To cure diseases they seem to have relied wholly on charms and
incantations.
The first step was to guard the entrance to the sick man's chamber.
A tablet says:
"That nothing evil may enter, place at the door the god (...) and the god
(...)."
That is to say, their images. I believe these were little figures of the
gods, brought by the priests, perhaps a sort of Teraphim.
The following line is more explicit: "Place the guardian statues of Hea
and Marduk at the door, on the right hand and on the left." But they added
to this another kind of protection:
1 Right and left of the threshold of the door, spread out holy
texts and sentences.
2 Place on the statues texts bound around them.
These must have been long strips like ribbons of parchment or papyrus. The
following line is still clearer:
"In the night-time bind around the sick man's head a sentence taken from a
good book."[10]
[Footnote 10: Similar to these were the phylacteries of the Jews, which
were considered to be protections from all evil. Schleusner in his Lexicon
of the New Testament says that they were "Strips of parchment on which
were written various portions of the Mosaic law, for the Jews believed
that these ligaments had power to avert every kind of evil, but especially
to drive away demons. as appears from the Targum on the Canticles," etc.
We see that the Babylonian precept was to bind holy sentences "around the
head" and others "right and left of the threshold of the door."
Cf. Deut. xi. 18: "Ye shall lay up these my words in your heart, and in
your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, and as frontlets
between your eyes.
"And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thine house, and upon
thy gates."]