Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And on today's episode of
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, our month long celebration of
Speaker 3: Halloween continues. Now, if you've been a listener for a while,
Speaker 3: you know what's going on. You know what we do
Speaker 3: every October. But if you are new to the show,
Speaker 3: here's the deal. Every October we devote all of our
Speaker 3: core episodes, our Tuesday and Thursday episodes to seasonally creepy
Speaker 3: subject matter things about ghosts, monsters, devils, curses, horrors, and frights.
Speaker 3: So last week we talked all about spooky trains, about
Speaker 3: locomotive horror stories, ghost trains, and the phenomenon of the
Speaker 3: Victorian railway madness. Today, we are beginning a new series
Speaker 3: on the demons and monsters of ancient Mesopotamian religion because
Speaker 3: they had some really exquisite demons, and as a concrete
Speaker 3: example to kick things off today, I wanted to start
Speaker 3: by talking about a specific ancient artifact. For my money,
Speaker 3: one of the creepiest looking artifacts from all of antiquity,
Speaker 3: and that is a mask of Humbaba.
Speaker 2: Ah Mbaba is an old friend of the show. We've
Speaker 2: talked about Humbaba, not stuff to blow your mind before.
Speaker 3: One of my favorites. Definitely, Humbaba came up in our
Speaker 3: series on the origins of the religious imagery of the Halo,
Speaker 3: because Humbaba, as described in the Epic of Gilgamesh, famously
Speaker 3: has these seven auras or radiances that are kind of
Speaker 3: like an evil halo. But first I want to talk
Speaker 3: specifically about this artifact, and then we can talk a
Speaker 3: bit more about Humbaba as an idea. So this artifact
Speaker 3: is a baked clay disc picting a hideous face. It's
Speaker 3: roughly three point three inches in height and in width,
Speaker 3: and it was produced during the Old Babylonian period between
Speaker 3: about eighteen hundred and sixteen hundred BCE. It was excavated
Speaker 3: by the nineteenth century Assyrian archaeologist Hormuz Ressam from the
Speaker 3: site of the ancient Babylonian city of Sipper, which is
Speaker 3: on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River in modern
Speaker 3: day Iraq. Today, this artifact is held in the collection
Speaker 3: of the British Museum. Now, this sculpture is absolutely worth
Speaker 3: looking up if you are able, but if not, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna do my best to describe it. The mask shows
Speaker 3: a humanoid face frozen in a pitiless grimace. It's got
Speaker 3: the teeth clenched. The head is rounded in shape with
Speaker 3: bulges in the outline of the head where the ears
Speaker 3: would be, and it has wide, blank, empty gray eyes. Now,
Speaker 3: I know, in some cases these ancient Mesopotamians stay statues
Speaker 3: and sculptures would have been painted, and the paint has
Speaker 3: simply weathered away over the years, which is the reason
Speaker 3: some of these ancient statues have such unsettling blank eyes,
Speaker 3: just these empty, cloudy pools of stone with no pupil
Speaker 3: or iris. I don't know if that's the case with
Speaker 3: this clay sculpture or if this is the way it
Speaker 3: was always intended to look. Either way, the state in
Speaker 3: which it has arrived to us in modernity is extremely
Speaker 3: unsettling looking. But I think the most interesting detail about
Speaker 3: it I haven't gotten to yet, and that is the
Speaker 3: texture of the flesh. The entire surface of this monstrous
Speaker 3: face is molded with a pattern like a labyrinth, so
Speaker 3: it's you have a long, single thick line like a
Speaker 3: rope folded over and over upon itself to form every
Speaker 3: part of this head, the hair, the forehead, the ears,
Speaker 3: the nose, the cheeks, and the double rows of clenched
Speaker 3: killer teeth. I think you can even see where the
Speaker 3: coil is supposed to be at its midpoint, you know
Speaker 3: where it folds over on itself. It's at the left
Speaker 3: side of the mouth, where the jaws open. Yeah.
Speaker 2: This is very unsettling looking, and if I were to
Speaker 2: compare it to anything, it makes me think of the
Speaker 2: character prune Face from the nineteen ninety Dick Tracy movie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like that level of like wrinkliness, but then with
Speaker 2: this also this vicious grin, this growling toothy mouth. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's pretty intimidating.
Speaker 3: But I think at least prune Face had pupils in his.
Speaker 2: Eyes somewhere in there. It was heavily littered.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the name implies, Okay, so Humbaba or huahwah. These
Speaker 3: are different, and this will come up throughout the series.
Speaker 3: Most of these entities we're going to be talking about
Speaker 3: have multiple names from different languages and stages in their
Speaker 3: cultural evolution. So this character is known as Huawa in
Speaker 3: Sumerian sources and Humbaba in Akkadian sources. I'm going to
Speaker 3: be calling him Humbaba.
Speaker 2: The other side of the coin is that there are
Speaker 2: best practices for pronouncing a lot of these words and
Speaker 2: these names, so we can we can certainly get them wrong.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, we can't, without any degree
Speaker 2: of failure, get it one hundred percent right, because nobody
Speaker 2: knows one hundred percent exactly how any of these given
Speaker 2: words or names were pronounced in the ancient world in
Speaker 2: their original setting.
Speaker 3: Very good point, Rob, We will be doing our best
Speaker 3: with all of these ancient Mesopotamian words and names. We
Speaker 3: will undoubtedly get some of them wrong in ways that
Speaker 3: will be detectable to people who specialize in these ancient languages.
Speaker 3: But yeah, to some extent, we don't fully know how
Speaker 3: everything was pronounced in every case.
Speaker 2: And you know, probably better that we don't hit it
Speaker 2: dead on because we don't want to summon any of
Speaker 2: these entities. Many of them have been as sleep for
Speaker 2: a very long time. We don't want to invite them
Speaker 2: into our modern world.
Speaker 3: Well, it's often the case in these mythologies that you
Speaker 3: might have a dead god that isn't really dead forever.
Speaker 2: Oh you know, The other thing that we risk is
Speaker 2: if we chance on a mispronunciation of one of their
Speaker 2: names that just hasn't been done before, we might chance
Speaker 2: upon the original pronunciation that therefore summons them into the
Speaker 2: modern world. That's like even the experts haven't been saying
Speaker 2: one hundred percent right, we could air into the summoning space.
Speaker 3: I can't even think about that, okay. So Baba or
Speaker 3: Huahbah is a character who features prominently in ancient Mesopotamian literature,
Speaker 3: most famously in the different versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Speaker 3: As I said earlier, we talked about him at some
Speaker 3: length in that series on the iconography of the Halo,
Speaker 3: because whom Baba is described as having these seven terrifying auras,
Speaker 3: these strange layers of deadly radiance that are taken off
Speaker 3: one by one before he is eventually killed by Gilgamesh
Speaker 3: and Gilgamesh's companion in Kidu. In Gilgamesh, Humbaba is described
Speaker 3: as a giant, terrifying humanoid creature assigned by the god
Speaker 3: in Leal, the lord of Winds, to be the guardian
Speaker 3: of the Cedar forest, and, according to the Stephanie Dally
Speaker 3: translation of Gilgamesh, This is in Tablet two. Humbaba is
Speaker 3: meant to be quote the terror of the people, Humbaba,
Speaker 3: whose shout is the flood weapon, whose utterance is fire,
Speaker 3: and whose breath is death. And we're told that Humbaba
Speaker 3: can hear a rustling of branches in his forest from
Speaker 3: sixty leagues away. So who would dare walk inside the
Speaker 3: forbidden pines? Now, even though we've talked about Humbaba before,
Speaker 3: I do think we probably want to come back and
Speaker 3: talk about him some more. We might get into some
Speaker 3: more depth in part two of this series, but specifically
Speaker 3: in the context of this clay mask from ancient Sipper,
Speaker 3: there is a question about the way that it looks.
Speaker 3: What is the deal with the labyrinthine design on the
Speaker 3: face is? Why is it represented as a horrific face
Speaker 3: with these deep wrinkles. The prune face look and the
Speaker 3: wrinkles seem to be formed out of a folded rope.
Speaker 3: There is an answer to this. We know conclusively why
Speaker 3: it looks that way. The rope that makes the face
Speaker 3: is not a rope. There is a cuneiform inscription on
Speaker 3: the reverse side of the mask which tells us this
Speaker 3: inscription is written by the hand of Warad Marduk, a diviner,
Speaker 3: son of Kubarum, also a diviner. And what the diviner
Speaker 3: says is, according to the British Museum's translation quote, if
Speaker 3: the coils of the colon resemble the head of Huawa.
Speaker 3: This is an omen of Sargon who ruled the land.
Speaker 3: Oh man, oh yeah. And then there's a part with
Speaker 3: some text missing, but it says if and then there's
Speaker 3: an illision, the house of a man will expand, so
Speaker 3: it's saying the coils of a colon. This horrifying mask
Speaker 3: is supposed to represent the piled up intestines of a
Speaker 3: slaughtered animal, which have been used in tons of cultures
Speaker 3: all throughout history as a stimulus for divination, meaning that
Speaker 3: a diviner could read signs of the future and gain
Speaker 3: access to privileged information by looking at the guts of
Speaker 3: a slaughtered animal, sometimes at the liver as well, or
Speaker 3: sometimes the intestines. In this case, I believe the animal
Speaker 3: is supposed to be a sheep, but you know, in
Speaker 3: various usages you would get different animals, might be a
Speaker 3: sheep or a goat, or an ox or so forth.
Speaker 3: In this particular case, the inscription suggests that if the
Speaker 3: diviner sees entrails that coil to represent the face of Humbaba.
Speaker 3: This is an omen of maybe successful conquest or expanding power,
Speaker 3: or the expansion of one's house. So according to a
Speaker 3: book we were both consulting called Gods, Demons and Symbols
Speaker 3: of Ancient Mesopotamia and Illustrated Dictionary. This is by a
Speaker 3: couple of scholars named Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, British
Speaker 3: Museum Press, nineteen ninety two. According to this book, the
Speaker 3: face of Huawa seen by a diviner typically means revolution
Speaker 3: in the state, which I guess doesn't sound so great
Speaker 3: if you are currently the king. And a lot of
Speaker 3: times these divinations would be given to a powerful person,
Speaker 3: recorded as given to a powerful person such as a king.
Speaker 3: But the authors also suggest there some evidence that clay
Speaker 3: masks representing the face of Humbaba were hung up on walls,
Speaker 3: maybe in palaces and temples as charms to ward off evil.
Speaker 3: So as terrifying as this kind of face looks, masks
Speaker 3: like this may have been thought to have the power
Speaker 3: to ward off evil rather than bring it, which is
Speaker 3: what we today call apotropaic magic, protective or warding off magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and we'll get into at least one other
Speaker 2: key example of this as we proceed through this episode.
Speaker 3: Now, like I said, we may have to come back
Speaker 3: to Humbaba later in this series, but I also think
Speaker 3: we should near the beginning of the series definitely acknowledge
Speaker 3: the ancient Mesopotamian supernatural entity that will be most recognizable
Speaker 3: to fans of modern horror movies because of his appearance
Speaker 3: in The Exorcist, and that is the demon Pazuzu.
Speaker 2: That's right, Bazuzu cast a long shadow over modern horror
Speaker 2: cinema and horror fiction. Also just really stands out the
Speaker 2: iconography of this particular demon because it features a pair
Speaker 2: of wings that in silhouette kind of look like an
Speaker 2: X behind a humanoid body, has like a horned dog
Speaker 2: like head, very fierce eyes and face, and yeah, works
Speaker 2: great in silhouette and is used not only in The
Speaker 2: Exorcist that we mentioned this on Weird House Cinema, but
Speaker 2: the when we did an episode on Ridley Scott's Legend.
Speaker 2: The same statue also shows up two different times in
Speaker 2: the movie Legend, just in the background or in the foreground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's funny. And the Exorcist was already out at
Speaker 3: that point. That's the funny thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think Pazzuzu got representation, and it was
Speaker 2: either like, let's get some more gigs, Let's get some
Speaker 2: more projects. I want to work with Ridley Scott.
Speaker 3: Now, later we will get to the question of whether
Speaker 3: these cinematic portrayals accurately captured the spirit of Pazuzu. Maybe
Speaker 3: they partially do, and maybe there's some ways they don't.
Speaker 3: They don't get it quite right, but at least within
Speaker 3: the story of The Exorcist, Pazzuzu is the name given
Speaker 3: to a demon that possesses and torments the twelve year
Speaker 3: old Reagan McNeil. And this is the story in the
Speaker 3: original nineteen seventy one novel by William Peter Blattie, and
Speaker 3: it's carried over into the nineteen seventy three film adaptation
Speaker 3: directed by William Friedkin. Though in the original novel and movie,
Speaker 3: the demon does not run around saying I am Pazzuzu.
Speaker 3: You get more of that in like The Exorcist to
Speaker 3: the Heretic, I think, which is, you know, there's a
Speaker 3: kind of downgrading of some of the subtleties of the
Speaker 3: original in that, but the connection with Pazuzu is established
Speaker 3: primarily through a prologue in the film in which the
Speaker 3: Catholic priest Lancaster Marrin is This is the character who
Speaker 3: ultimately leads and performs the exorcism rights in the third
Speaker 3: act of the movie, he's working at an archaeological dig
Speaker 3: in Iraq, and in multiple contexts you see him encounter
Speaker 3: a state of a frightening, monstrous creature from ancient times.
Speaker 3: And one thing I always liked about The Exorcist is
Speaker 3: that the meaning of this confrontation is never made too explicit,
Speaker 3: so it doesn't get corny. We don't get Maren facing
Speaker 3: off against it at the beginning and saying, you know,
Speaker 3: giving some monologue like you are evil, Pazuzu, I must
Speaker 3: defeat you. You know that you don't get a direct
Speaker 3: address till towards the end of the film. Instead, there
Speaker 3: is just this vague, powerful sense of dread that the
Speaker 3: entity depicted in these ancient artworks is somehow present now
Speaker 3: and is powerful, and its shadow has somehow fallen over
Speaker 3: our lives now. Of course, while I love The Exorcist,
Speaker 3: you know it's a great horror movie. In the modern world,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't go to the Exorcist to understand what an
Speaker 3: entity like Pazuzu originally was and originally meant. In The Exorcist,
Speaker 3: Pazuzu is rendered as a demon in the modern Christians
Speaker 3: sense of the word, meaning a malevolent spirit, a minion
Speaker 3: of Satan which can possess the bodies of innocent humans
Speaker 3: and use them to Satanic ends. So this is a
Speaker 3: Christian demon, specifically a demon as imagined by a twentieth
Speaker 3: century Catholic author. But this leads to the question, what
Speaker 3: was Pazuzu in his original time and place. Does it
Speaker 3: make sense to call him a demon? And if it does,
Speaker 3: should we at least modify our understanding of the English
Speaker 3: word demon a little bit for the purpose of the discussion,
Speaker 3: Maybe a little bit less the Catholic William Peter Bladdie
Speaker 3: demon and maybe more a demon in the broader Greek
Speaker 3: sense of the term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a This is a very important question
Speaker 2: to ask before we proceed into any more detailed discussion
Speaker 2: on these various demons. Yeah, what is a demon? We
Speaker 2: certainly it's one of those terms that you just throw
Speaker 2: it out there and it's going to summon various images
Speaker 2: and ideas. You might, for instance, think of the ball
Speaker 2: rog and various chaotic evil denizens of the Abyss from
Speaker 2: dungeons and dragons, and of course these are all based
Speaker 2: on entities from other you know, faiths and traditions and
Speaker 2: so forth. You might also well think of the name
Speaker 2: of various names from Christian demonology, particularly those that crossed
Speaker 2: over out of theology and into popular culture for everything
Speaker 2: from horror movies to rock music. And again many of
Speaker 2: these given names, Many of these entities were appropriated from
Speaker 2: other cultures and faiths, some transformed into Christian demons, and
Speaker 2: in their original context were considered gods or some other
Speaker 2: spiritual entities. And yet at the same time, even in
Speaker 2: discussing mythic, legendary and folkloric entities, either casually or even
Speaker 2: from like from the level of scholarship and academia, the
Speaker 2: word demon is often used instantly provides a starting point
Speaker 2: from which to potentially understand perhaps a foreign concept or
Speaker 2: a creature or entity in another tradition you know. And
Speaker 2: you see this with other words as well, like you'll
Speaker 2: frequently if you're reading about, say, Chinese mythology and Chinese
Speaker 2: legend and law, you might read about goblins or trolls.
Speaker 2: You might read about ogres in Japanese lore and so forth.
Speaker 2: You know, there's certain types of monsters, types of figures,
Speaker 2: types of imaginary beings that seem largely universal, and when
Speaker 2: you get into the particulars, yes, things change a bit,
Speaker 2: but in general you can often safely say, well, this
Speaker 2: is a demon from this particular faith. There's still a
Speaker 2: lot of room for error, and there is a lot
Speaker 2: of error out there when you look into especially like
Speaker 2: historic understandings of some of these entities. So yeah, we
Speaker 2: can throw out the word demon, and we can strike
Speaker 2: close to the truth. We can strike close to perhaps
Speaker 2: the original intended meaning here. And as such we can
Speaker 2: loosely think of demons as as the following evil supernatural
Speaker 2: spirits or beings of some sort that were never human,
Speaker 2: are not mortal, and yet exist beneath the status of
Speaker 2: gods and sometimes demi gods. They are often conceived as
Speaker 2: punishers in the afterlife, though they're also frequently seen as
Speaker 2: spreaders of sin, disease, death, and temptation in the world
Speaker 2: of the living. In Christian traditions, they are often described
Speaker 2: as fallen angels, followers of the rebel angel Lucifer now Satan,
Speaker 2: the ruler of Hell, and in other traditions they may
Speaker 2: seem at times more part of a cosmic order than
Speaker 2: agents in rebellion against said order. But even then you'll
Speaker 2: still find room in such tradition systems for a notion
Speaker 2: of something that is seen as an agent of misfortune
Speaker 2: or temptation out there working in the world, something that
Speaker 2: is an enemy of mortal men and may be working
Speaker 2: outside of the graces of the divine. Now, the word
Speaker 2: itself in English demon derives from the Greek demos, which
Speaker 2: could be benevolent or malevolent. Like in the Greek tradition,
Speaker 2: this could be a good supernatural being or a bad
Speaker 2: supernatural being. Just because it was demos, just because it
Speaker 2: was a demon in this context doesn't mean it's necessarily
Speaker 2: evil and out to get you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can interpret it as like a spirit.
Speaker 2: Now, turning to more specifically to the ancient Mesopotamian world,
Speaker 2: one of the books that we look to here was
Speaker 2: a book titled God's Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia,
Speaker 2: an Illustrated Dictionary. This was originally published in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: two and the authors here are Jeremy Black and Anthony Green,
Speaker 2: and illustrated by Tessa Rickards. The authors here point out
Speaker 2: that the word demon works as an a is an
Speaker 2: approximate translation of a couple of different terms that refer
Speaker 2: to both good and evil spirits, so very much in
Speaker 2: the Greek sense of the word demon. These terms are
Speaker 2: in Akkadian rabisu and in Sumerian moscin, both of which
Speaker 2: again can refer to good and or evil spirits. I've
Speaker 2: also seen more head on translations that define the rabisu
Speaker 2: as lurker and moscum as deputy or attorney. The authors
Speaker 2: point out that during the Neo Assyrian period, roughly what
Speaker 2: nine twelve through six O nine BCE, there were spells
Speaker 2: that basically said evil rabisu, please see yourself out. Good
Speaker 2: Rubisu come on in. So you'd see a lot of
Speaker 2: this sort of thing, like you want the good demons,
Speaker 2: you don't want the bad demons, but you're not just
Speaker 2: like no demons allowed, Like yes, of course the good
Speaker 2: demons can come in.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Black and Green's book includes a one tablet that's
Speaker 3: sort of a figuring mating clay from the Neo Assyrian period.
Speaker 3: They say it's probably from the seventh century BCE that
Speaker 3: depicts a god named Ilamu, which means Harry. And if
Speaker 3: you look at the tablet, yeah, he's got like real
Speaker 3: like hair coming out. It almost looks like Medusa, the
Speaker 3: locks of hair coming out like snakeheads. But yeah, he's
Speaker 3: a hairy guy. And written on his arms, so the
Speaker 3: canea form is actually like spanning, it's going running down
Speaker 3: the length of his biceps, his arm. One arm says
Speaker 3: get out, evil demon, and the other one says, come in,
Speaker 3: good demon. And I was actually reading in another book,
Speaker 3: a book called Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia by the French
Speaker 3: historian Jean Botero. This is translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan,
Speaker 3: and Boto argues that there really was no word in
Speaker 3: any of the ancient Mesopotamian languages that meant specifically demon
Speaker 3: in the way we use it, like specifically categorizing the
Speaker 3: class of evil harmful spirits. Instead, these evil harmful spirits
Speaker 3: would be referred to sort of by their individual names
Speaker 3: rather than as a class of types of beings. And
Speaker 3: as far as classes of beings, you would just have
Speaker 3: this larger like, yeah, you got spirits and they could
Speaker 3: be good or bad.
Speaker 2: Now, the Rubisu mentioned how sometimes translated as lurker, and
Speaker 2: it does seem to lurk. It sort of haunts, it
Speaker 2: lingers around an affected individual.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Black and Green also stressed that in modern studies of
Speaker 2: ancient Mesopotamian art and iconography, Again this is a book
Speaker 2: from ninety two, so acknowledging that there could potentially be
Speaker 2: some shift here, but this seems to still be the
Speaker 2: case based on even far more recent papers dealing with
Speaker 2: specific entities. But they stress that the term demon is
Speaker 2: generally applied to any entity that is an upright human
Speaker 2: body and also has like hybrid creature elements, while full
Speaker 2: on animal combinations or something like on all fours, those
Speaker 2: are considered monsters. So, for instance, across between a lion
Speaker 2: and a duck, that would be a monster. A cross
Speaker 2: between a lion, duck and a human like where it's
Speaker 2: more or less humanoid shape, that would be a demon.
Speaker 3: Yeah. From what I gather, the really rough way of
Speaker 3: thinking about it is that if it's bipedal, it's usually
Speaker 3: a demon, and if it's on all fours, it's probably
Speaker 3: a monster. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, they stress that demons are actually rare in ancient Mesopotamia,
Speaker 2: mythology and the names. Certainly, this is the case with
Speaker 2: name demons. The names we know are mostly via they're
Speaker 2: mention in various spells, and in many cases we have
Speaker 2: little information regarding their nature or appearance, certainly as far
Speaker 2: as evil demons and evil gods are concerned. And this
Speaker 2: might be because it was just considered inappropriate to depict
Speaker 2: some of them under most circumstances. Though, as we've discussed
Speaker 2: already and will continue to discuss, there are cases where
Speaker 2: you really want to show that horrid face in full detail,
Speaker 2: otherwise it might endanger you to create their image. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't want to. You don't want to summon the
Speaker 2: demon into your presence, even if you were discussing it
Speaker 2: or ultimately using it to ward off something else. But
Speaker 2: also it seems like sometimes you need an image of
Speaker 2: the demon if you are trying to ward it off.
Speaker 2: So I guess it comes down to the basic idea
Speaker 2: that visual depictions and symbolic depictions of these entities is powerful,
Speaker 2: and it can be powerful in a way that helps
Speaker 2: deter them, or it can be powerful in a way
Speaker 2: that attracts them. But they write that quote in some cases,
Speaker 2: descriptions of their appearances are so vague and inconsistent as
Speaker 2: to suggest they were not well established. So that's the
Speaker 2: other side of the coin. It just might be well,
Speaker 2: it's not really you know, there's not really a canon
Speaker 2: for how this particular entity looked or even how it behaved.
Speaker 2: You know, we might think about in our own like
Speaker 2: pop culture world, in our own like urban legend world,
Speaker 2: you have a general idea what I mean, you have
Speaker 2: a very clear idea what some entities look like. Like
Speaker 2: Jason Vorhees. Yeah, you know what he looks like. You've
Speaker 2: seen it in various films. There's shifts and how he's depicted,
Speaker 2: but there's there are a number of elements that need
Speaker 2: to be in place. Meanwhile, something like I don't know
Speaker 2: Bloody Mary, it seems a bit more vague, like I
Speaker 2: don't know if there's a particular canon as to how
Speaker 2: she is supposed to look.
Speaker 3: This I thought was really interesting, and this makes me
Speaker 3: think we should actually come back sometime into a whole
Speaker 3: Halloween series on. Yeah, what you could call like canonically
Speaker 3: bounded versus unbounded monsters, Monsters that have a very tight,
Speaker 3: canonically set description and those that are extremely vague and
Speaker 3: in the case of the ones that are vague, where
Speaker 3: does the horror come from? Because you know, when a
Speaker 3: monster is, like say, represented in a movie, you know
Speaker 3: what that movie representation looks like and you can picture it.
Speaker 3: But when there's a monster that is you don't even
Speaker 3: get a very clear physical description. Where is the horror based?
Speaker 3: What is it you're imagining?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, and I should probably draw in an example
Speaker 2: that doesn't originate in a visual medium. I think if
Speaker 2: I think back on entities, unreal entities that I had
Speaker 2: varying degrees of fear of as a child, well, I
Speaker 2: can think of the Boogieyman, and I can think of
Speaker 2: gray aliens like the kind that you know are going
Speaker 2: to potentially kidnap you and probe you and so forth,
Speaker 2: And there's more of a definite idea of what a
Speaker 2: gray looks like, whereas the Boogieman, Yes, there are I mean,
Speaker 2: the big Boogeyman is sometimes depicted in certain ways, like
Speaker 2: I remember there being a way that the real Ghostbuster's
Speaker 2: cartoon depicted the Boogieman. But for the most part, the
Speaker 2: Boogeyman is up for grabs. There's no definite way that
Speaker 2: it looks, but the fear of it. Certainly when you're
Speaker 2: young can still be palpable.
Speaker 3: Oh lord, I just looked up the Real Ghostbusters boogieman.
Speaker 3: It looks why is it wearing a tuxedo?
Speaker 2: I remember that being a pretty wild episode. There were
Speaker 2: some episodes of The Real Ghostbusters that went pretty hard.
Speaker 3: It looks like a pale rock and roll grimlin with
Speaker 3: a disproportionately huge face, wearing lots of lipstick, with sharp teeth,
Speaker 3: big long nose, purple punk haircut, and a tuxedo coat
Speaker 3: with long tails. So it's dressed for a formal dinner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a bad dude, all right. So anyway,
Speaker 2: the main point here is that, yeah, some of these
Speaker 2: creatures would have been perhaps unbounded, you know, and we
Speaker 2: would have been vague and inconsistent, but others became extremely
Speaker 2: important in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and in religious practice. And
Speaker 2: we have at least one case of a sort of
Speaker 2: demonic face turn, of an evil entity becoming if not good,
Speaker 2: at least useful for our protection. And you know, I
Speaker 2: guess this under the line is an important reality that
Speaker 2: we have discussed in the past and the show, and
Speaker 2: that is that religion and belief transform and evolve. Over time,
Speaker 2: New ideas emerge, foreign ideas enter into a different region
Speaker 2: or a different belief system. Things change, and it impacts
Speaker 2: the exact form and function of various fantastic entities and creatures,
Speaker 2: sometimes utterly transforming them. And this is especially the case
Speaker 2: here today because we're ultimately considering the passage of thousands
Speaker 2: of years here, and we're not only talking about like
Speaker 2: subtle changes in belief or Okay, well, this god becomes
Speaker 2: a little more popular, this demon becomes a little more popular.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we're talking about the emergence of groundbreaking new concepts
Speaker 2: and how people considered their place in the cosmos and
Speaker 2: the structure and function of the unseen world. Now. Black
Speaker 2: and Green proposed a simplified five phase chronology for the
Speaker 2: development of gods and demons in ancient Mesopotamia. And I'm
Speaker 2: going to roll through it here real quick, because I
Speaker 2: feel like it's you may get lost in some of
Speaker 2: the dates here and the different periods, but I think
Speaker 2: the overall flow is important, all right. So first up
Speaker 2: is the formative phase.
Speaker 3: They write it.
Speaker 2: During the late Ubaid and Uru periods, very roughly in
Speaker 2: the neighborhood of the fourth millennium BCE, we have the
Speaker 2: earliest composite beings envisioned, combining various elements of different animals.
Speaker 2: Up next the optimistic phase. This would have been during
Speaker 2: the Acadian period around let's say two twenty three thirty
Speaker 2: four through twenty one to fifty four BCE, and this
Speaker 2: is when we have galyptic scenes depicting the capture and punishment,
Speaker 2: the busting, if you will, of evil demons.
Speaker 3: Makes me feel good, yeah.
Speaker 2: And then we have the balanced phase during the Old
Speaker 2: Babylonian period eighteen ninety four BCE through fifteen ninety five BCE,
Speaker 2: and we have cylinder and seal designs that often mixed
Speaker 2: images with good and bad associations. So that's the balance.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, the good entities the bad entities
Speaker 2: finding balance. Then we have the transformative phase during the
Speaker 2: fourteenth through eleventh centuries BCE. The human centric imagery of
Speaker 2: the Old Babylonian period gives way to mostly animal headed hybrids.
Speaker 2: And then finally we get the demonic phase. And as
Speaker 2: the name implies, this is the period during which quote
Speaker 2: individual evil demons were depicted in their full horror in
Speaker 2: Neo Assyrian and neo Babylonian art. And it's interesting too
Speaker 2: that they point out that this demonic phase lines up
Speaker 2: with the emergence of a new first millennium BCE theological model,
Speaker 2: that of a demonically populated hell. This is of course key,
Speaker 2: the key theological invention because it foreshadows, you know, the
Speaker 2: medieval Christian image of a demonic afterlife. It also mirrors
Speaker 2: the various hell realms of Buddhism and Hinduism, and it
Speaker 2: essentially like adds this entirely different realm to one's understanding
Speaker 2: of the unseen world.
Speaker 3: That's right. I mean a lot of modern Christians might
Speaker 3: not remember this, but say, in the Hebrew Bible, you
Speaker 3: don't get depictions of a demonically populated hell with tortures
Speaker 3: for the damned. That's not there that emerges in early
Speaker 3: Christian theology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I mean, for my money, you can
Speaker 2: throw it out right now. You don't have to keep
Speaker 2: it if you got it now. One question that the
Speaker 2: author's raise here is what made this vision of the
Speaker 2: afterlife different from that of say, ancient Egyptians. We've talked
Speaker 2: on the show before about the robust vision of the
Speaker 2: afterlife that was modeled in an Egyptian belief the idea
Speaker 2: that the afterlife is certainly a realm of danger. It
Speaker 2: is not a you know, it's not a just one
Speaker 2: big heavenly celebration. There are a lot of dangers and
Speaker 2: entities out there, but it's also a realm of great possibility.
Speaker 2: So a person of means and power and magical ability
Speaker 2: could potentially translate all of that over into their next
Speaker 2: life in the field of reeds.
Speaker 3: That's right. So even among ancient cultures that had a
Speaker 3: religious idea of an afterlife, of some sort of place
Speaker 3: you go after death, there's a lot of diversity in
Speaker 3: what that afterlife looks like and what you do there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, I think there's probably still a lot of
Speaker 2: room to get into the nuances of either broad regional
Speaker 2: religious traditions. But Black and Green contend that in general
Speaker 2: we see a strong sense of Mesopotamian pessimism in regards
Speaker 2: to the afterlife. According to Black and Green, the region
Speaker 2: in general at this time was one of agriculture and clay,
Speaker 2: but little else in abundance, certainly for the common denizen
Speaker 2: of this region. So almost every aspect of life they
Speaker 2: write was likely quite harsh compared to ancient Egypt, and
Speaker 2: this colored an equally harsh view of the afterlife. So
Speaker 2: immortality that's for the gods. Mortal man, however, is just
Speaker 2: doomed to die, passing on only into a shadowy realm,
Speaker 2: where in Sumerian traditions, the shades of the dead consume
Speaker 2: only the ashes, and in a serio Babylonian traditions, the
Speaker 2: grim afterlife is the domain of demons and monsters black
Speaker 2: and green. Right that Eventually traditions and belief systems developed
Speaker 2: by which you can affect your arrival and status in
Speaker 2: the afterlife or that of a loved one via proper burial.
Speaker 2: But earlier on it was probably either based around a
Speaker 2: cult of the dead, via which you might you know,
Speaker 2: communicate with deceased family members, or it was just a
Speaker 2: means of preventing their spirits from haunting you after they've died.
Speaker 2: But yeah, especially early on, there's not this sense that, oh,
Speaker 2: we need to talk to Grandma or communicate with Grandma,
Speaker 2: or have offerings for Grandma to make sure she's doing okay. Like, no,
Speaker 2: there's not really any doing okay in this afterlife. It's
Speaker 2: a world of ash and shadow. But we don't want
Speaker 2: Grandma to come back from the realm of ash and
Speaker 2: shadow and start haunting us. Things are bad enough here,
Speaker 2: we don't need her here as well.
Speaker 3: But at some point you get the idea of, well,
Speaker 3: maybe we could send some food, send some care packages
Speaker 3: to Grandma in the afterlife and that might help a
Speaker 3: little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So so again we enter this demonic period.
Speaker 2: We suddenly have this idea of afterlife where are there
Speaker 2: may be demons everywhere? And it also comes around the
Speaker 2: same time as new practices such as erecting statues and
Speaker 2: reliefs of magically protective beings in palaces and in temples,
Speaker 2: as well as burying clay images of such entities in
Speaker 2: building foundations to protect that building and its occupants against
Speaker 2: demons and disease. They're right, quote diverse and cultural background
Speaker 2: and original significance. The various gods, demons and monsters involved
Speaker 2: were brought together into a fairly restricted visual series of
Speaker 2: this time, and for the first time they came to
Speaker 2: be treated as a group in mythological narratives. So you know,
Speaker 2: demonic avengers assembled.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: Now most of the demons from this period of ancient
Speaker 2: Mesopotamian belief they still in their punishment of mortals and
Speaker 2: their spreading of disease and death. They were mostly still
Speaker 2: doing it at the behest of the greater gods, so
Speaker 2: you can think of them as being still part of
Speaker 2: the system, you know, like that. You don't like what
Speaker 2: they're doing, but they have some right to do it.
Speaker 2: And maybe the ultimate blame lies in how I'm living
Speaker 2: my life or what I'm not doing to protect against
Speaker 2: their offenses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did I do something to be taken by the
Speaker 3: grip of this demon? And that grip is usually a
Speaker 3: disease of some kind.
Speaker 2: Right, But there do sing to be exceptions to the rule,
Speaker 2: and one exception in particular, and it may be due
Speaker 2: to the fact that some acts of demons and some
Speaker 2: events in life are just too horrific to be attributed
Speaker 2: to the gods. And that brings us to the entity
Speaker 2: known as La mache To. So I've looked up lamache
Speaker 2: To in one of my favorite sources for entities like this, spirits, fairies, Lepricaus,
Speaker 2: and Goblins and Encyclopedia by folklorist Carol Rose, and she
Speaker 2: describes lamache To as the Babylonian demoness of disease and
Speaker 2: describes depictions as often being that of a woman stripped
Speaker 2: to the waist suckling a pig and a dog, with
Speaker 2: a comb and a spinning worl in each hand, representing
Speaker 2: the gendered tasks of wife and mother, these being the
Speaker 2: core targets of her wrath because she is a demon
Speaker 2: that attacks pregnant women and new mothers, bringing death and disease,
Speaker 2: particularly to infants. She is a daughter of the sky god,
Speaker 2: but according to Black and Green, she seems to be
Speaker 2: operating she's seldom to be operating outside of the domain
Speaker 2: of the gods, so she's not doing evil because she
Speaker 2: has been ordered to. She's doing it for her own purposes,
Speaker 2: perhaps for her own delight, like she's just pure chaotic evil,
Speaker 2: I guess. Black and Green likewise describe her based on
Speaker 2: depictions as a humanoid creature with the head of a lion,
Speaker 2: teeth of a donkey, naked human breasts, a hairy body,
Speaker 2: blood stained hands, long fingers and nails, and taloned bird
Speaker 2: like feet. Her animal she has like a siventure animal,
Speaker 2: and she rides this animal. It is the donkey, and
Speaker 2: she sometimes holds a snake in each hand as well,
Speaker 2: and she also has a boat to travel through the underworld.
Speaker 2: She's also sometimes depicted with donkey ears, as are other
Speaker 2: entities in Mesopotamian myth and it's less scary it does
Speaker 2: it does to us outsiders, and apparently this has caused
Speaker 2: various translations to change donkey ears to lion ears when
Speaker 2: when this entity has been taken into other cultures and regions.
Speaker 2: But the authors suspect that at the time and to
Speaker 2: the target audience, it was seen as a fitting animal
Speaker 2: to invoke with such a demon, as the wild donkey
Speaker 2: was held to be swift footed. So I guess in
Speaker 2: the regional context, like what is like the fastest animal
Speaker 2: to traverse a rough terrain, it would perhaps be the
Speaker 2: wild donkey, and therefore it is a fitting creature for
Speaker 2: a swift demon to ride in iconography.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now I can see how some of our associations
Speaker 3: with various domestic animals, like whether they could be conceived
Speaker 3: as scary or not, that could be purely cultural. Because
Speaker 3: remember we did the series about why the goat is
Speaker 3: associated with demons. I can imagine a culture where that
Speaker 3: is not a common association, thinking like, what what's scary
Speaker 3: about a goat? A goat because it.
Speaker 2: Met goats, like they can be real sweet.
Speaker 3: Goats can be cute. Oh yeah, so I think you
Speaker 3: can imagine a similar thing going on with the donkey
Speaker 3: ears there that like, donkey's not scary to us because
Speaker 3: we just don't have the right history of cultural association.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you might even be able to get into like
Speaker 2: what sounds are considered funny in English, you know, like
Speaker 2: the like sounds are often funny donkey, monkey clown, you know,
Speaker 2: And you're gonna have a different set of linguistic values
Speaker 2: in a different language and of course in a different time,
Speaker 2: different region and so forth, as well as other factors.
Speaker 2: So again we're talking about La mache too, not to
Speaker 2: be confused with La Masu. Lamasu is a benevolent demon
Speaker 2: often depicted as you know, a winged lion or bull
Speaker 2: with a human head. But no, La mache Too is
Speaker 2: a being of intense darkness and one that again is
Speaker 2: seeming to act independently of the gods, flicks harm on
Speaker 2: mortals for her own purposes. It's not part of a
Speaker 2: divinely orchestrated punishment system, and so we attribute to her
Speaker 2: cases of miscarriage, cases of infant mortality related illnesses that
Speaker 2: may be affecting pregnant women or new mothers, and it's
Speaker 2: said that what is happening is that she'll slip into
Speaker 2: a woman's room at night, a pregnant woman's room, and
Speaker 2: touch her stomach seven times to kill the child inside
Speaker 2: her other times and another telling she just straight up
Speaker 2: like steals children in the night. And she is also
Speaker 2: sometimes depicted as bringing disease to men as well, So
Speaker 2: she is I guess equal an equal opportunity offender in
Speaker 2: that department. So she is an enemy to all mortals,
Speaker 2: and she is an enemy most vitally to not only
Speaker 2: our generation but the next generation, like she is like
Speaker 2: a dire threat to the enterprise of humanity.
Speaker 3: So feelings about the Donkey years aside a truly horrifying being.
Speaker 2: Yes, now what are you gonna do? How are you
Speaker 2: going to fight an evil like that? Well, this is
Speaker 2: where we come back to Pazuzu.
Speaker 3: Pazuzu our old friend.
Speaker 2: Yes, perhaps the most well known ancient Mesopotamian demon of
Speaker 2: our age due to its invocation in horror cinema, in
Speaker 2: horror literature, and horror imagery. Pazuzu was an Assyrian in
Speaker 2: Babylonian demon or demonic god of the first millennium BCE. Again,
Speaker 2: you're probably familiar with this striking profile, a humanoid entity
Speaker 2: wing it in such a way as to create a
Speaker 2: sort of X shape. It could almost look like he
Speaker 2: has four wings, though I think we're perhaps to see
Speaker 2: this as the upper and lower parts of two wings,
Speaker 2: but again it kind of creates this X shape behind him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he has a dog like face, taloned feet, bulging eyes,
Speaker 2: scaly body, and if you look closely, there's also a
Speaker 2: snake headed penis there. He generally has the right hand
Speaker 2: held up as if you know, in pledging something, and
Speaker 2: the left hand is down, and sometimes there's a scorpion's
Speaker 2: tail as well.
Speaker 3: So Pazusu is.
Speaker 2: Kind of an enigma here because on one hand, he
Speaker 2: was definitely held up to be a malevolent demon of
Speaker 2: the underworld. You know he is. He is not your friend,
Speaker 2: but he also comes to serve as a potent protector,
Speaker 2: invoked in amulants to protect women against the evil of
Speaker 2: lamashe tou. He has often depicted driving her and her
Speaker 2: donkey steed back into the underworld, and these images might
Speaker 2: be displayed in the home as a part of a
Speaker 2: protective plaque, and then you also have amulets of Pazuzu's
Speaker 2: head that could be worn, it seems, by pregnant women.
Speaker 2: So you would actually wear the horrific like dog like uh,
Speaker 2: you know, gorgon face of the zuzu on your body
Speaker 2: to keep lamash Tou from get close to you and
Speaker 2: reaching out to you and touching you seven times with
Speaker 2: their awful hand.
Speaker 3: That is interesting in a very different kind of association
Speaker 3: than we get in The Exorcist.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And in a sense, I feel like the
Speaker 2: Exorcist does Bazuzu dirty, where Bazuzu is just an absolute
Speaker 2: enemy of law and order in humanity, where in reality,
Speaker 2: I think he's he's more in between. He's more of
Speaker 2: a tweener, you know, he's he's not a complete heel,
Speaker 2: he's not a complete face, but he's you know, kind
Speaker 2: of doing like a semi face turn here. I you know,
Speaker 2: I I inevitably came back to the quote from Dame
Speaker 2: Judy Dinch and the Chronicles of Riddick. You know, she says,
Speaker 2: in normal times, evil would be fought by good, but
Speaker 2: in times like these, well it should be fought by
Speaker 2: another kind of evil.
Speaker 3: Oh what's good? For the necromonger is good for thelmashe tou.
Speaker 2: Now, Bazuzu also protects against pestilential wins so winds carrying
Speaker 2: pestilence because he is. And I was shooting about looking
Speaker 2: at a number of different sources that dealt more specifically
Speaker 2: with Bazuzu, and one I looked at is a paper
Speaker 2: by Maraja Todorovska. It's titled Demonic, Hybrididy and Liminality Bazuzu
Speaker 2: and lamashe Tou. This is from twenty twenty three. She
Speaker 2: refers to him as the king of evil winds and
Speaker 2: the ruler over the worst of the wind demons, who
Speaker 2: he can also seem to control to some extent. I
Speaker 2: don't know if he's straight up controlling them or he
Speaker 2: is just like the roughest, toughest of the bunch and
Speaker 2: he can beat them into submission in the same way
Speaker 2: that like Godzilla is the king of monsters, not because
Speaker 2: there's like a detailed hierarchy, but because he can whip
Speaker 2: all the other ones.
Speaker 3: That's right. He's not giving orders to the other monsters.
Speaker 3: He's the monster you call when you got a monster
Speaker 3: messing with your city.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And yeah, the Godzilla world does line up
Speaker 2: with this rationale as well, so Pazuzu can break the
Speaker 2: wings of dangerous wind demons. And this source also points
Speaker 2: to the likely foreign origins of Bazus, given that he
Speaker 2: was a late introduction to regional beliefs and traditions. He
Speaker 2: doesn't pop up visually till the eighth century BCE, and
Speaker 2: textually he doesn't pop up to the seventh The Metropolitan
Speaker 2: Museum of Art also has some resources about him because
Speaker 2: they have some images of Pazuzu in their collection. They
Speaker 2: point out that he was associated with the cold winds
Speaker 2: that blew into present day Iraq from the Zagros Mountains
Speaker 2: on the border with present day Iran, though they also
Speaker 2: stretched into southeastern Turkey. These mountains and these winds were
Speaker 2: thought to carry pestilence. These mountain regions had long been
Speaker 2: inhabited by humans from very early times. They were also
Speaker 2: known to have been Neanderthals that lived there at one point,
Speaker 2: and in fact, the earliest known human remains in Mesopotamia,
Speaker 2: or at least at one point. The earliest known human
Speaker 2: remains in Mesopotamia were excavated in Shaannadar Cave in the
Speaker 2: Zagros mountains, according to Black and Green in their nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two book, But Yeah, Bazuzu is often depicted as
Speaker 2: climbing mountains in order to engage in battle against other demons,
Speaker 2: particularly other wind demons. But who knows what kind of
Speaker 2: demon Bazuzu might battle. You might be able to to
Speaker 2: convince him to do battle against an evil demon that
Speaker 2: is coming after you. Now, it's interesting to note that
Speaker 2: when we look at some of these Pazuzu amulets, but
Speaker 2: you know that would be worn by a pregnant woman
Speaker 2: that has the face of Bazuzu, and it's all about
Speaker 2: keeping La Machhetu away from you. If you you flip
Speaker 2: them over, you would see that they would also have
Speaker 2: inscriptions of like straight up benevolent gods on the back,
Speaker 2: the side that's facing you, that's touching your chest. Perhaps
Speaker 2: because again, Pazuzu is not your friend. He is a
Speaker 2: very dangerous wind demon, you know, master of evil winds,
Speaker 2: and at the end of the day, he's not something
Speaker 2: you want to mess with. You don't want his attention
Speaker 2: to fall back on you. And so you know, it's
Speaker 2: like you want to keep the face of that ambulant
Speaker 2: pointing out to where your enemy may may come from,
Speaker 2: but you don't want it looking in at you. You
Speaker 2: don't want to somehow manifest his rage at you.
Speaker 3: M Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating, and it's something I think that may
Speaker 2: feel foreign to people who are more used to the
Speaker 2: trappings of a monotheistic religion. You know, the idea that, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can turn to a dangerous entity or potentially dangerous entity,
Speaker 2: one that's not a typical ally of human beings in
Speaker 2: order to deal with certain evil, supernatural threats. You know,
Speaker 2: you can. Essentially it's like almost like hiring a bounty
Speaker 2: hunter in the Star Wars universe, Like, yeah, Pazuzu, you know,
Speaker 2: he can do this job for you. But you know
Speaker 2: you're making a deal with a ultimately a pretty dangerous
Speaker 2: and unsavory character, so you got to be careful. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but at least he's not the Empire, you know. So again,
Speaker 2: you know, I can't help but think Pazuzu is done
Speaker 2: dirty to a certain extent in The Exorcist. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm not prepared to do like a
Speaker 2: full analysis of how Pazuzu would behave in the Exorcist
Speaker 2: and or of another demon would be more fitting for
Speaker 2: the role. But yeah, it seems like if you knew
Speaker 2: how to manage your use of Pazuzu and your invocation
Speaker 2: of Pazuzu, you could very much use him to protect yourself.
Speaker 3: If one were forced to try to reconcile the canon here.
Speaker 3: I think what you can maybe say is that within
Speaker 3: the world of the Exorcist, it's actually just a separate
Speaker 3: Christian demon that is taking on the image and name
Speaker 3: of Pazuzu. Is just saying like, I assume this form.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because otherwise you'd be tempted to say, well, actually
Speaker 2: the god that they are calling on should be Pazuzu.
Speaker 2: The demon and the entity they're trying to drive away
Speaker 2: should be a lamache To who is ultimately here not
Speaker 2: a acting a baby or a pregnant woman, but is
Speaker 2: at least attacking like a young girl, which is maybe
Speaker 2: not too far away from her, you know, usual targets
Speaker 2: of aggression.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I think that probably marks the end of
Speaker 3: our first part here, but we're going to be back
Speaker 3: to talk about some more demons and frightening entities of
Speaker 3: ancient Mesopotamian religions in the next episode.
Speaker 2: That's right, because there are more demons, there are more gods,
Speaker 2: there are more strange monster like creatures. So we're going
Speaker 2: to get into it in the next episode. In the meantime,
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