Texts in Conversation
The curses in the Esarhaddon Succession Treaty and Deuteronomy 9 follow ancient Near Eastern tradition, where erasing a person’s name and lineage was a form of extreme punishment. In this culture, to be “blotted out” meant total loss of honor and legacy.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Deuteronomy 9:14
Hebrew Bible
13 Moreover, he said to me, “I have taken note of these people; they are a stubborn lot! 14 Stand aside and I will destroy them, obliterating their very name from memory, and I will make you into a stronger and more numerous nation than they are.” 15 So I turned and went down the mountain while it was blazing with fire; the two tablets of the covenant were in my hands.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
The Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon 1:537-544
Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty (SAA 2 6)
Ancient Near East, Assyrian
537 Just as a m[ule has n]o offspring, may your name, your seed, and the seed of your sons and your daughters disappear from the land. 540 Just as a germinal shoot of ma[lt, if it] is soaked with ma[sh...], does not sprout (and) a [...] does not return [...], may your [see]d and the seed of y[our] s[ons] and your daughters disappear [from] the face of your ground.
Date: 672 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Noteworthy are the iconic and textual associations in the golden calf narrative when Moses beseeches YHWH to forgive Israel for making “gods of gold” and, if not, to “blot me out from the document that you wrote.” The root mḥh, here translated as “blot out,” appears elsewhere in the West semitic corpus in reference to inscription effacement, as, for example, in the reciprocal curse against text effacement in the ʾAḥirom sarcophagus (“may his inscription be effaced”). These observations recall a wider range of biblical traditions concerning the “blotting out” of names and memories of people and places (Exodus 17:14; Deuteronomy 25:19; 2 Kings 14:27; 2 Kings 21:13; Psalm 9:6; Deuteronomy 29:19; Deuteronomy 9:14; Deuteronomy 25:6; Judges 21:17; Psalm 109:13; Psalm 69:29). This same root mḥh also appears in Numbers 5:23 in the context of the ritual ordeal for the accused adulteress, in which written curses are “blotted off” into water and then given to the suspected adulteress to drink ..."
Natalie Naomi May, ed., Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond, OIS 8 (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2012), 333–334.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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