Amulet Atlas

amuletsLamashtu plaque𒀭𒈕𒈨

said la-MASH-tu, Akkadian dLa-maš-tu; Sumerian Dimme

also: Lamashtu amulet · Lamastu plaque · Dimme amulet

amuletMesopotamiaIraqSyriaconfidence mediumneeds checking

A small plaque, pierced or looped so it can hang, carrying the figure of the demon it is aimed at. Lamashtu is cut on it as a composite: a lion's or dog's head, donkey's teeth, bare breasts, bird-of-prey talons, a serpent gripped in each hand. She stands on a donkey in a boat; a dog and a piglet suckle at her. Her seven names, and an incantation telling her to keep away, run across the object in cuneiform. Bronze is the material of the big Neo-Assyrian examples; smaller ones are fired clay and cut stone.

cited

When

first millennium BCE, with earlier examples this project has not seen dated cited

PeriodNeo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian
How the date is knownexcavated — dug up in a dated context
NoteThe cited article separates 'early representations' from 'later first-millennium BCE examples' without giving a first attestation. The span here is the dated half of that sentence; the floor is a floor, not an origin.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

FormPlaque or tablet
Made ofCopper and bronze · Fired clay
GoesAt the neck · On a wall · At the door · In the grave
Made byritual specialists; the objects were made to be worn, attached to the body or to clothing, or set near beds, doorways and other vulnerable spaces
It saysLamashtu's seven names and an incantation ordering her not to approach the person named (cuneiform)
NoteAn obsidian example is described in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection, with a lion-griffin head, raised clawed hands and bird talons. This project read no published measurement, so none is given.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

The story

Lamashtu is the daughter of the sky god Anu, and she acts on nobody's instructions but her own — the reason Assyriologists argue she is a goddess rather than a demon, and the reason her name is written with the cuneiform sign that marks deity. Her victims are the unborn and the newly born. She touches a pregnant woman's stomach seven times to kill the baby, or takes it from the wet nurse. Adolescents, adults and the old are on her list too, as a bringer of disease.

The incantations open by addressing her directly. One amulet, catalogued as AO 8184, runs through her names — 'Dimme', 'Daughter of Anu', 'Who was named by the gods', 'Victoria, heroine among ladies' — and then delivers the whole point of the object: "you must not approach (this) person." The names matter because knowing them is the hold.

The largest surviving pieces are scenes rather than signs. The Neo-Assyrian plaque in the Louvre known as the Plaque des Enfers sets divine symbols above a sickroom: a patient on a bed, ritual specialists at work, and in the bottom register Lamashtu on her donkey in the boat with the serpents in her fists, while Pazuzu drives her off down the river.

Inference — the object is not a picture of the demon so much as a place to put her. Iconographic studies distinguish an earlier threatening figure with raised hands, a middle type holding a comb and spindle, and the elaborate serpent-holding compositions of the first millennium BCE; what stays constant across all three is that she is shown named, held, and on her way out.

cited

Where you can see one

An accession number appears here only where it was read off a catalogue page that is linked. No link, no number.

What this is near

contrastPazuzu headthe counter-figure cut on the same plaques, shown chasing her down the river; a household could own both and they were not opposites in the traytraditionMesopotamian household protectionthe tradition this object is the centre of — a named demon, a named opponent, an incantation, and a thing to hangdescendantIncantation bowlthe same soil a thousand years later, with the demon caught in a spiral of ink under the floor instead of nailed to a wallparallelHoly rider pendantthe childbirth demon again, now called Abyzou and trampled by a rider on Byzantine bronzeparallelTaweret amuletEgypt's answer to the same danger, and a guardian rather than a demon held offparallelBes amuletthe Egyptian household protector scholars compare to Pazuzu, and so to this plaque's other halfmotifThe serpentthe sign in both her fists on the first-millennium compositionspracticeHanging at the doorwhere these went — beds, doorways, and the places a household counted as openstoryMost of them are for childrenthe long read this object opens: the oldest named amulet-demon in the atlas hunts newborns

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

originHoly rider pendantthe same demon's job description two thousand years earlier and one region east — A. A. Barb traced this family of she-demons back to the Mesopotamian primeval seaoriginIncantation bowlthe same argument in bronze a millennium earlier, with the demon pictured instead of writtencontrastPazuzu headthe demon he is bought for; the necklace in the Uruk texts exists because she is in the roomcontrastTaweret amuletMesopotamia's answer to the same fear — but there the danger to mother and baby is the figure on the plaque, and here she is the guardpartMesopotamian household protectionthe object at the centre of it — the demon, named and held, on a thing you can hangcarried-byThe lionthe lion head on the demon rather than on the guard, which is what makes this family two-sidedcarriesMost of them are for childrenthe oldest named answer in this class: a plaque against the demon the incantations say takes the unborn and the newly born

Where this came from

Elsewhere

Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.

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