Deliver me from evil. Mesopotamian incantations (2500-1500 b.C.)

This study analyses five aspects of the approximately 450 published Mesopotamian incantations dating to the period from 2500 to 1500 BC: the incantations' development during this perios; their functions and particular type of suffering, illness; the verbal techniques they use to request or represent helpful divine intervention towards those ends; their accompanying ritual; the information they provide about the ultimate cause of such suffering, that is harmful divine intervention. the work ends by summarising this analysisi and arguing that it fails to suppoert the conventional calssification of the incantations as magical rather than religious.