Ekimmu

The first sign was usually small. A cup of beer set out for the dead going flat and sour on its shelf, a name no one in the house had spoken in two generations, a grave somewhere past the edge of the fields with its mudbricks pried loose and scattered. Then came the bad dreams, and the slow wasting, and a thread of cold air that crossed a shut room and settled over the youngest child asleep on the roof. In the cities strung along the Tigris and the Euphrates, people knew what that cold thread was. Something dead had found its way back, and it had come to feed.

The ekimmu was the dead that would not lie still. Sumerian scribes called such a spirit gidim, the Akkadians eṭemmu, and the same restless shade went into the records as edimmu, a name later eyes misread as ekimmu. Whatever it was called, it belonged to the broad and dangerous family of the utukku, the spirits that walked out of the underworld with business among the living. Most of the dead stayed where they were put, down in the great dust-choked house below, drinking the water their descendants poured for them. The ekimmu was the exception. It was a ghost with a grievance.

It had almost no shape. The ekimmu was thought to be all but bodiless, less a figure than a movement of air, a chill that pressed against the skin and was gone. It owned no form of its own because it was not a monster born into the world but a person who had left it wrongly, the lingering remnant of one specific corpse. To meet one was to feel rather than to see: a weight on the chest in the dark, a draught with no open door behind it, the sudden certainty of not being alone.

What made an ekimmu was always a failure of the living, or a death the living could not mend. A body left unburied on a battlefield or drowned and never recovered, a traveler who died alone in the open with no one to wash and inter him, a person killed before his time or by violence: any of these could rise restless. So could the properly buried dead, if their families grew careless and let the offerings lapse. The Mesopotamian dead were not fed once and forgotten. They were owed a standing debt of bread and poured water, month after month, and a household that stopped paying it might find the creditor at the door.

At its quietest, the work of an ekimmu looked almost gentle. It slipped into a sleeping house and lay against a child through the small hours, and by morning the child was a little paler, a little weaker, the breath gone shallow. It favored the young and the sick and the deeply asleep, the ones least able to push back. Sometimes it fastened instead on a grown man who had broken a taboo, eaten meat he should not have, crossed a line of conduct, and rode him into sickness, ruin, or crime. The Mesopotamians blamed these ghosts for fevers that came from nowhere and for the impulses that wrecked a life.

The terror behind all this had its grandest statement at the gates of the underworld. When the goddess Ishtar came down to the land of no return and found the gate barred, she made a threat that froze the keeper at his post. She would smash the doorposts and break the door, she said, and bring up the dead to eat the living, until the dead outnumbered those who still breathed. It was the worst thing a Mesopotamian could imagine, the orderly border between the buried and the breathing torn open, every hungry shade let loose at once. The ekimmu was that nightmare in miniature, a single leak in the same wall.

Against it stood the long machinery of the funeral and the feast. The dead were laid in the ground with care and given goods for the road, and then they were kept, fed each month at the kispu meal with bread and beer and a libation of water for a thirst that never ended down in the dust. A name spoken kept a ghost content. When feeding failed and an ekimmu came anyway, the household called in the ašipu, the exorcist, who knew the words. He would name the ghost, learn what it wanted, give it that, and order it back below, sometimes binding it into a figurine or a substitute to carry it off. The cure was rarely violence. You cannot stab the wind.

That was the strange mercy buried in the horror of it. An ekimmu could not be killed, because it was already dead, and it could not be reasoned out of existence, because its hunger was real and its grievance usually just. But it could be satisfied. Bury the body. Say the name. Pour the water. The ghost on the wind was not, in the end, evil so much as unfinished, a piece of unpaid business drifting through the dark of a house, waiting for someone to settle the account.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Ekimmu?

The Ekimmu is a restless, vengeful ghost from ancient Mesopotamian belief, known across Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia. It is the spirit of a dead person who was not buried properly or whose family stopped making offerings, and it returns to the living as a near-formless wind-spirit that drains their life and brings sickness.

How does someone become an Ekimmu?

A person becomes an Ekimmu through a wrongful or unfinished death: being left unburied, drowning without recovery, dying alone, or being killed violently or before their time. Even the properly buried can rise as an Ekimmu if their descendants neglect the regular funeral offerings owed to the dead. In every case the cause is a failure of the rites that should have settled the spirit.

What does an Ekimmu do to the living?

An Ekimmu drains the vitality of the living, preying especially on sleeping children, the sick, and the vulnerable, leaving them weak and wasting. It was blamed for sudden fevers and disease, and it could possess people who broke taboos, driving them toward ruin or crime. Because it is almost incorporeal, a chill or gust of wind rather than a body, it cannot be fought off by force.

How do you get rid of an Ekimmu?

An Ekimmu is stopped not by killing it but by satisfying it. Proper burial, monthly kispu offerings of bread and beer, libations of water, and speaking the dead person’s name keep a ghost at rest. When one appears anyway, an exorcist priest called an ašipu would name it, give it what it wanted, and command it back to the underworld, sometimes binding it into a figurine.

Is the Ekimmu the same as the Edimmu?

Yes. Ekimmu and Edimmu are two readings of the same Mesopotamian ghost; “edimmu” is generally considered the more accurate transcription of the Akkadian, while “ekimmu” is a long-standing alternate reading. The related Akkadian word eṭemmu and the Sumerian gidim refer to the same idea of the surviving spirit of the dead.

Related Entries

Gidim, Utukku, Gallu, Rabisu, Lamashtu, Pazuzu, Lilitu, Asakku, Alû, Ereshkigal, Nergal, Preta, Jiangshi, Dybbuk, Draugr