Note 982 — Chapter XXXVI · FISH IN OFFERINGS, AUGURIES, ETC.

Compare the exorcism by Tobias of Sara’s demon in Tobit. Langdon, Babylonian Magic and Sorcery (op. cit.), p. 223, commenting on the difficulty, which Semitic philology does not clear up, as to whether a wizard is one who cuts himself (as Robertson Smith and most scholars suppose), or whether he is one who casts his spell by whispering or ventriloquy, holds that “from the Sumerian word and the Sumerian ideogram of the word uhdugga which means one who whispers as he casts saliva, we can settle at once the most primitive method of sorcery known to us.”