Alû

A man wakes in the dark of a Babylonian bedroom and finds that he cannot move. Something lies across him, not gripping, not clawing, simply covering, the way a soaked cloak lies over a shoulder. There is no edge to get a hand under. His chest will not fill, and the shout he reaches for does not arrive. Whatever is on him already has a name in the language of the exorcists, and the name is alû.

It belongs to the fixed roll of evil spirits that Mesopotamian exorcists recited for something close to two thousand years. The great compendium against them, Udug-hul in Sumerian and Utukkū Lemnūtu in Akkadian, eventually ran to sixteen tablets, its earliest incantations written in Sumerian in the third millennium BCE and its last copies made near the end of cuneiform writing altogether. The eighth tablet is the alû’s tablet. It gives the demon what may be the strangest physical description in Mesopotamian literature, and it builds that description entirely out of removals: the evil alû has no mouth, no limbs, no ears, no face.

That is not a translator being coy. Every organ the incantation strikes off is one that would let a thing be reasoned with, bargained with, or recognised. A demon with no mouth cannot be argued into leaving. A demon with no ears cannot be begged. What survives the subtraction is a covering, and covering is precisely what the older lines say it does. One of them runs: the wicked alû who covers a man like a garment. Another sets the scene flat and cold, a victim whom in his bed the wicked alû covered, whom the wicked ghost by night overwhelmed. The descriptions single out the chest.

The class it belongs to does have a parentage of sorts. The fifth tablet declares the evil demons spawned from the seed of Anu, the sky god, and calls them offspring of earth: heaven’s seed in the ground, which is a tidy way of saying they were made from the same stock as everything else and came out wrong. No separate birth is told for the alû. It has no story. It arrives in the texts fully formed and already in company, one of the seven names an exorcist could rattle off in a single breath alongside the utukku, the eṭemmu, the gallû, Lamashtu, Labaṣu and the lilû.

The physicians used the same vocabulary. Babylonian diagnostic and therapeutic tablets treat the alû as an agency to be identified rather than a monster to be met, and they attach it to conditions a modern clinic would file under seizure, stupor and psychosis. One passage lays out a grim progression: a patient has been suffering from antašubbû, the falling disease, and from bēl ūri, the lord of the roof, and from the hand of a ghost and the hand of a curse, and then an evil alû begins to afflict him with ideas of persecution. Elsewhere the demon’s presence is associated with unconsciousness and coma. The picture assembles itself from the symptoms outward: a man who stops, goes down, goes quiet, and does not come back for a while.

The counter-measures were physical, fragrant and extremely loud. The exorcist sprinkled the patient with water into which tamarisk and maštakal had been thrown, passed a censer and a torch over him, worked aromatic cedar oil into his skin, and scattered zisurrû-flour in a ring at the outer gate and along the door bolt. Doorposts were plastered with bitumen and gypsum until the house was sealed the way a jar is sealed. A copper drum called the Hero of Heaven was beaten near the bed, because the noise was more than the demons could stand. The eighth tablet ends with a stranger performance still: the exorcist puts on red robes, takes a raven and a falcon in his hands, hangs a mouse and a thornbush from the door lintel, and announces that he will whip the demons out like a stray donkey.

The incantations are unusually precise about where the alû was not permitted to be, which is the surest guide to where it usually was. You may not sit in his chair, one runs, nor lie in his bed, nor go up to his roof, nor enter his dwelling. They must not cross the door jamb. They must not cross the threshold. Another dismisses them with what amounts to a list of their habits: do not keep standing in corners, do not sit in nooks, stop circling him in the dark in the middle of the city, stop surrounding him out in the fields, go off to the bottom of the Netherworld.

Its powers follow from the shape of it, or from the absence of one. Having no body, it has nothing that a wall can stop. Having no weight, it can settle over a sleeping man without waking him first. It takes the voice, then the limbs, then the senses, and it can hold a person under for as long as it likes. It works at night, indoors, on people lying flat, which is to say it works on everyone eventually.

Its limits come from the same place. It is not a god, it has no cult and no temple, and nobody in Mesopotamia ever prayed to it; it was a problem for a professional rather than a power to be courted. Naming it was half the cure, which is why the litanies are so exhaustive that they read like inventories. Beyond that it turns out to be oddly obedient to boundaries, stopped by a line of flour, a plastered doorpost, a threshold it has been forbidden to cross. And it cannot bear the drum. A thing that took a man’s voice away could itself be run out of a house by noise, which is either a joke the exorcists were in on or a piece of working psychology good enough to be copied for twenty centuries.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Alû in Mesopotamian mythology?

The Alû is an evil spirit of Akkadian and Sumerian tradition that attacks people in their sleep by covering them like a garment. It appears throughout the exorcistic incantation series known as Udug-hul in Sumerian and Utukkū Lemnūtu in Akkadian, usually named in a group alongside the utukku, the eṭemmu, the gallû and Lamashtu. Babylonian medical texts also blame it for seizures, stupor and disordered thinking.

What did the Alû look like?

The Alû is described by what it lacks rather than what it has. The eighth tablet of the canonical incantation series states that the evil Alû has no mouth, no limbs, no ears and no face, which leaves it as a formless covering rather than a creature with an appearance. Ancient artists left no agreed image of it, and the texts never supply one.

What does the Alû do to its victims?

The Alû settles over a sleeping person, presses on the chest and removes the ability to speak or move. Ancient descriptions connect it with unconsciousness and coma, and one medical passage has an evil Alû afflicting a patient with ideas of persecution after he has already suffered the falling disease. The symptoms it was used to explain overlap closely with what is now called sleep paralysis.

How did Babylonians protect themselves from the Alû?

Protection was the exorcist’s job and it was thoroughly practical. He sprinkled the patient with water treated with tamarisk and maštakal, applied cedar oil, scattered zisurrû-flour in a ring at the outer gate, plastered the doorposts with bitumen and gypsum, and beat a copper drum called the Hero of Heaven whose noise the demons could not tolerate. The eighth tablet adds red robes, a raven and a falcon carried in the hands, and a mouse and a thornbush hung from the door lintel.

Related Entries

Utukku, Gallu, Rabisu, Edimmu, Gidim, Ardat-Lili, Lamashtu (Labartu), Lilitu, Pazuzu, Asakku, Anu, Enki, Night Hag, Alp, Bakhtak