Vampires Through the Ages (2 page)

Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreaded and abhorred, yet dight with fearful fascination, as the vampire …

—Montague Summers, the Vampire in Lore and Legend

1

From the Cradle
to the Grave

Detectives and mystery writers the world over will tell you that every good story begins with a dead body, but in our case it's the lack of one that sets the stage and introduces the singularly dark mystery that begins our hunt for the truth about vampires. On a cold, dank night in 1933, the murky water of Lake Snagov lapped at a tiny, tree-lined island sitting at its center, with three white towers rising from the concealing foliage of the island's interior—each topped with the distinctive metal cross of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Accessible only by rowboat from a distant cluster of thatched cottages, the Byzantine chapel dominating the island sat like a fortress citadel marking the site of Snagov Monastery, home to what legend claimed was the final resting place of the Wallachian prince himself, Vlad Dracula Tepes, or as he is better known in the West, Count Dracula.

Already the sun was retreating over the ancient oak forests and marshlands that surrounded the lake and gave this region of Romania a notably wild, almost forbidding reputation. Inside the chapel the shadows lengthened quickly, giving the frescoes of its long dead patrons and saints a more sinister appearance. The votive candles filling the walls and niches did little against the coming darkness and only added to the heaviness of the air with their smoky tapers. Dinu Rosetti and George Florescu flipped on their electric lamps in order to provide more light for the task that lay ahead of them. Assigned by the Romanian Commission on Historic Monuments to excavate the monastery grounds, the two men now stood before the chapel's altar, at whose base a large, unmarked burial stone lay waiting.

Founded in the fourteenth century by the ruler Mircea the Old, the monastery served as more than just a sanctuary for black-robed monks seeking prayer and meditation; over time it was usurped by various rulers as a place for the interment, torture, and execution of their rivals. As the centuries passed and royal dynasties gave way to nation states and political movements, the island became home to condemned criminals and political prisoners, many of whom would never leave the island alive again. During the June through October diggings, the team did indeed find evidence of torture and murder after unearthing a large collection of skeletons, many of which showed signs of decapitation and other violence.

Kneeling down, Dinu gently swept the surface of the stone with a fine brush, stirring up centuries of dust and the strong smell of frankincense. Nervousness gripped them as they laid the tips of their pry bars into the seal of the stone, wondering what they would find beneath the heavy slab. Would it contain the rotting bones of the long-dead prince, infamous for the cruelty he showed to both his enemies and his own people; or did it, as some claim, hold something far worse—something supernaturally evil?

The harsh sound of the stone rising from the floor grated against the chamber walls. Night had fallen completely now, and raising their electric torches the two men peered into the grave with superstitious curiosity. What they found within that dark depression beneath the rich Romanian soil, however, would only further the riddle of Dracula's legend. What they found was an empty grave!

Count Dracula has forever become linked in the Western mindset with one of the most notorious creatures in man's collection of “things that go bump in the night.” Despite being called by many names in many languages, it's the term
vampire
that most readily comes to mind when conjuring up images of the blood-sucking monster. The lack of a body that night in 1933 begs many questions that we hope to answer in this book. Besides the obvious considerations of where did the body go and was it ever really buried there, we need to ask ourselves: how did a Wallachian tyrant who died roughly six hundred years ago become connected with the legend of the vampire? In addition, what is a vampire and how did such a fearful creation come into being? Of greatest importance, however, is the question that perhaps only you will be able to decide for yourself—have vampires ever existed, and if so, could they even now be waiting in some dark crypt for night to fall so that they might rise again and threaten humanity with their undying thirst for human blood?

In search of these answers, we'll leave behind the dark monastery of Snagov for now and travel east across mountains and seas, through deserts and valleys, to a land now occupied by modern Iraq. For it is here, in the fertile lands that stretch between the
Euphrates
and Tigris rivers, known as Mesopotamia, that humanity began to emerge into the history books and forge the cradle of civilization, and as we shall see it is also where the tale of the vampire began its dark rise as well.

Rise of the Demons

The earliest hint of a belief in vampires comes to us in the form of archeological evidence excavated from the ruins of the once powerful cities that came to dominate the land between the two rivers. Cuneiform tablets from the First Babylonian Dynasty of the eighteenth century BCE, and depictions on excavated pottery shards revealing scenes of vampires drinking the blood of men, point to a deeply rooted fear among early people of a number of blood-drinking spirits and demons. The Babylonians, for instance, developed a complex hierarchy of demons and other entities stemming from earlier Sumerian origin. Among them there were two general categories that came to be feared above all others.

The first was the dreaded
ekimmu
: evil spirits that had once been human, but could find no rest in the grave. These were some of the most well-documented spirits in ancient Babylon, and their name when translated means “that which is snatched away.” Belief held that these spirits were created when a person died a violent and premature death, had left important tasks unfinished, died too young to have tasted love, or most importantly was not buried properly. This included those who had died alone in the desert or had no one left to conduct the proper burial ceremonies and leave food offerings at their tombs. If no offerings were left for the spirits, they would become hungry and leave the underworld to seek nourishment from the living. As Reginald Thompson writes in his book
The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia
, the Babylonians were very clear on what awaited the victims of the ekimmu, believing that “if it found a luckless man who had wandered far from his fellows into haunted places, it fastened upon him, plaguing and tormenting him until such time as a priest should drive it away with exorcisms” (Thompson 1903, xxviii).

These evil spirits often proved the most persistent and difficult to dislodge once they latched onto their victim, and inviting an attack by one could result from actions as simple as gazing upon an impure corpse or touching food contaminated by the spirit. Being a creature of the wind and the darkness, it could also pass through solid objects at will, such as doors or walls. In cases in which the ekimmu resulted from improper burial, performing the appropriate rites was often enough to put the spirit to rest. In other instances, the spirit could be destroyed with weapons made of wood—a defense that would resurface in later vampire traditions in the form of a wooden stake. When all else failed, however, temple priests performed lengthy and elaborate exorcisms, some of which still exist today, as in the form of the following incantation:

The gods which seize (upon man)

Have come forth from the grave;

The evil wind-gusts

Have come forth from the grave.

To demand the payment of rites and the

pouring out of libations,

They have come forth from the grave;

All that is evil in their hosts, like a whirlwind

Hath come forth from the grave.

The evil spirit, the evil demon, the evil devil,

From the earth hath come forth;

From the underworld unto the land they

Have come forth;

In heaven they are unknown,

On earth they are not understood.

They neither stand nor sit

Nor eat nor drink.
(Thompson 1908, 7)

A second type of fiendish blood drinker, thought to roam the desert places and city streets alike, was a creature that never existed in human form, but was born of pure evil. Primitive records from the reign of the Babylonians tell of a particularly bloodthirsty demoness referred to as
Lamashtu
,
who appears to have evolved from a demoness of even older origin named
Lamme
. As a feared night stalker, Lamashtu ran the gambit of evil doings, including seducing men, harming pregnant women, destroying crops, causing disease, and drinking the blood of the living. In Babylonian theology, she was the daughter of the sky god Anu, who ruled all other gods, spirits, and demons. During the birth of a child, Lamashtu was said to slip into the birthing chamber and feed on the flesh and blood of the newborn, and many a stillborn child's death was blamed on her presence. The only protection afforded to a vulnerable mother and child was through the use of magical amulets and prayers chanted by temple priests during the birth.

Lone travelers were also at particular risk of encountering Lamashtu and were often warned that she made her home in desolate mountains and lonely marshlands. Although, in truth, demons were thought to be formless entities of pure evil, they were often depicted physically with allegorical descriptions that matched their characteristics and traits. Lamashtu, for example, was frequently described as a winged woman with a hairy body and the head of a ferocious lion, or in some illustrations as a woman holding a double-headed serpent in each hand while suckling a dog on her right breast and a pig on her left.

A demonic spirit similar to the Lamashtu was the
gallu
, and though there is some confusion as to whether this was a single entity or an entire class of demons, it was often referred to as part of the “Seven Demons,” which took the shape of a raging bull and flew about the cities at night eating the flesh of humans and drinking their blood. These loathsome creatures haunted dark places and were tasked with hauling off unfortunate souls to the underworld. Slaughtering a lamb upon the temple altar or other blood offerings were the only known way to appease them. When such measures failed, the people often turned to their priests, who, as in other cases of demon attack, relied on the power of exorcisms, a fragment of which survives:

Spirits that minish heaven and earth,

That minish the land,

Spirits that minish the land,

Of giant strength,

Of giant strength and giant tread,

Demons (like) raging bulls, great ghosts,

Ghosts that break through all houses,

Demons that have no shame,

Seven are they!

Knowing no care,

They grind the land like corn;

Knowing no mercy,

They rage against mankind:

They spill their blood like rain,

Devouring their flesh (and) sucking

Their veins.

Where the images of the gods are,

There they quake

In the temple of Nabu, who fertiliseth

The shoots of wheat.

They are demons full of violence

Ceaselessly devouring blood.

Invoke the ban against them,

That they no more return to this

Neighborhood.

By heaven be ye exorcised! By earth be

Ye exorcised!
(Thompson 1903, 69–71)

Of all the known demons to claw their way out of the walled cities and incense-filled temples of Mesopotamia, one found its most enduring legacy not with the powerful Babylonians, but with a small group of captives from a far-off land known as the Kingdom of Judah. In the Jewish mythology, no demon held such aversion and dismay as that of a winged night demoness named Lilith, who terrified expectant mothers and slumbering men like no other. Some scholars traced the adoption of Lilith to a period of Jewish history known as the Babylonian Captivity, in which Jerusalem was sacked by Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BCE and its people deported to Babylon. After Babylon was in turn conquered by the Persian Empire in 538 BCE, the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great gave the Jews permission to return to their native land. Although some remained, many returned and brought back with them the traditions and superstitions of their former captors, including a fear of the demoness Lilith.

Much like the Lamashtu from which she originated, Lilith was primarily seen as an infant killer. As a protective measure, many Hebrews wrote in the four corners of their birthing chambers the words “Adam, Eve, begone hence Lilith,” or hung special amulets over their child's cradle, which included the names of angels written upon them to act as wards. Also, like earlier incarnations, the Lilith that followed the Hebrews home was a voracious succubus who seduced men in their sleep to obtain their seed in the hopes of spawning demonic offspring of her own. Men waking from fitful dreams to find they had experienced a nocturnal emission were required to recite a prayer the next morning to prevent such an occurrence.

Like many stories passed down over the ages, Lilith's tale is one that transforms with leaps and bounds as each successive culture adopted it as their own. The first mention of a creature called a
lilith
can be found in the Sumerian story of
Inanna and the Hullupu Tree
, first set down on clay tablets during the seventh century BCE. In this creation myth, the earth and the sky had just separated from one another when a violent storm arose and uprooted a beautiful willow tree, which rested upon the banks of the Euphrates River. Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love and war, rescued the tree and planted it among her sacred groves in the city of Uruk. While she waited for the tree to grow large enough to make into a chair and bed for herself, three evil creatures settled on it. The first was a magical snake that coiled itself between the roots; the second was a
lilith
, who made its home inside the trunk; and the third was an anzu bird (a mythological creature much like a sphinx), which nested in the branches. Unable to rid her precious willow tree of these intruders, Inanna turned to her brother Utu, the sun god, but he refused to help. In the end, Gilgamesh, Uruk's famed warrior king, took up the challenge; and after the heavily armed hero killed the snake, the lilith and anzu bird fled in terror.