03x09 - Lilith: Queen Of The Night

[bunniefuu]

(Music)

- What does it all mean?

This is where the archeology has been found.

Oh, hi, How are you?

Look at that.

I need a planter.

Shrine to belly button.

This is (indistinct).

(music)

Look at that.

No one gets into this,

Don't take me too far.

Now that's naked archeology.

(music)

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,

and God said, let there be light.

Everyone knows the story of Genesis,

how God created the Garden of Eden

and gave life to both Adam and Eve.

The original man and woman

would go on to populate the entire planet.

But according to rabbinical interpretation,

Adam's first wife wasn't Eve at all.

It says that his first wife was actually named Lilith.

And that Lilith left Adam

because he wouldn't let her be on top

during their sexual relations.

You blame her, I don't blame her.

Then when Lilith leaves Adam,

she becomes a demon tempting men while they sleep

and stealing children in the middle of the night.

Today, modern feminists have adopted Lilith as their own,

for them she's an icon of empowerment and sexuality.

But who was she really?

Was she really an early pioneer of women's rights

or was she a demon?

And what can archeology tell us about the role

that Lilith played in the ancient world?

My first clue comes from an eighth century

rabbinical commentary, known as The Alphabet of Ben Sira,

which says that Lilith was Adam's first wife,

as a way to explain the discrepancy between the first

and second chapters of the Book of Genesis.

You see in Chapter one of Genesis,

it says God created man and woman at the same time.

But then in Chapter two, it says that God created woman

out of Adam side.

Causing rabbinical writers like Ben Sira,

to speculate whether God had created two different women.

So to find out more about this first woman who dumped Adam,

because she held a different position from him.

I'm in downtown Jerusalem

where I'm meeting with Lilith expert, Rebecca Lesses.

You're an expert.

So tell me about Lilith, what she is made before Eve.

I don't get it.

- Yes, according to Ben Sira,

Adam and the first woman

are created together at the same time.

And her name is Lilith.

She's given a name.

And so you can look at them as equal

and she seemed to regard herself as being equal to Adam.

When they're disputing over who should be on top,

apparently in sexual relations.

- She wants to be on top.

- She wants to be on top.

- And this is like a big problem for Adam.

- Of course, he says, I'll be on top.

And she says, no, no, no, I'll be on top.

- He says, I'm the boss.

- I'm the boss.

They fail to compromise.

Adam is upset.

He wants her back.

- The first divorce.

- It's the first divorce.

- What happens?

- Three angels are sent to get her back.

She refuses to return because she knows

she's not gonna be equal.

Then she gets disgusted.

She recites the divine name and she flies away.

- In The Alphabet of Ben Sira,

Lilith refuses to take

from Adam lying down.

Which is probably why modern feminists have claimed her

as an icon of feminine power.

Not only is there a feminist magazine named after Lilith

but there's even a music festival

called Lilith Fair.

But The Alphabet of Ben Sira

does not paint her as a feminist.

Not only does it say that she could fly,

which means that she might've had wings,

it also says, that when Lilith disobeys, both Adam and God,

the world's first woman turns into a female demon.

But who's right?

The rabbis or the feminists?

- She doesn't fit into what the role of women should be

a woman's supposed to be submissive to her husband,

do what he says.

And she's not submissive at all.

- Two sides to her.

- Yeah, there are two sides to her.

- Feminist and demon.

- That's where the picture of her

as a feminist is drawn from people.

- That's why modern feminists have adopted her.

- Yeah, Yeah.

- She even has a folk festival named after her.

- Yes.

- I don't think the people

who named the folk festival after her

know her demonic side.

- Probably not.

- [Narrator] Modern feminists have obviously bought

their ideas about Lilith from rabbis

riding in the eighth century.

But selectively ignore the part about her becoming a demon.

But I want to know where the rabbis

got their ideas about Lilith.

Was this just the literary invention

to explain those first chapters of The Book of Genesis?

Or is there real archeology out there

that can tell me what Lilith looked like

and where she came from?

(car moving sound)

( music)

I'm searching for archeological clues

that can explain an eighth century text

called The Alphabet of Ben Sira,

which says that Adam's first wife, wasn't actually Eve,

but a woman named Lilith

left Adam after they argued about

who should be on top during sex.

So far, I've found that the rabbis who wrote this

described her as a winged woman,

who turned into a demon

when she disobeyed both Adam and God.

But where in the first place

did the rabbis get this idea that Lilith was a demon?

Maybe they didn't get their ideas

from the story of Adam and Eve itself,

after all Lilith his name isn't the actually mentioned

anywhere in The Book of Genesis.

But I do know one fragment,

that's at least a thousand years older

than The Alphabet of Ben Sira.

That does mention Lilith by name.

It's a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Maybe that fragment can tell me what Lilith looked like

and what she was all about.

So I'm heading to the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit

in Downtown Jerusalem.

Looking around the nd Century BCE and found here

in the caves of Qumran,

the Dead Sea Scrolls are one of the most important

archeological finds of the th century.

And in one fragment known as the Song for a Sage,

Lilith is mentioned by name.

When it says:

- And I the Instructor proclaim His glorious splendor,

So as to frighten and to terrify all spirits

of the destroying angels, bastards, demons, Lilith,

howlers and desert dwellers.

- But then it's fairly unlikely

that the rabbis got their ideas about Lilith

from this fragment.

Since the scrolls themselves weren't discovered until ,

but it does tell me that in the ancient world,

there was a tradition that linked

a figure named Lilith to demons.

And according to Rebecca Lesses,

that Lilith demon had an unhealthy appetite

for small children.

What's her role with children?

- m*rder*r in the premodern world

and in parts of the world today without good healthcare.

You know, a lot of children die before the age of one

or before the age of five of all kinds of diseases.

So why is it that children die at such a young age?

It must be because of a demon has taken them away,

has inflicted this illness upon them.

- That's serious business before modern medicine.

- Absolutely.

- It's so hard to come to terms with

why innocent children die.

- Because of demons.

- In ancient times, infant mortality was over %.

That means three out of every children born

would have d*ed.

And so Lilith became the perfect scapegoat.

The fact that Lilith had wings and snatched up babies

has given me a new clue that she might have had talons

or claws as well.

But Lilith didn't just snatch up newborn babies.

She also did the demonic equivalent of preemptive strike

and stole man's sperm as they slept in the night.

- This is on one hand, how she's the thr*at to children.

And she's also regarded as a thr*at to men

when they're asleep, she can seduce them.

And from them, she can get demon children.

- They have kind of a wet dream.

- Yeah.

- Wet dreams are a perfectly normal body function.

(wind blowing)

But once you connect sperm with children being born,

then you say, wait a minute.

What happens to all of that sperm that doesn't get born?

You know what I mean?

Sperms that goes out there, but doesn't result in children

must be frustrated spirits that wanted to be born

but didn't get born.

Procreation was serious business in the ancient world.

And in biblical Israel, spilling your seed

for reasons other than childbirth was considered a sin.

So if Lilith was knocking at your door

in the middle of the night,

you would have tried anything to stop her from coming in

and back in those days, the only way to stop Lilith

was by trapping her inside a magic bowl.

And if you're looking for experts of magic

and (indistinct) balls,

there's no better person to go to then Dan Levene,

which is who I'm meeting now

at the Bible Land's Museum in Jerusalem.

So what we have here is a magic bowl.

Can you explain to me the whole concept of magic bowls,

- Their amulets.

- Their amulets?

- Yes, if you wanted to ward off misfortune

you'd go to a practitioner and he'd write it for you,

the names of the clients.

So we have names of real individuals who lived...

- to years ago?

- Yes.

Most of them were taken home.

They were buried upside down under the floor,

sometimes in the four corners of the house.

And these things are in a sense kind of like demon traps.

So...

- Like you have mouse traps?

- Absolutely.

- These are absolutely demon traps?

- Yes, yes.

- At the middle of the night, you hear a snap (claps once)

- Poof!

And they're gone.

- By burying one in each corner of their homes,

the ancients considered these magic bowls to be

the best form of insurance against Lilith's evil doings.

If you can just show me like physically,

what's going on saying that magic bowl was there?

- Well, this one, this is a divorce writ for Liliths.

And the idea of divorce writ it is a legal contract,

binding for demons and supernatural beings

as well as humans.

- They're called Goetz.

- Yes, this is a goet against demon.

And it basically a divorce writ

telling the demons you have got your divorce writ.

It's been served to you...

- Get outta here.

- Get out, go

- Specifically Lilith?

- Specifically Lilith, yes,

- All the magic bowls that have ever been found,

come from the ancient Babylonians city of Nippur,

in present day Iraq.

But ever since the end of the Iraq w*r,

hundreds of these bowls

were looted from the Museum in Baghdad.

Many made their way through the antiquities market

to Jerusalem.

Which is where I'm headed next.

I want to find my own magic bowl

that will protect me against Lilith's evil charms.

(Music)

I'm looking for clues that can tell me more about Lilith,

who according to rabbinic tradition was Adam's first wife.

So far, I found out that the ancients

believed that Lilith was a demon.

That the only way to get rid of her

was by crapping her inside Babylonian magic bowl.

And since the end of the Iraq w*r,

hundreds of these bowls

have made their way to the antiquities market

in Jerusalem's Old City.

Which is where I'm headed now with Professor Dan Levene.

Who's agreed to help me pick out one for myself.

- Oh I think we've got a good story there.

- It's a beautiful one, look at that, look at this.

- What do you see there?

- I see it's divided in four.

- Yes.

- Oh it's Holy name, It's the name of God.

- It's the permutations of the Tetragrammaton.

- The Tetragrammaton, which is the Holy name of God.

- The Holy name of God.

- Wow! I just found a magic bowl from fifth century Babylon

that uses the four letter name of God to divorce the Lilith

which I can't help, but find exciting.

Since the rabbinic tradition clearly says

that Lilith spoke the same name of God

to divorce herself from Adam.

It's perfect symmetry and perfect for my collection too.

There's a price on the back.

My God, this is the price?

- Yes.

- Dollars?

- Dollars.

- $,.

- Yes, cause it's a genuine antique.

- It a genuine antique, I know that

I'm the naked archeologist, I can't afford a $,,

But it's a beautiful one.

- It is a beauty.

- This is Kabbalah, this is real Kabbalah

because it's using the Holy name.

- Absolutely.

- And various variations of the Holy name

for the purpose of protection.

- Absolutely.

- Kabbalah is a form of Jewish mysticism,

which uses symbols to reveal the hidden truths

behind the Bible.

In fact, The Alphabet of Ben Sira

is also considered Kabbalistic.

Since it uses the Lilith story

to decode the Book of Genesis.

But if Jewish mysticism portrays Lilith as a demon,

then I wonder what the Christian tradition has to say.

And my first clue comes from one of the greatest

achievements of Christian architecture,

The Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

Built in the th century.

It has a stone carving that depicts Adam and Eve

being tempted by Lilith.

But instead of depicting her as a demon with wings,

she's depicted as a half woman, half snake

with a tail wrapped around the tree of knowledge.

What's this carving about?

Where did the Christians get the idea

to turn Lilith into a snake in the first place?

To find out

I'm taking a look at an early Christian form of mysticism

called Gnosticism.

Like Kabbalah, Gnosticism was meant to reveal

the hidden truth from the Bible,

which the Catholic church eventually tried to suppress.

And it would have succeeded too if the Nag Hammadi library

hadn't been discovered here

on the Western bank of the Nile river, back in .

The library contains papyri books,

that date to the third century.

And even though the books don't mention Lilith,

they do mention another woman who sounds a lot like Lilith.

Except the Gnostics called her Sophia

after Greek word for wisdom.

But I'm convinced that Sophia and Lilith

come from the same idea.

You see the Gnostics believed

the universe was balanced by male, female energies,

and the Sophia represented the female.

But then when she abandoned her role in the world,

Sophia fell into darkness.

She gave birth to the material universe,

including all of humanity.

(child crying)

In doing so, Sophia disrupted the balance of the universe,

which the creation of Eve was meant to solve.

Sound familiar?

Well, it should, because it sounds exactly

like the story of Lilith,

but because of Sophia's connection to wisdom

and the serpent's connection to forbidden knowledge,

the Gnostics came to identify Sophia

with the tree of knowledge.

So it's through Sophia, that Lilith becomes the serpent

that tempts Adam and Eve in Christian art,

which can even be seen in Michelangelo's famous Fresco

here on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

But these mystical visions of Lilith

are much later traditions.

I want to know what the original Lilith

really looked like.

So far I know that Lilith was a winged woman.

She was both nocturnal and a demon.

She also had talons and was a seductress,

which means she was probably naked.

And now all I have to do is find the ancient archeology

that matches that description.

(music)

I'm on a quest to find the archeology

that can tell me where Lilith came from

and what she really looked like.

So far I've found out that Lilith influenced both

Jewish and Christian ideas about how humanity was created.

And in both cases, she was seen as a thr*at to procreation,

but I've also found out that the only way to get rid of her

was by trapping her in a magic bowl

and all the bowls ever found King from ancient Babylon.

(crowd cheering)

You see, in the sixth century BCE,

the kingdom of Judah

was conquered by the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar.

When the Jews were taken c*ptive to Babylon,

they could have been exposed to Babylonian myths

and customs, including that of Lilith.

In fact, both ancient Babylon

and Israel Lilith's name translates as nocturnal woman

or woman of the night.

And it just so happens that at the British Museum in London,

they have a , year old statue from ancient Babylon.

That's actually called the queen of the night.

So that's where I am now to meet with curator Irving Finkel.

This is clearly a naked lady.

- I'm glad you spotted that straight away

without any help from me, but that is true.

She's a little bit scary to tell you the truth.

- She's meant to be.

We called her the queen of the night.

- Some would say that it's male fear of women.

She's gorgeous, but she's got these talons.

- She's clearly an underworld goddess of great power.

She holds the golden rings in booths,

which means she has cosmic power.

- Wow! The statue matches the description of Lilith exactly,

And I'm convinced that it must be the earliest

prototype for the tradition that follows.

- In Mesopotamian magic, there is a character called Lilitu.

- Lilitu.

- Lilitu.

- That's why I'm here, I'm interested in Lilith

and I'm Interested in Lilitu.

- Yes.

- And when I heard about this lady,

she's sure sounded like Lilitu.

- Yes, It is possible, it is possible.

I mean, one doesn't know where these things originate.

The rabbinical Lilitu and all these other demons

that get to att*ck the babies and children

are clearly a very ancient phenomenon where

a witch like thing with claws and eagles

and coming in the night

gets the belly of a pregnant woman gets the new born baby.

So it dies in spasms is a deep seated,

submitted personification of those dangers

in this sort of way.

- So he or she is the earliest depiction of Lilith

in the ancient world.

A nocturnal goddess

who fits all the criteria for Adam's first wife.

She was a looker.

But with those talons,

no wonder he didn't want her to be on top.

And it seems that it's this woman who evolves

into the Lilith we meet in The Alphabet of Ben Sira.

It's been quite a journey.

And what I've learned is that from the get go,

we all wanted to be on top.

The struggle that ensued,

the universe was thrown out of balance.

Death, darkness, jealousy, and envy

were all introduced into the cosmos.

But instead of trying to trap Lilith in magic bowls,

maybe we should try to channel

her dark and destructive energy

into love, equality, light, and life.

(soft beats)

(music)