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This article is about the demon Lilith. For other meanings of the word, see Lilith (disambiguation).

Lilith is a female Mesopotamian night demon believed to harm male children. In Isaiah 34:14, Lilith (לִּילִית, Standard Hebrew Lilit) is a kind of night-demon or animal, translated as onokentauros; in the Septuagint, as lamia; "witch" by Hieronymus of Cardia; and as screech owl in the King James Version of the Bible. In the Talmud and Midrash, Lilith appears as a night demon. She is often identified as the first wife of Adam and sometimes thought to be the mother of all incubi and succubi, a legend that arose in the Middle Ages. Lilith is also sometimes considered to be the paramour of Satan.

Lilith (1892), by John Collier

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Etymology

Hebrew לילית lilith, Akkadian līlītu are female Nisba adjectives from the Proto-Semitic root LYL "night", literally translating to nocturna "female night being/demon". Sayce (Hibbert Lectures, 145ff.), Fossey (La Magie Assyrienne, 37ff.) and others reject an etymology based on the root LYL and suggest the origin of Līlīt was as a storm demon; this view is supported by the cuneiform inscriptions quoted by these scholars. The association with "night" may still be due to early popular etymology. The corresponding Akkadian masculine līlû shows no Nisba suffix and compares to Sumerian (kiskil-)lilla.

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Akkadian mythology

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Kiskil-lilla

Lilith has been identified with ki-sikil-lil-la-ke₄, a female demon in the Sumerian prologue to the Gilgamesh epic.

Kramer translates:

a dragon had built its nest at the foot of the tree

the Zu-bird was raising its young in the crown,

and the demon Lilith had built her house in the middle.

[...]

Then the Zu-bird flew into the mountains with its young,

while Lilith, petrified with fear, tore down her house and fled into the wilderness

Wolkenstein translates the same passage:

a serpent who could not be charmed made its nest in the roots of the tree,

The Anzu bird set his young in the branches of the tree,

And the dark maid Lilith built her home in the trunk.

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The Burney relief

The Burney Relief, ca. 1950 BC.

The Gilgamesh passage quoted above has in turn been applied by some to the Burney relief (Norman Colville collection), which dates to roughly 1950 BC and is a sculpture of a woman who has bird talons and is flanked by owls.

The key to this identification lies in the bird talons and the owls. While the relief may depict the demon Kisikil-lilla-ke of the Gilgamesh passage or another goddess, identification with Lilitu is more tenuous and likely influenced by the "screech owl" translation of the KJV. A very similar relief dating to roughly the same period is preserved in the Louvre (AO 6501).

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Date: 2015-12-17; view: 805