Plants as Persons: First-Millennium Mesopotamian Anti-Witchcraft Botany

The article explores the role of plants in first-millennium BCE Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rituals and incantations, with particular attention to the so-called "Heilmittel incantations". Rather than treating vegetal substances as passive materia medica et magica, the study investigates how plants were conceptualized as living, intelligent, and agentive beings actively participating in ritual performances. Through the analysis of poetic language, etymologies, metaphorical associations, and performative invocations, the article shows how plants acquired therapeutic efficacy within Mesopotamian ritual practice. It argues that anti-witchcraft botany in ancient Mesopotamia must be understood within a broader relational ontology in which plants possessed agency, intentionality, and cosmological significance.