So May God Do To Me! 93 else’s thigh (9). However, neither of these gestures seems to express a form of punishment (10). So far, key evidence has been left out of the debate. Ancient Mesopotamian sources mention a gesture in use when taking an oath. For example in texts from Mari (ca. 1775 B.C.E.), the Akkadian lap˝tum napiπtam “to touch the throat” is a technical term for taking an oath (11). The following passage makes especially clear that the expression bears upon an oath: Say to my lord: Thus says Yawi-il˝, your servant: My lord wrote as follows to me regarding the sending of the gods: “Send your gods so that I touch my throat.” Now then, I have sent the gods. My lord may pronounce the oath of the gods (12). Unquestionably, the touching of the throat meant that one was deserving of being killed when breaking the oath (13). The Akkadian word napiπtu means both “throat” and “life”, as does Hebrew vp,n<. In other words, who touches his throat puts his life at risk. As long as swearing the oath was accompanied by the touching of the throat, the awareness of the ensuing curse for breaking it must undoubtedly have been alive. What is evident is that the Mesopotamian gods were witnesses to the oath. Apparently, the gods would also execute the punishment in case the oath was broken. In the Hebrew Bible as well, the deity is the subject of the curse. It does not seem unlikely that the Israelites at some stage used to make a similar gesture when pronouncing the phrase πyswy hkw µyhla yl hç[y hk (14). The fact that the practice of combining oath-taking with touching the throat was not confined to Mari, but extended to very large parts of Mesopotamia, yields even greater plausibility to this assumption (15). The Mesopotamians may well have used a phrase similar to the Hebrew self-imprecation while taking an oath and touching the throat. Akkadian oaths are sometimes made up of a subordinate clause introduced by the particle πumma “if”, without a main clause. Probably, this expression emerged after (9) Å. VIBERG, Symbols of Law. A Contextual Analysis of Legal Symbolic Acts in the Old Testament (CB.OT 34; Stockholm 1992) 19-32, 45-51, with reference to Gen 14,22; 24,9; 47,29; Deut 32,40, etc. (10) Differently: CROWN, “Aposiopesis”, 107: “The gestures of punishment which one can demonstrate by raising the hand are few, limited perhaps to the act of rendering out the tongue, putting out the eyes, or more likely the running of a finger across the throat”. (11) See P. HOSKISSON, “The N^πum ‘Oath’ in Mari”, Mari in Retrospect: Fifty Years of Mari and Mari Studies (ed. G.D. YOUNG) (Winona Lake, IN, 1992) 203-210. Cf. also KOTTSIEPER, “[b'v;”, esp. 976-977; The Assyrian Dictionary, L (Chicago 1973) 84-85. (12) Archives royales de Mari, 13, text 147,1-9. Of course, “gods” here refers to the images of the gods. (13) The expression was also used in connection with the slaughtering of animals; see Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (Wiesbaden 1965) I, 535. (14) See the observation by Crown quoted in n. 10 above. (15) In the then widely known Babylonian Epic of Creation, even the “great gods” imprecate themselves and touch their throats (Enuma Elish VI, 97): “The great gods assembled and made Marduk’s destiny highest; they themselves did obeisance. They swore an oath for themselves, and swore on water and oil, touched their throats”. Translation by S. DALLEY, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford – New York 1989) 264. See also The Assyrian Dictionary, A2 (Chicago 1968) 234.