THE EVIL EYE OF HUMANS, ANIMALS, AND DEMONS IN SUMERIAN LITERATURE

Abstract

The widespread ancient belief in the deleterious powers of the eye as reflected in Sumerian literature has been largely neglected in recent research. It has even been suggested that the belief system, though common in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, was foreign to the ancient Sumerians. While Thomsen suggested that the evil eye was limited to humans, other scholars have argued that the evil eye was only associated with divinities in Sumerian literature. This study focuses on the conceptual content of linguistic expressions relating to the eye of humans, animals, and demons in order to demonstrate that much can still be learned about this complex belief system as it existed in ancient Mesopotamia when conceptual metaphors and metonymies for the evil eye are also taken into account.