436 THE FISH OF TOBIAS—DEMONIC POSSESSION 
scope for making love to the bride their jealous wrath might 
be appeased, or the danger, at any rate, minimised. The 
alternative to appeasement was deception of the demon ; 
whence women sometimes disguised themselves as men, and 
even wore false beards ! 
We find, on returning from this semi-folklore excursion, 
Prof. Langdon asserting that in Sumero-Babylonian religion 
each individual is guarded by a divine spirit or god.1_ He is 
called the ‘‘ Man’s God,”’ and the man is defined, in a religious 
sense, as a “ Son of God.’”’ But this term applies to no females. 
This can hardly be attributed to accident, for our sources 
of information mention hundreds, even thousands, of men 
bewitched, and by demonic force abandoned by their indwelling 
gods, but never a woman. Women not infrequently figure as 
causing the condition of tabu, but never as having fallen to the 
powers of devils, or witches, or as being under the protection 
of a personal god. They never appear in the private penitential 
psalms. 
But when we recall the high position occupied by women, 
not only in Babylonian society, but also in the eye of the civil 
law, which regarded their rights, as often as not, equal to those 
of men, and that women are often found as priestesses of 
religious orders, Langdon’s statements, resting on recent 
discoveries, create grounds for surprise. 
To explain the anomaly he conjectures that when the texts 
refer to sinners, penitents, or sufferers, the title “son of his 
god ” applies in all probability also to women. 
The book of Tobit, whether Persian in its source or Aramaic 
in its original text, furnishes an example of demonic possession 
of a woman, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. 
The Jewish conception of demonic possession resembles, 
indeed probably descends from, the Babylonian. The “ seven 
devils’? of Matt. xii. 45, Luke xi. 26, and viii. 2, simply 
reflect the evil spirits, called in a famous incantation The Seven, 
who play no small part in Babylonian mythology. 
1 Babylonian Magic (London, 1914), pp. 223-224, and Le Podme Sumérien, 
already cited, p. 72, note 3. 
2 Maspero, Dawn of Civilisation, pp. 634, 776. 
