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The people of the Ancient Near East believed that demons andevil spirits swarmed everywhere; they could enter food and drink, and eventhe human body. Demons caused disease, illness and physical annoyancesand even personified some of the diseases. The ancients used amulets andincantations to prevent the demons from causing harm, and exorcism as ameans of healing. It is only in the past hundred years or so that theknowledge of pathogenicity – the existence of germs and their role in thetransmission of disease has transformed our understanding of the cause ofsome of the diseases. Our “germs” were demons to the ancients; our “beinghygienic” meant the warding off of harmful spirits; our therapeuticsreplaced the exorcising of demons. A particularly feared demon was thechild-killing demoness, known as Lamaštu in Mesopotamia, Lilith inHebrew belief, and Lamia, Gello and others to the Greeks. Pregnancy-loss,the death of newborn babies and infants were attributed to this demoness.There are scholars who argue that the place of the child-killing demons inthe realm of the demonic reflected the standard opinion of the time of whatthe proper role of a woman was in society. In other words these demonsrepresented the antithesis of a proper woman. However, we have to godeeper in our analysis of the child-killing demoness to understand the roleshe played in popular belief.

Keywords: demonology, disease, Lilith, Lamaštu, healing, exorcism,incantation.