Esagil-kin-apli

Esagil-kin-apli was the ummânū, or chief scholar, of Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina, 1067–1046 BC, as he appears on the Uruk List of Sages and Scholars listed beside him and is best known for his Diagnostic Handbook, Sakikkū (SA.GIG), a medical treatise which uses symptoms to ascertain etiology, frequently supernatural, and prognosis, which became the received text during the first millennium.

He was a “prominent citizen of Borsippa” from a learned family as he was referred to as the “son” of Assalluḫi-mansum, the apkallu, or sage, of Hammurabi’s time, ca. 1792–1750 BC.

The Exorcists Manual is sometimes described as a “vade mecum” and is a compendium of the works all those aspiring to master the āšipūtu, or craft of exorcism, should be cognizant. These include exorcism rituals, royal rituals, medical knowledge, incantations and omen series. It begins, “Incipits of the Series belonging to the art of exorcism (mašmaššūtu), established (kunnu) for instruction (izhu) and testing (tāmartu), all to be read out.” It is actually composed of two manuals, the first concerning kakugallūtu, “exorcism corpus,” and išippūtu, “esoteric knowledge,” and the second of which begins on the reverse line 4 stating that what follows on lines 5 to 20 is the manual of the exorcist according to the scholar Esagil-kin-apli and then goes on to list works such as the great omen series of astrological (Enūma Anu Enlil) and terrestrial (Šumma Ālu) portents.

Subtitled the niṣirti E[zida], “secret of Ezida,” this is extant in a Neo-Assyrian and a Neo-Babylonian copy. It provides a biographical introduction and then Esagil-kīn-apli provides an explanation for the new edition of the diagnostic compendium SA.GIG (Sakikkû) and the physiognomic series Alamdimmû, which he describes “(Regarding) the twin series, their arrangement is one.” Although the Catalogue of Texts and Authors credits the authorship of the two works to the god Ea, it is this catalogue together with the codicil on the Sakikkû which suggest otherwise. The catalogue opens with an index of sorts, providing incipits for each of the tablets together with the number of their lines.

Šumma alamdimmû, “if the form,” contains physiognomic omens on twenty-seven tablets. In his catalogue, Esagil-kin-apli describes the work as: “... (concerning) external form and appearance (and how they imply) the fate of the man that Ea and Assaluḫi/Marduk (?) ordained in heaven.” The term alamdimmû, “form” or “figure,” comes from the Sumerian alam.dímu. Following the first twelve tablets of the Šumma alamdimmû proper, the work is subdivided into sections beginning with Šumma nigdimdimmû, “if the appearance” or “shape,” on two tablets, whose extant copies are too fragmentary to interpret.

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