Men, Women and Children? Some Gender Aspects in Mesopotamian Incantation Bowls

Over 500 incantation bowls have been edited in the time that passed since Austen Henry Layard’s first mention of specimens from Nineveh and their pioneering edition by Thomas Ellis. Great advancements have been made since, and the field has enjoyed a significant bloom in the past decades, with extensive publications. Still, the scholarly history of these objects is fraught with terminological and methodological uncertainties, two factors that are often interconnected. Starting with their name—Aramaic, Mesopotamian or Sassanian, incantation bowls, magic bowls, or even demon bowls—through their function—medical, ritual or religious artifacts, and down to most aspects related to their producers, these objects rest on a research base that contains numerous question marks. Much important work has been conducted in elucidating these, along with the bowls’ background and function, deciphering their intricate texts and analyzing their imagery and form. In the past decades more attempts are made towards a synthesis of this existing knowledge, meant to generate new understandings of the bowls and their historical, social and cultural contexts. In several places I have argued for the importance of terminological precision when conducting such syntheses. This precision is one factor among several needed to take the study of the bowls to the next level.
In the following article I will implement the above suggestion when considering some gender aspects of the Mesopotamian incantation bowls inscribed in Jewish Aramaic. The article is part of a larger project, in which I explore various features of gender and magic in the ancient and medieval world. Other aspects of this ongoing project have been discussed elsewhere. Generally, the topic of gender in the incantation bowls has not benefitted from the attention it deserves. Previous explorations have mainly considered the gender of the bowls’ producers, though not always in a methodical fashion. Questions pertaining to the gender of the bowls beneficiaries, on the other hand, have mostly been left unexplored. My article is a step in this direction.