Gallu (also Galla, Gala; Akkadian Gallû)

They poured the milk into the dust. They scattered the sheep across the hillside, drove the churn over so it lay empty on its side, and broke the shepherd’s crook across the knee. Only then did they turn to the shepherd. This was how the gallu worked, not with a single blow but with the patient unmaking of a life, every object that proved a man had lived dismantled in front of him. Dumuzi watched, and understood there was nothing left to bargain with.

The gallu were the enforcers of the Mesopotamian underworld, and they had been part of its machinery for a very long time. The Sumerian word galla once named a kind of official, a constable or bailiff sent to collect what was owed. When the same word was turned toward the realm of the dead, the meaning held. The gallu were collectors, sent to bring back a debt, and the debt was always a person. Akkadian scribes inherited them as gallû and kept them busy in incantation and myth for the better part of three thousand years.

What they looked like is one of the things the tablets decline to say. Mesopotamian texts describe the gallu almost entirely through absence. They know not food. They know not drink. They eat no flour offering and pour no libation. They take no wife and father no children. The portrait is built from negatives until a shape emerges anyway, something that has shed every appetite and attachment that makes a being knowable. They moved as a group, usually seven, identical and without distinguishing feature, and that uniformity was itself a kind of terror. A creature you cannot tell apart from its fellows is a creature you cannot single out, cannot beg, cannot name.

They belonged to the underworld the way a hand belongs to an arm. Babylonian theology counted the gallu among the seven evil demons, the offspring of hell, spirits who carried out the will of the powers below. They answered to Ereshkigal, queen of the dead, and to Nergal beside her. When a decree came down from her throne, the gallu were the part of the world that made it happen. Nothing about them could be reasoned with.

On an ordinary day the work was quieter than the myths suggest. A sick man on a reed bed, the fever climbing, the breath going thin and shallow against the ceiling of a mud-brick room, and the seven of them already standing in it, patient, waiting only for the moment the law allowed them to close their hands. They did not gloat and they did not hurry. They simply collected.

Their most famous errand began with a goddess. Inanna went down into the underworld, was stripped of her power at each of its seven gates, and died there, hung as a corpse on a hook. When she was revived and allowed to climb back toward the living world, the law of the place sent the gallu up with her as an escort, and the law had a price. Someone had to take her place below. The demons watched as she passed those who had mourned her, her loyal servant and her two grieving sons, and Inanna would not surrender any of them. Then she came to the city of Uruk and found her husband Dumuzi seated on his throne in clean garments, untouched by grief. She fixed him with the eye of death and said the word the gallu were waiting for. Take him.

What followed is the closest the gallu come to having a story of their own. Dumuzi ran. He had dreamed his own capture already and woke knowing what the dream meant, and he fled across the steppe to the sheepfold of his sister Geshtinanna. The sun god Utu, moved by his prayers, turned his hands and feet into a gazelle’s so he could run faster, and for a while the chase stretched out across the open country. The gallu came to Geshtinanna and tried to buy from her the place where her brother was hiding. She refused. They tortured her, and still she said nothing. So they went instead to a friend of Dumuzi, who took their gifts and pointed. They found the shepherd at last among his sister’s pens, and the milk went into the dust, and the crook came apart. In the end Geshtinanna offered to share his sentence, and the two of them split the year between the world above and the world below.

The power of the gallu was their refusal. They felt no hunger, so no feast delayed them. They felt no greed, so no bribe turned them, although they were willing enough to take a bribe from someone else when it served the hunt. They did not tire, did not lose a trail, did not soften at the sight of a wife or a child. Beyond the pursuit of the dead, they were blamed for the smaller cruelties of ordinary life, the sudden fever, the run of bad luck, the sickness that settles on a house for no reason anyone can name.

For all that, they were not beyond handling. The Mesopotamians did not imagine the gallu could be fought, but they believed the creatures could be redirected. A lamb offered at their altar might satisfy the claim and send them looking elsewhere. The long exorcism series the scribes called Evil Demons, recited by trained incantation priests, named the gallu among the spirits it was built to drive out. And the gods themselves could intervene, as Utu did, buying a hunted man a little more road. The gallu always collected in the end. They could be delayed, paid past, prayed past. They could not be cancelled.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Gallu?

The Gallu are demons of the ancient Mesopotamian underworld who seize the dying and drag them down to the land of the dead. They originated in Sumerian belief, where the word galla first named a constable or debt-collector, and they functioned as the enforcement arm of the underworld powers. They are usually described as a faceless, identical group of seven.

Who do the Gallu serve?

The Gallu serve the rulers of the Mesopotamian underworld, chiefly the queen Ereshkigal and the god Nergal. When a decree was issued from the underworld throne, the Gallu were the spirits who carried it out, escorting souls below and enforcing the law that the dead must remain dead.

What did the Gallu do to Dumuzi?

The Gallu seized Dumuzi, the husband of the goddess Inanna, after she returned from the underworld and chose him to take her place among the dead. They pursued him across the steppe as he fled, and when they caught him they destroyed every sign of his life as a shepherd, pouring out his milk and breaking his crook before hauling him below.

Can the Gallu be stopped?

The Gallu cannot be fought or bribed away from a soul they have been sent to collect, but Mesopotamian ritual offered ways to redirect them. A lamb sacrificed at their altar might satisfy their claim, and exorcism incantations recited by trained priests were used to drive them out of a household. A god could also delay them, as the sun god Utu did to give Dumuzi more time.

Are the Gallu evil?

The Gallu are dangerous and feared, but they are best understood as enforcers rather than purely malicious beings. They carry out the lawful decrees of the underworld rather than acting on their own cruelty, though they were also blamed for everyday afflictions such as sudden illness and misfortune. Babylonian tradition classed them among the seven evil demons.

Related Entries

Ereshkigal, Nergal, Inanna, Ishtar, Anunnaki, Utukku, Asakku, Lamashtu, Pazuzu, Rabisu, Anzû, Edimmu, Gidim, Ekimmu