Dear Mar Shiprim readers,
Please join us in congratulating Evelyne Koubková for winning this year’s IAA Dissertation Prize for her dissertation on the Mesopotamian exorcist’s self-presentation.
Applications are now open for next year’s prizes. For more information, see https://iaassyriology.com/awards.
With best wishes,
Pavla Rosenstein
Mar Shiprim Editor
Congratulations to this year’s IAA Dissertation Prize winner!
This year’s IAA Dissertation Prize was awarded to Dr. Evelyne Koubková for her dissertation, How Rituals Shape Authority: The Mesopotamian Exorcist’s Self-Presentation in Ritual Texts and Practice, completed at Yale University under the supervision of Prof. Eckart Frahm.
Koubková, now an Assistant Professor at the Research Center for West Asian Civilization at the University of Tsukuba, sought to combine ritual theory and philology for her dissertation, building on her earlier training in Religious studies at Charles University in Prague.
Koubková shares that “My hope was to apply ritual theory to Mesopotamian sources and to produce a book that would be enjoyable and interesting for Assyriologists as well as people from outside the field. In essence, I found myself writing the book I had wished to be able to read back when I first got interested in Mesopotamian rituals, and I never stopped having fun writing it. Once I realized the vastness of the first-millennium BCE corpus of ritual texts, I wanted to find a topic that would allow me to explore the corpus as a whole. The most prominent ritual practitioner, the exorcist (āšipu / mašmaššu), deserved an in-depth treatment, which promised to become a go-to resource for anyone working on Mesopotamian rituals. The idea was to thoroughly introduce the profession and the exorcist’s roles in society and juxtapose that social reality with their own words.”
Dr. Evelyne Koubková (photograph courtesy of Evelyne Koubková)
Undeterred by the volume of cuneiform texts to cover, Koubková shares that a degree of creativity enabled her to manage the large corpus, while remaining sensitive to the application of theoretical models to cuneiform sources: “Ritual theory equipped me with some of the necessary tools to analyze the exorcists’ performative self-presentation, but I also found that a good measure of creativity was necessary to adapt these tools to Mesopotamian sources. Transitioning from Religious studies to Assyriology for my PhD, I became aware of the problems involved in the insensitive application of theory to ancient texts. In fact, I found the authority of ritual specialists across cultures surprisingly undertheorized and realized that the Mesopotamian ritual corpus might contribute a unique set of data to this question.”
She elaborates on her findings. “I identified what I considered the main features of the exorcists’ self-presentation in ritual texts: their purity that is never subject to doubt, their divine protection, a range of ritual tools and attributes endowed with divine powers, and finally, their power of speech.” She further notes the tension evident in what she terms the “exorcist’s idealized self-presentation,” with the exorcist navigating a fine line between human and divine realms. “His identity was always shifting on a multidimensional spectrum,” Koubková explains. “He was a human ritual practitioner in need of divine protection, but he could also harness divine powers, and even temporarily embody the god Marduk / Asalluḫi. In his ritual speech, he could represent himself, Marduk, or his clients, and even inanimate substances used in the ritual proceedings. His purity was perfect, despite all the impurities he encountered. There was never any doubt about his flawless ritual performance. Yet he could not always be Marduk and there is a certain hesitation in some sources regarding their full identification. The constant shifts in his identity made him able to mediate between the human and the divine world. The exorcist’s self-presentation was supposed to be effective, not unified, and it addressed a range of audiences – the gods, the evil powers, the exorcists’ clients, as well as themselves – the ritual practitioners in need of encouragement. Exploring these tensions in the exorcists’ self-presentation brings these specialists to life, revealing how they grappled with their uneasy tasks.”
Céline Debourse, Assistant Professor at Harvard University and elected board member of the IAA, comments that Koubková’s dissertation “is structured with admirable clarity. After establishing the terminology and social context of the exorcist, Koubková focuses on three central themes that shape the exorcist’s self-presentation: purity, divine protection, and the power of speech. These are not abstract qualities but practical tools through which the exorcist constructs his professional identity. At the heart of the thesis lies a deceptively simple but powerful question: how did the exorcist come to wield such remarkable authority? Rather than treating authority as something granted externally (by institutions or tradition), Koubková shows that it was something made within the āšipu’s rituals and texts themselves. By analyzing a large corpus of first-millennium BCE ritual texts, she demonstrates that authority was not just claimed but enacted through words, gestures, objects, and texts.”
Debourse commends the dissertation for offering a fresh and engaging rethinking of one of the most intriguing figures of the ancient Near East: “while previous scholarship has examined exorcists as ritual experts or healers, Koubková turns attention to how they present themselves within the texts. This approach opens a new interpretive lens, moving beyond cataloguing practices to understanding how authority is constructed, negotiated, and maintained. Far from being a shadowy magician muttering spells in the margins of society, Koubková reveals the Mesopotamian exorcist (āšipu / mašmaššu) as a highly trained intellectual, ritual specialist, and cultural authority whose power was actively constructed through ritual practice and text.”
Debourse further reiterates the importance of integrating a creative approach with a rigorous academic analysis of the sources: “the IAA Dissertation Prize committee unanimously rated the dissertation’s scientific significance at the highest level, reflecting its importance not only for Assyriology but also for broader fields such as the history of religions and ritual studies. The committee further praised the dissertation’s synthetic scope, bringing together a wide range of textual material while engaging with theoretical frameworks, in particular ritual theory. What ultimately makes the dissertation prize-worthy is its combination of intellectual rigor and imaginative insight. Koubková invites us to see rituals not as static scripts but as dynamic performances that shape social reality. The exorcist emerges as a master of performance – someone who, through words and actions, makes authority believable and effective. In short, the study transforms how we understand both Mesopotamian religion and the nature of authority.”
Koubková is now working on publishing her work. “It’s a great honor to receive this recognition, alongside previous winners, many of whom I truly admire. I am grateful to those who believed in my project and encouraged me along the way – my advisors Eckart Frahm, Benjamin Foster, and Daniel Schwemer as well as Uri Gabbay and my colleagues from the RITM (Rituals In Texts in Mesopotamia) working group. The prize is, of course, also a great incentive to publish my revised dissertation soon, which I am planning to do open access in the hope that it reaches a wide and diverse audience of readers.”
Applications are now open for next year’s IAA prizes. Two prizes are available: The PhD Dissertation Prize (€1500) and the Best Article Prize for an Early Career Scholar (€1000; €250 for runner-up if also selected). For more information, please visit: https://iaassyriology.com/awards
Article by Pavla Rosenstein