The Demonising of the Demon Pazuzu

Revisiting the demon from The Exorcist

Bronze statuette of Pazuzu (1800–800 BCE), Ancient Near Eastern Collection of the University of Tübingen, Germany. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

I saw The Exorcist when I was in my mid-teens. Despite the by-then outdated special effects of pea soup vomit and rotating heads, it left me terrified. I was convinced the devil had me in mind as his next possession target.

The demon who possessed 12-year-old Regan MacNeil was called Pazuzu. He was based on a god from ancient Mesopotamian times.

I thought The Exorcist’s Pazuzu was a very bad character indeed. But it turns out he was more complicated than simply evil.

Did this dog-headed demon really make young girls vomit pea soup?

Who was Pazuzu?

Pazuzu was a Mesopotamian demon god who reached the height of his popularity in the first millennium BCE.

For those of you whose forte is not ancient history, Mesopotamia was home to the Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians. It was situated in present-day Iraq and Kuwait as well as parts of Iran, Syria and Turkey.

Pazuzu was the son of Hanbi, ruler of the underworld and king of the demons. He lived in the underworld, where all demons resided back in the day. Pazuzu controlled the west and south-west winds which brought famine, locusts, destructive storms and death.