A CAULDRON OF CULTURES

Most people will be aware of the notorious traditional superstition that a witch can be detected by throwing her (or more rarely, him) into a body of water. If she floats, then the water has rejected her, and she is guilty. If she sinks, then it has accepted her and, if she can be hauled out before she drowns, she is innocent.

Many fewer will know that the throwing of suspects into water is first recorded in the law code of the Babylonian king Hammurabi, almost 4,000 years ago. This is just one illustration of a broader truth: that the beliefs concerning witchcraft which underpinned the infamous early modern European witch trials, in which tens of thousands of people were executed, have ancient roots. Without understanding those roots, it is impossible to understand the whole history of attitudes to witchcraft