Lamashtu: Babylonian goddess of vampires

TO Lamashtu —also known in Lamartu in Arcadia, and Dimme in Sumeria—she is credited with being the first Babylonian goddess of vampires, whose name became synonymous with horror and terror in almost all Mesopotamian peoples.

Lamashtu is depicted as a hybrid creature: hirsute, with the head of a lion (or bird), teeth and ears of a donkey, bronze claws and nails, among other creepy features. Without a doubt, the representations of Lamashtu are the most disturbing in all of Mesopotamian mythology. She is also described as riding a hellish donkey, nursing a dog and a pig while she holds a pair of two-headed snakes.

4,000 years ago, in Ancient Babylon, Lamashtu definitively ascended to the vampire pantheon as the daughter of Anu, god of the sky, a relationship that fails to explain why Lamashtu chose to dress in nature’s most shabby attire.

Few dared to pronounce Lamashtu’s name out loud. He referred to her through horrific epithets, such as the Dryer of Rivers, the One who Devastates the Crops or the Black Horror of the Night. When Lamashtu needed to feed she attacked directly the heart of the villages. Like a cold, creeping wind that erodes the flat grasses of the moor, she Lamashtu toured the villages in search of pregnant women, an appetite that she shared with another vampire goddess: Lilith.

With invisible fingers Lamashtu touched the wombs of pregnant women seven times, withering life in its most fertile refuge. Lying in wait, Lamashtu then waited for the cries and lamentations to cease, for the funeral rites to follow one another, for the funerals to conclude, and then feed on the cadaverous effluvia and the blood shed during those abominable interruptions.

Lamashtu preferred this horrific diet over any other, although if the opportunity arose she was also capable of stealing infants from their beds, a trait that relates her to the most fearsome fairies of Celtic mythology, skilled child thieves, who were replaced with his own offspring: the Changelings.

But the infants who fell into the clutches of Lamashtu suffered an even worse fate, since he used to poison them with his acidic, poisonous milk, the infamous fruit of sterility.

Lamashtu was the most feared vampire of ancient days. Next to her, Lilith pales as an unreliable imitation of the tortures of the underworld, as do other goddesses of the vampire pantheon, such as Ardat Lili, Aisha Qandisha, Alouqua and Aluga, for example.

A vile murderer of infants, Lamashtu also preyed on the flesh of men and women, causing terrible nightmares and diseases for which there was no remedy or possible relief. To prevent his attacks, pregnant women in Ancient Babylon used to carry with them an amulet of Pazuzu, the only being in the universe capable of measuring the terrible thirst of Lamashtu (see: Pazuzu: the demon of “The Exorcist”, perhaps he was not the bad guy)

The mediating quality of Pazuzu is explained by following the complex plot of alliances of the gods of Babylonian mythology. After all, Pazuzu was Lamashtu’s husband; who curiously was also a demon, and not just one more, but the King of the Wind Demons, which placed the fearful Babylonian mothers at a true crossroads, since to avoid the wrath of Lamashtu they must necessarily resort to another diabolical being.

So intense was the terror caused by this vampire goddess that not a single sanctuary, Temple or building evidence of the cult of Lamashtu has ever been found. There are, however, a few prayers that have crossed the barriers of time, and which, out of prudence, we prefer to omit.

Bearer of countless epithets, Lamashtu was known as Lamashto, Lamastu, Lamatu. All its Babylonian variants have the particles: La-Mas-Tu, whose meaning could be: “the seven witches”, in clear allusion to its different facets as a dispenser of horrors.

Vampire legends. I Vampiresses.