CHAPTER III
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,