Circa Second Half Of The Second Millennium B.C.E.
Exorcist-Poet

Revered Author. Bullutsa-rabi was the author of a great hymn to Gula, the goddess of healing. The frame narrative of the poem, in which Bullutsa-rabi introduces Gula, is written in the third person, while Gula sings her own praise in the first person. In the thirdperson frame Bullutsa-rabi beseeched the goddess on his own behalf, and he even wrote his name in the last lines of the poem. The passage in which Gula enumerates her skills provides valuable information about how Mesopotamian physicians treated patients:

I am the physician, I can save life,
I carry every herb, I banish illness.
I gird on the sack with life-giving incantations,
I carry the texts which make (one) well.
I give health to mankind.
(My) clean dressing salves the wound,
(My) soft bandage relieves the pain.
At my examination...