Lilith in Sumeria and Babylonia

   Lilith is preeminently an emanation of the great winged Bird Goddess. She is a wind spirit, and her earliest associations are with the Sumerian Goddess of the Grain, Ninlil, Lady of the Air, who birthed the moon in the darkness of the netherworld and bestowed the divine right to rule.

   Lilith's recorded story begins with Innana, granddaughter of Ninlil, who was the "Queen of Heaven" in early Sumeria. The legend of Innana and Enki told of the sacred sexual customs that were one of Innana's gifts to civilize the people of Erech. Here, the holy women of the temple were known as the nu-gig, the pure and spotless virgin priestesses. They took as their lovers the members of the community who came to the temple to worship the Goddess and to receive a healing. At this time Lilith's name is recorded as a young maiden, the "hand of Innana," who gathers the men from the street and brings them to the temple at Erech for the holy rites.

   Between 3000 BCE and 2500 BCE the ancient Sumerian culture began to interface with the coming of the patriarchy. As the patriarchy moved to overtake the reign of the Goddess, they first needed to sever the people from the Goddess's vast power, which was centered in her inner temple of sacred sexual love. In order to accomplish this task the patriarchy rejected and suppressed the sexual rites of the Goddess religion. Like the denied shadow when projected, women's sexual power became demonized as a force of evil. Over the centuries the young maid Lilith, who first approached the men to take them to Innana's holy temple, became in patriarchal culture the embodiment of everything that was evil and dangerous in the sexual realm. She especially catalyzed men's worst fears concerning the sexual power of the feminine.

   By 2400 BCE Lilith, Spirit of the Air, was distorted into a demon of the night who personified natural disasters such as storms and winds. She was imaged as a beautiful maiden who would not release her lovers or ever give them real satisfaction. There existed four classes of demons: the Lillu demons, who were vampires; the Lilitu or she-demons; the Ardat Lili and the Irdu Lili, who were female and male counterparts, dwelling in waste places, preying upon men and women by night and conceiving ghostly children. These demons haunted desolate places in stormy weather and were dangerous to pregnant women and children.

   Lilith's flower was the lilu, or lily, or "lotus" of her genital magic, which represented the virgin aspect of the Triple Goddess. A Sumerian king list dating from this time states that Lugalbanda, father of the great hero Gilgamesh, was a Lillu-demon. This statement cal also be read as a veiled reference pointing to Gilgamesh, who was reputed to be two-thirds divine and one-third human, to have the sacred blood lineage descending from the sexual rites of the Goddess.

   A Babylonian terracotta plaque from 2300 BCE depicts Lilith as a Bird Woman and Lady of the Beasts. She is beautiful, with a slender nude body, wings that fall behind her like an open veil, and powerfully clawed owl feet. Her head is adorned with a crown of multiple horns worn by all great deities, and she holds the ring and rod symbols of power. Surrounded by lions as her protectors, and owls depicting her nocturnal wisdom, she is the animal soul of the world, who is associated with every living creature that creepeth and all the beasts of the field. The literal meaning of Lilith's name is "screech." She was associated with the screech owl of the night, and later as a demon of screeching.

   The story of how Lilith was cast out of the Sumerian cosmology was told in the epic tale Gilgamesh and the Netherworld (dating ca. 2000 BCE). Innana saved a sacred huluppu tree on the banks of the Euphrates that had been uprooted by a great windstorm. She then planted this willow in her holy garden, planning to use its wood for her throne and bed. As the years passed the tree matured, but it bore no branches or leaves for three reasons: the snake who could not be charmed made its nest in the roots of the tree; the fierce Anzu bird set its young in the crown; and, in the middle, the dark maid Lilith built her home. And so Innana, who loved to laugh, wept because the snake, bird, and Lilith would not leave her tree. She turned to Gilgamesh for help. He slayed the serpent. His men cut down the tree and presented it to Innana for her throne and bed. The Anzu bird escaped with its young to the mountains, and Lilith smashed her home and flew to the wild and uninhabited places. Innana rewarded Gilgamesh with a drum and drumstick from the base and crown of the tree, which enabled him to talk with the gods and to descend to the netherworld.

   From a feminist perspective, this story raises several disturbing questions. Why would Innana weep at the presence of her handmaid Lilith tree? Why did she wish for the symbols of the ancient Bird and Snake Goddess to be gone from her life? And why did Innana reward Gilgamesh for destroying the sacred serpent and banishing Lilith and the Anzu bird?

   The Epic of Gilgamesh, as inscribed upon the clay tablets dating from 2000 BCE, was the later Babylonian version of an earlier Sumerian tale that had occurred over the preceding one thousand years. It is known only in fragments today. From the patriarchal perspective Innana must sacrifice her virginity, that is, her new moon maiden nature as a goddess who is free and autonomous. She must also submit to the new solar gods and allow Gilgamesh to destroy the key symbols of her power: the bird, the snake, and the tree.

   It now becomes clear why Innana wept at the continued presence of Lilith, the serpent, and the Anzu bird, who all resided in her sacred tree. The ancient Bird and Snake Goddess who made her home at the crown and base of the tree of life united heaven and earth. This image contained the power and knowledge inherent in the eagle-winged, lion-faced bird and the wisdom of sexual renewal embodied by the serpent. Innana had to give up these symbols of her power if the new patriarchy was to grant her throne and bed, her new symbols signifying co-rulership in the new reign. If she could not let go of them voluntarily, they would be taken away from her in any case by the coming patriarchal onslaught. The home of her handmaiden Lilith was destroyed, and Lilith had to flee to the desolated wilderness.

   Lilith's banishment continued into the following centuries as the Babylonian, Hittite, and Semitic civilization superseded the Sumerian culture in the ancient Near East. The wild, free, and virgin (belonging to no man) aspect of feminine sexuality that Lilith symbolized became distorted into the irresistible, lascivious, insatiable, unmarried she-demons who seduced men in their sleep against their will and excited their nightly emission. An ancient Babylonian cylinder seal shows a man copulating with a vampire whose head has been cut off in order to keep away the nocturnal visits of Lilith and her sisters. Another charm has the reference,

The Lilu, the Lilit, the night Lili
Enchantments, disasters, spells,
Illnesses, evil charms,
In the name of heaven
And in the name of earth
Let them be exorcised.

   In a seventh-century BCE Syrian tablet Lilith was portrayed as a winged sphinx with the following inscription, part of an incantation used to help women in childbirth:

O, Flyer in a dark chamber,
Go away at once, O Lili.

   Lilith was feared as a female demon who endangered women in childbirth and strangled infants. This terror may be linked to her attempt to defend Ninlil's right to bestow rulership by preventing the survival of the conquering tribes' heirs. Many of these incantation texts warding Lilith off have been found in Ninlil's city of Nippur in Babylonia.

   Taken from the book, Mysteries of the Dark Moon, Demetra George.

This page was last updated: November 06, 2008

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