THE VAMPIRE IN BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA, AND GREECE
The belief in the vampire and ghoul was prevalent even in Babylon and
Assyria, where it was maintained that the dead could appear again
upon earth and seek sustenance from the living. The belief is, in all
probability, linked up with the almost universal theory that transfused
blood is necessary for revivification. Baths of human blood were
anciently prescribed as a possible remedy for leprosy.
Mr R. Campbell Thompson, in his work _The Devils and Evil Spirits of
Babylonia_, states that the _Ekimmu_ or departed spirit was the soul of
the dead person unable to rest, which wandered as a spectre over the
earth. “If it found a luckless man who had wandered far from his fellows
into haunted places, it fastened upon him, plaguing and tormenting him
until such time as a priest should drive it away with exorcisms.”
Mr Thompson also gives the translation of the following two tablets,
which, it will be seen, contain references to this belief:—
The gods which seize (upon man)
Have come forth from the grave;
The evil wind-gusts
Have come forth from the grave.
To demand the payment of rites and the pouring out of libations,
They have come forth from the grave;
All that is evil in their hosts, like a whirlwind,
Hath come forth from the grave.
The evil Spirit, the evil Demon, the evil Ghost, the evil Devil,
From the earth have come forth;
From the underworld unto the land they have come forth;
In heaven they are unknown,
On earth they are not understood.
They neither stand nor sit
Nor eat nor drink.
INCANTATION
Spirits that minish heaven and earth,
That minish the land,
Spirits that minish the land,
Of giant strength,
Of giant strength and giant tread,
Demons (like) raging bulls, great ghosts,
Ghosts that break through all houses,
Demons that have no shame,
Seven are they!
Knowing no care,
They grind the land like corn;
Knowing no mercy,
They rage against mankind:
They spill their blood like rain,
Devouring their flesh (and) sucking their veins.
Where the images of the gods are, there they quake
In the temple of Nabu, who fertiliseth the shoots of wheat.
They are demons full of violence
Ceaselessly devouring blood.
Invoke the ban against them,
That they no more return to this neighbourhood.
By Heaven be ye exorcised! By Earth be ye exorcised!
Greek Christianity, as already stated, has been credited by many with the
origin of the vampire belief, but this contention is hardly borne out by
facts. The belief was undoubtedly developed greatly under the influence
of the Greek Church, and utilised by the Greek priests as an additional
power which they possessed over the people. It did not become prominent
in Greece until after the establishment of Christianity, and there are
many remarkable stories told of vampire apparitions among the Slavonic
races bordering on Greece, as well as among the Arabians. In later times,
Father Richard, a French Jesuit of the seventeenth century, went as a
missionary to the Archipelago, and has left an account of the islands
of Santerini in which he discourses at length upon the _bucolacs_ or
vampires of that district.
Some Greeks believe that the spectre which appears is not really the
soul of the deceased, but an evil spirit which enters his body after the
soul of the owner has been withdrawn. Thus Leo Allatius, in describing
the belief, says: “The corpse is entered by a demon which is the source
of ruin to unhappy men. For frequently emerging from the tomb in the
form of that body and roaming about the city and other inhabited places,
especially by night it betakes itself to any house it fancies, and, after
knocking at the door, addresses one of the inmates in a loud tone. If
the person answers he is done for: two days after that he dies. If he
does not answer he is safe. In consequence of this, all the people in
Chios, if anyone calls to them by night, never reply the first time; for
if a second call is given they know that it does not proceed from the
_vrykolaka_ but from someone else.”
In the _Menées des Grecs_ it is recorded that an ecclesiastic of Scheti,
being excommunicated by his superior for some act of disobedience,
quitted the desert and came to Alexandria, where he was apprehended by
the governor of the city, stripped of his religious habit, and strongly
solicited to sacrifice to the idols of the place. The man bravely
resisted the temptation, and was tortured in several ways, till at last
they cut off his head, and threw his body out of the city to be devoured
by dogs. The next night it was carried away by the Christians, who,
having embalmed it and wrapped it up in fine linen, interred it in an
honourable part of the church with all the respect due to the remains
of a martyr. But at the next celebration of the Mass, upon the deacons
crying out aloud as usual, “Let the catechumens and all who do not
communicate retire,” his grave instantly opened and the martyr retired
into the church porch. When Mass was over he came again of his own accord
into the grave. Not long afterwards it was revealed by an angel to a
holy person, who had continued three days in prayer, that the deceased
ecclesiastic had been excommunicated by his superior, and would continue
bound till that same superior had reversed the sentence. Upon this a
messenger was despatched to the desert after the holy anchorite, who
ordered the grave to be opened and absolved the deceased, who, after
this, continued in his grave in peace.
Pitton de Tournefort, in his _Voyage into the Levant_, gives the
following interesting account: “We were present at a very different scene
and one very barbarous at Myconi. The man, whose story we are going to
relate, was a peasant of Myconi, naturally ill-natured and quarrelsome;
this is a circumstance to be taken notice of in such a case: he was
murdered in the fields, nobody knew how or by whom. Two days after his
being buried in a chapel in the town it was noised about that he was
seen to walk about in the night with great haste, that he tumbled about
other people’s goods, put out their lamps, gripped them behind, and
played a dozen other monkey tricks. At first the story was received with
laughter, but the thing was looked upon seriously when the better sort
of people began to complain of it: the papás themselves gave credit to
the fact, and no doubt had their reasons for so doing; masses were duly
said; but for all this the peasant drove his old trade and heeded nothing
they could do. After divers meetings of the chief people of the city,
of priests and monks, it was gravely concluded that it was necessary in
consequence of some musty ceremonial to wait till the ninth day after the
interment should be expired.
“On the tenth day they said one Mass in the chapel where the body was
laid in order to drive out the demon which they imagined was got into it.
After Mass they took up his body and got everything ready for blowing
out his heart.... The corpse stunk so abominably that they were obliged
to burn frankincense, but the smoke mixing with the exhalations from the
carcase increased the stench; every person averred that the blood of
the corpse was extremely red. The butcher swore that the body was still
warm....”
Pitton concludes the story by ridiculing the theory that this was the
body of a vampire or _vroucolaca_.
The practice of burning the body of a suspected or proved vampire does
not appear to have found general favour in Greece, doubtless by reason of
the fact that the Greeks possessed a religious horror of burning a body
on which holy oil had been poured by the priest when performing the last
rites upon the dying man.
Leake, whose _Travels in Northern Greece_ were published in 1835, says
in the fourth volume of that work: “It would be difficult now to meet
with an example of the most barbarous of all these superstitions,
the Vrukólaka. The name being Illyric, seems to acquit the Greeks of
the invention, which was probably introduced into the country by the
barbarians of Sclavonic race. Tournefort’s description is admitted to be
correct. The Devil is supposed to enter the Vrukólaka, who, rising from
his grave, torments first his nearest relatives and then others, causing
their death or loss of health. The remedy is to dig up the body and if,
after it has been exorcised by the priest, the demon still persists in
annoying the living, to cut it into small pieces, or, if that be not
sufficient, to burn it.”
In Crete the belief in vampires—or katalkanás, as the Cretans call
them—and their existence and ill-deeds forms a general article of
popular belief throughout the island, but is particularly strong in the
mountains, and if anyone ventures to doubt it, undeniable facts are
brought forward to silence the incredulous.
One of the stories told by the Cretans is as follows: “Once upon a time
the village of Kalikráti, in the district of Sfakia, was haunted by a
Katakhanás, and the people did not know what man he was or from what part
he came. This Katakhanás destroyed both children and full-grown men, and
desolated both that village and many others. They had buried him at the
church of St George at Kalikráti, and in those times he was regarded as
a man of note, and they had built an arch over his grave. Now a certain
shepherd, believed to be his mutual Sýnteknos,[1] was tending his sheep
and goats near the church, and, on being caught in a shower, he went
to the sepulchre that he might be protected from the rain. Afterwards
he determined to sleep and pass the night there, and, after taking off
his arms, he placed them by the stone which served him as his pillow,
crosswise. And people might say that it was on this account that the
Katakhanás was not permitted to leave his tomb. During the night, then,
as he wished to go out again, that he might destroy men, he said to the
shepherd: ‘Gossip, get up hence, for I have some business that requires
me to come out.’ The shepherd answered him not, either the first time,
or the second, or the third; further, he knew that the man had become
a Katakhanás, and that it was he who had done all those evil deeds. On
this account he said to him on the fourth time of his speaking: ‘I shall
not get up hence, gossip, for I fear you are no better than you should
be and may do me some mischief; but if I must get up, swear to me by
your winding-sheet that you will not hurt me, and on that I will get
up.’ And he did not pronounce the proposed words, but said other things;
nevertheless, when the shepherd did not suffer him to get up, he swore
to him as he wished. On this he got up, and, taking his arms, removed
them away from the monument, and the Katakhanás came forth, and, after
greeting the shepherd, said to him: ‘Gossip, you must not go away, but
sit down here; for I have some business which I must go after; but I
shall return within the hour, for I have something to say to you.’ So the
shepherd waited for him.
“And the Katakhanás went a distance of about ten miles, where there was a
couple recently married, and he destroyed them. On his return the gossip
saw that he was carrying some liver, his hands being moistened with
blood; and, as he carried it, he blew into it, just as the butcher does,
to increase the size of the liver. And he showed his gossip that it was
cooked, as if it had been done on the fire. After this he said: ‘Let us
sit down, gossip, that we may eat.’ And the shepherd pretended to eat it,
but only swallowed dry bread, and kept dropping the liver into his bosom.
Therefore, when the hour for their separation arrived, the Katakhanás
said to the shepherd: ‘Gossip, this which you have seen, you must not
mention, for if you do, my twenty nails will be fixed in your children
and yourself.’ Yet the shepherd lost no time, but gave information to the
priests and others, and they went to the tomb, and there they found the
Katakhanás, just as he had been buried. And all people became satisfied
that it was he who had done all the evil deeds. On this account they
collected a great deal of wood, and they cast him on it, and burnt
him. His gossip was not present, but when the Katakhanás was already
half-consumed, he, too, came forward in order that he might enjoy the
ceremony. And the Katakhanás cast, as it were, a single spot of blood,
and it fell on his foot, which wasted away, as if it had been roasted on
a fire. On this account they sifted even the ashes, and found the little
finger nail of the Katakhanás unburnt, and burnt it too.”
The 22nd formula of the _Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia_,
published by Sir Henry Rawlinson and Mr Edwin Norris in 1866, reads:—
The phantom, child of heaven,
which the gods remember,
the _Innin_ (kind of hobgoblin) prince
of the lords
the ...
which produces painful fever,
the vampyre which attacks man,
the _Uruku_ multifold
upon humanity,
may they never seize him!
[1] That is, related to each other through god-parents. In Crete, those
whose god-parents were the same or were connected by ties of kinship were
regarded as being in consanguineous relationship, and therefore were
unable to contract marriages with each other.