Ritual "If a Person's Body Keeps Faltering like a Sick Person" and "Ištar’s Descent into the Netherworld"

Use of Mythological Knowledge in a Ritual

Abstract

This article analyzes the process and contents of the ritual, text “Hauptritual B” published by W. Farber, in the book Beschwörungsrituale an Ištar und Dumuzi (1977). It examines how this ritual relates to the famous mythological narrative "Ištar's Descent into the Netherworld" by using the following: (1) comparing the ritual process with typical anti-witchcraft rituals (2) comparing the roles of the main divine characters in each texts.

   This ritual was linked to the mythological narrative through use of identical divine characters. However, the context in which they appeared in the ritual is not identical to their counterparts in the mythological narrative. Therefore, the above mentioned relationship does not give a direct explanation of the ritual acts by linking them to mythological narratives or provide an etiology of the ritual, as stated in former studies. This article argues that this loose correlation represents another type of relationship between a ritual and a mythological narrative.