Labasu

Labasu is not preserved in narrative myth as an individual with a birth-story; instead the entity is attested only in lexical, incantation and ritual lists. In bilingual Sumerian–Akkadian lists Labasu is recorded by the Akkadian form labāṣu and by the Sumerian logographic pairing ᵈdìm.me.A, placing it within the technical DÌM/kamad semantic field of harmful, disease-causing beings. The textual record therefore presents Labasu as a technical demon-name within a classificatory system of malefic agents rather than as a character of a cosmogonic narrative.

No consistent, detailed physical iconography or anatomical description of Labasu is preserved in the cited material. In the surviving sources Labasu chiefly appears as a name in enumerations of hostile spirits and in incantation formulas; the corpora that mention it provide no uniform corporeal portrait and treat the entity primarily as an unseen, malefic force responsible for illness.

Textual sources associate Labasu specifically with disease causation, most often in texts treating fever and related sicknesses (scholarly summaries note links to biphasic fevers without jaundice). Labasu functions as an etiological agent invoked in medical-astrological writings, and in anti-witchcraft and expulsion rites it is enumerated among hostile agents that can be adjured, expelled, or ritually transferred. In many tablets Labasu occurs in close association with Lamashtu and Ahhazu, forming a triad of disease-causing spirits in incantatory practice. The corpus treats it as removable or propitiable by ritual action.