How to calm a crying child - advice from the inhabitants of Ancient Mesopotamia

All the children are crying. You might think that this is what they are doing. All parents are trying to find universal ways to calm a crying child. We have always tried to deal with crying with different methods. And so it has been for all ages. Only the approach to reassuring the child has changed.

The well-preserved Late Babylonian cuneiform tablet depicted in the image below contains songs and rituals that the inhabitants of Mesopotamia used to calm their babies. In these lullabies, parents asked their children to become as calm as water, to fall asleep like a sleepy calf in a gazelle, or to doze like a shepherd who had fallen asleep above his flock.

Along with the songs, the text on the plate says that parents do strange things. From our point of view. They collect roadside dust on the street, in the doorway, and even on the grave. Then, presenting the ultimate absolute silence, they blow on the crying child. Apparently, it helped ...

Ancient Mesopotamian tablets were studied by Dr. Eckhart Fram, a professor at Yale University, a specialist in Middle Eastern languages ​​and civilizations.

"The main thing people ask for on the tablets is peace and quiet - says the professor, - they have the same wishes as in modern lullabies ".

The plates were made in Nippur (100 miles south of modern Baghdad) and are today stored in the Natural History Museum in Peabody, Connecticut. These are the most famous cuneiform lullabies. Scholars believe that the song’s lyrics first originated in oral folk poetry and were transmitted from century to century before it was recorded between about 500 and 300 BC. However, this text has a number of key differences from modern lullabies to us.

"The child disturbed his father with his cry, caused tears of matter, Kusarrikku disappeared from his loud cry"- this is what the tablet says. It is important not only that the parents were upset and the child should be comforted. Another thing is important here. That Kusarikku was hiding. Kusarikku is a mythical animal, a kind of hairy ghost in the shape of a bison. The scary thing is that he will be afraid of crying and will leave the house. And he is one of the important supernatural guardians of the hearth. And from shy. According to Professor Fram, "if ghosts are outraged or scared, they can do terrible things to people, even those that the gods do not allow themselves". In a normal environment, they protect the house from demons, from evil forces.

One of the worst demons was the goddess Lamashtu. She, as the ancients suspected, stole children and killed pregnant women.

She is depicted on the amulet as a formidable figure: partly a bird, partly a lion, partly a man, with small puppies and pigs hanging from her chest.

Thus, reassuring a crying child was much more serious than just comforting the baby and letting tired parents rest. It was a necessary protection for everyone living in the house from danger.

"For the Mesopotamians" there was no clear line between magic and science "- says Fram.

Texts containing spells, like these lullabies, rituals associated with blowing dust or offering to various deities, existed along with serious scientific texts and literature. Plates were collected in collections, ancient libraries that existed in temples, palaces and private homes.

Another scientist, Assyriologist from the University of Chicago, John Wee, warns that we do not know enough about why the child was crying, and it would be too strange for us to insist on any specific explanation. "The work of the historian is to put ourselves in the place of an ancient person. In this case, the tablets allow us to evaluate how Mesopotamian beliefs and beliefs gave good reasons to be afraid of human noise or crying.".

Domestic ghosts such as Kusarikku or demons such as Lamashtu may have been living images of legitimate parental fears at a time when infant mortality was high. Crying could signal a terrible risk to the life of the child. Numerous dangers lay in wait for children from birth - illness, infection, injury.

Although we don’t know for sure why the child cried millennia ago, his parents believed that a gentle, soothing lullaby and some dust would not harm his health.

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