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An Oath, Its Curse and Anointing Ritual

2004; American Oriental Society; Volume: 124; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/4132218

2169-2289

Anne Marie Kitz,

Families in Therapy and Culture

Scholars have long acknowledged that curses were expressed in conventional ways throughout the ancient Near East.' Thus, maledictions could endure over many centuries in diverse texts with relatively minor changes in terminology.2 Since curses were somewhat standardized, it may not be surprising to find they could be incorporated into oaths which are nothing other than a form of conditional self-cursing. The purpose of this brief examination is to demonstrate how a well-known malediction could be incorporated into an oath whose accompanying ritual is specifically designed to intensify the anathema. Such a ceremonial appears to be intrinsically linked to the nature of the malediction's punishment.3 This, in turn, may have contributed to the endurance of certain terminological expressions that remained a feature of the same curse not only in Neo-Assyrian texts but also in Psalm 109 of the Hebrew Bible.