Mîs-pî, inscribed KA-LUḪ.Ù.DA and meaning “washing of the mouth,” is an ancient Mesopotamian ritual and incantation series for the cultic induction or vivification of a newly manufactured divine idol.
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Mîs-pî, inscribed KA-LUḪ.Ù.DA and meaning “washing of the mouth,” is an ancient Mesopotamian ritual and incantation series for the cultic induction or vivification of a newly manufactured divine idol.
01 · What it is
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02 · Where & name
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03 · How it is doing
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04 · Proof & reuse
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Chapter Takeaways
The ritualThe extant corpus of tablets comprising mîs-pî consist of two ritual accounts, one late Babylonian and one earlier Assyrian, together with several Sumerian incantations to be recited at the various stages of the ritual,…
Common Questions Answered on Record
What is Mîs-pî in plain words?
Mîs-pî, inscribed KA-LUḪ.Ù.DA and meaning “washing of the mouth,” is an ancient Mesopotamian ritual and incantation series for the cultic induction or vivification of a newly manufactured divine idol.
Where is Mîs-pî practised or documented?
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What is the current condition of Mîs-pî today?
□□□□ (Not yet assessed): Documented in open cultural records, but no cited field assessment of its current vitality has been added here yet.
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Cite as: "Mîs-pî." folkroom, https://folkroom.org/art-forms/mis-pi, text CC BY-SA, with attribution.
Mîs-pî, inscribed KA-LUḪ.Ù.DA and meaning “washing of the mouth,” is an ancient Mesopotamian ritual and incantation series for the cultic induction or vivification of a newly manufactured divine idol. It involved around eleven stages: in the city, countryside and temple, the workshop, a procession to the river, then beside the river bank, a procession to the orchard, in reed huts and tents in the circle of the orchard, to the gate of the temple, the niche of the sanctuary and finally, at the quay of the Apsû, accompanied by invocations to the nine great gods, the nine patron gods of craftsmen, and assorted astrological bodies. 1
The ritual
The extant corpus of tablets comprising mîs-pî consist of two ritual accounts, one late Babylonian and one earlier Assyrian, together with several Sumerian incantations to be recited at the various stages of the ritual, recovered from a wide distribution of find spots. These date from the eighth to the fifth centuries BC and are thought to have been arranged on 6 or 8 tablets. Although these texts are from the first millennium BC, a reference to a ritual of the opening of the mouth of a statue of the deified statue of Gudea may represent an earlier recension, and mouth-washing is mentioned during the middle Babylonian period.
The rituals are for the consecration of a cultic image, a statue formed from a wooden core encased in gold and/or silver, decorated with inlaid precious stones, and dressed in robes. They involve the “washing of the mouth” (mîs-pî proper) on the first day to cleanse the statue of all traces of human contamination in the production of the idol, and the “opening of the mouth” (inscribed KA.DUḪ.Ù.DA, Akkadian: pit pî) performed with syrup, ghee, cedar and cypress on the second to bring it to life, sacraments which may be related to the pit uzni, “ear-opening” ceremony. 1
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Mîs-pî”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. 1
Mîs-pî is Mesopotamian ritual, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 2
The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 2