it is made incredibly clear to her by the aliens that if she resists anything they're asking of her, then she will be put back into suspended animation and will probably never be woken up again. And the aliens use her to breed. It's science fiction. The aliens can't reproduce themselves. They need another race to join with to reproduce at all. She can't really resist it and she can't really say no. And she is just sort of desperately trying to use whatever power she has to ask for sort of little things to try and find her freedom where she can. And in the end, she sort of becomes a version of Eve herself. a version of Eve herself. And I think a lot of the point of Octavia Butler's story is this idea of not every woman who is oppressed is oppressed because she's really pro and she thinks women should be oppressed. Women can be just as mentally free as Lilith. But if you end up in a situation where you can't get out, then that mental freedom is not going to manifest in suddenly going,

well, I've had enough of this and flying away. That, you know, women of second wave feminism who were turning their back on husbands and home, they had a lot to lose and they were certainly making sacrifices, but they were sacrifices that they could make that weren't sort of putting themselves necessarily in danger of death. And that that isn't a freedom that some women have and I love the fact that Lilith has been used to tell those stories as well because I think there is very much sort of a desire to use her to be like well we should all break free we should all leave Eden. Eden's not a paradise for us because we're oppressed but actually no that's not an option for some women and it's great that Lilith can be used in that way as well.

Well, Sarah, you speak about it all so passionately. And I think that's a lovely way to kind of end it with the legacy of Lilith down into the late 20th and I guess into the 21st century too. You have written a book where you go into even more detail about Lilith and these other figures, descendants of Lamashtu and the mermaids and so on and Lamia and so on and so forth, the book is called?

Woman's Law, which is woman with an A and law spelt L-O-R-E. It's a quote from Keats' poem on Lamia that if I'd really thought about it, I wouldn't have used something where you could spell it two different ways. Brilliant. Well, Sarah, it's been an absolute pleasure. And it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me and listening to me witter on. Well, there you go. There was Sarah Clegg explaining all about these demonic women from antiquity,

figures such as Lilith, Lamashtu, and so much more. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Last things from me, you know what I'm going to say but if you've been enjoying the ancients podcast and you want to help us out then you know what you can do you can leave us a lovely rating on apple podcast on spotify wherever you get your podcast from it greatly helps us as we continue to grow the ancients and to share these extraordinary stories from our distant past with you and with as many people as possible. But that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era,

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