Ahhazu

No narrative origin myth for Ahhazu is attested in the provided sources. Instead, Ahhazu is presented in lexical and ritual texts as a named member of a roster of harmful beings (the DÌM / kamad group) and occurs in bilingual Sumerian–Akkadian lists where it forms part of a triad headed by the goddess Lamashtu/DÌM.ME. Its textual role is primarily as an etiological agent of particular disease presentations, invoked and countered in medical-astral, magical and anti-witchcraft corpora (for example Maqlû, Utukkū Lemnūtu, and the Group Eight anti-witchcraft rituals).

The cited sources do not supply a detailed physical description of Ahhazu. Textual evidence renders the name as meaning 'seizer' or 'the grabber' (Akkadian aḫāzu) and in Utukkū Lemnūtu Tablet 11 is translated as 'grabber' or as a jaundice-demon, which conveys a conceptual image of a being that seizes or takes hold of bodies or bodily functions. Beyond this epithet and its placement within the DÌM/kamad group led by Lamashtu, no explicit bodily traits or iconographic details are given in the provided material.

In the medical-magical texts cited Ahhazu is an agent of specific somatic disorders. It is repeatedly associated with jaundice and related biphasic fevers; sources also link it with alterations in mental status, fever accompanying skull fractures, abnormal posturing, and, in summary formulations, with injuries to the liver. Illnesses caused by Ahhazu are sometimes spoken of as the 'hand of aḫḫāzu' (i.e. a seizure by the being). Texts contrast Ahhazu with other illness-spirits (for example Labasu, associated with fever without jaundice, and amurriqanu, glossed as 'jaundice and bloating or wasting'), indicating a differentiated taxonomy in which named spirits correspond to particular clinical pictures. Ahhazu regularly appears alongside other hostile agents (Lamashtu, labāṣu, lilu, lilītu, utukku, šēdu, etc.) in incantations and anti-witchcraft rites.