250 



NA rURE 



[January 12, 1905 



translation of an ancient prescription for curing the 

 tooth-ache. The sufferer was ordered to mix some 

 beer with oil and with another unknown ingredient, 

 and, having rubbed it on his tooth, he recited the 

 following words three times : — " When Anu had 

 created the heavens, the heavens created the earth, the 

 earth created the rivers, the rivers created the canals, 

 the canals created the marshes, the marshes created 

 the Worm, which caine and wept before Shamash and 

 cried out before Ea, saying : — ' What wilt thou give 

 me for my food? What wilt thou give me to eat? ' 

 To this the Sun-God replied : — ' I will give thee dry 

 bones and scented . . . wood.' To this the Worm 

 made answer : — ' Of what use are dry bones and 

 scented . . . wood to me? Let me drink between the 

 teeth and let me be at the gums, that I may drink the 

 blood of the teeth and sap the strength of the gums, 

 then shall I be master of the bolt of the door.' " When 

 the patient had said the above, he was ordered to 

 address the Worm and say, " Mav Ea smite thee with 



ii 



—Bronze animal-headed figure of one of the Eabyloni, 

 Evil. From " The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylo 



the strength of his fist, O Worm! " We can only 

 hope that these potent words relieved the sufferer. 



The bulk of Mr. Thompson's present volume is, of 

 course, occupied with the transliterations and literal 

 translations of the documents of which he treats; but, 

 as these are manifestly intended for the expert in 

 cuneiform only, we mav briefly note the summaries of 

 their contents, which appear in the preface. The te.xts 

 which refer to words of power show that they possessed 

 much in common with a similar class of document 

 found in Egypt and elsewhere. The Sumerian 

 magician having found out the name of the devil which 

 •caused the sickness he was called upon to cure, pro- 

 ceeded to deal with it by means of sympathetic magic. 

 He employed ceremonies of various kinds, in which 

 magical figures, loaves of bread, pieces of hair, water, 

 a virgin kid, &c. , played prominent parts. Sicknesses 

 could be transferred to the dead bodies of kids and 

 pigs, and devils could be made to disappear into masses 



NO. 1837, VOL. 71] 



of water collected in jiots, whereupon the vessels 

 themselves would break. In Sumer and Accad 

 knotted cords were much used for purposes of witch- 

 craft, and knotted locks of hair were held to be all- 

 powerful. The section which treats of the ban and 

 taboo is especially suggestive, and we hope that Mr. 

 Thompson will say more on these subjects when he 

 has collected a larger number of examples. Finally, 

 he directs attention to the existence of the word 

 " Ktippiiru,^' which is the equivalent in meaning to the 

 Mosaic idea of " atonement," and the texts printed in 

 the volume before us show conclusively that the acts 

 which formed the atonement removed the taboo which 

 man had incurred. The Sumerian ceremonies of 

 atonement were certainly developed out of sympathetic 

 magic, and the examples of atonement given in the 

 Bible show that the ceremonies mentioned were, in 

 more than one case, closely connected with primitive 

 Hebrew magic. Those who are interested in the study 

 of magic in all its forms will find Mr. Thompson's 

 book of considerable interest and importance. 



SPEECH CURVES. 



AN interesting lecture ' was recently delivered in 

 the psychological institute of the University of 

 Berlin by Prof. Scripture, of the University of Yale, 

 whose investigations in phonetics are well known. 

 Prof. Scripture's method is that first employed by 

 Fleeming Jenkin and Ewing, and afterwards de- 

 veloped by Hermann, the writer and others, namely, 

 to record on a moving surface, either by photo- 

 graphy or by a direct system of levers, the curves 

 imprinted by speech on the cylinder of a phonograph 

 or on the disc of a gramophone. Dr. Scripture has 

 recently improved the mechanism of his apparatus so 

 as to obtain an amplification of the curves, about three 

 times in the horizontal and three hundred times in the 

 vertical direction, while the speed of the movement of 

 his gramophone plate was reduced 126,300 times that 

 at which it rotates during the acoustical reproduction 

 of the sound. His curves have been submitted to 

 analysis, and it shows the energy with which the 

 research is being prosecuted when he is able to state 

 that in .'Vmerica he has twenty persons engaged in this 

 special bit of work. 



In the discussion of his results, Prof. Scripture, in 

 the first instance, refers to some remarks by Prof. 

 Sievers, of Leipzig, on what may be called the 

 " melody " of vowels and words. Prof. Sievers says 

 that each line and verse of a poem has its own melody, 

 and that this will be determined by the psychological 

 condition of the individual at the time of its vocal ex- 

 pression. An author, too, while writing a poem, say 

 one of a dramatic character, may give a certain 

 " melody " to the expressions of one individual. 

 Goethe, for example, causes Faust to drop his voice at 

 the close of a sentence, while the voice of Mephisto- 

 pheles rises and falls in a variable manner. Sievers 

 also points out, as a curious fact, that when Goethe 

 completed the poem, many years after he wrote the 

 earlier portions, he had forgotten these melodic effects, 

 and the later portions have not the same melodic 

 characteristics. Prof. Scripture supports Prof. 

 Sievers's view. This melodic character will thus affect 

 the quality of a vowel sound. 



Prof. Scripture holds that the movement of the vocal 

 cords does not produce a sinuous curve, and herein 

 he agrees with Marage, of Paris. By the movements 

 of the cords a number of sudden and more or less violent 

 shocks are given to the air, and each shock is com- 

 municated to the air in the resonators. In this way 



1 "liber das Studium der Sprach Kurven." By E. W. Scripture. 

 Annitlifi cicr NaturphilosophU. (Leipzig : Veil and Co.). 



