The Text Beside Its Nearest Relative, Surpu

Assyriologists routinely read Maqlu beside Surpu, "burning" in Akkadian as well, since both are extended incantation series built around fire as the instrument of release, both survive in comparably reconstructed form from the same library find, and both were edited in modern times by Erica Reiner. The two are not duplicates of one purpose. Surpu addresses a client afflicted by the consequences of a violated taboo or an unwittingly broken oath, an offense against divine order with no human perpetrator to blame, and its cure is confession and ritual absolution. Maqlu addresses harm attributed to a specific human agent, the witch, and its cure is retaliation against an identified, if unnamed, wrongdoer.

Reading them together shows Mesopotamian ritual specialists distinguishing sharply between misfortune that was nobody's fault and misfortune somebody caused, and building an entirely different incantation apparatus for each. Both series were almost certainly performed by the same class of exorcist priest, the ashipu, whose professional library plainly held both as complementary tools for adjacent but distinct kinds of affliction. Both series also share a formal closing structure, a final purification returning the client to ordinary life, which suggests Mesopotamian ritual specialists worked from a shared template for concluding an affliction rite regardless of which underlying cause the affliction was diagnosed to have.