ABSTRACT
Mantic texts cannot be separated from the corpus of cuneiform literature as ‘non-fiction’. Although we know little about the actual training process of incantation priests, diviners, exorcists and other professionals who aspired to the higher levels of their craft that were only accessible to the fully literate, it is unlikely that it excluded the study of a wide range of texts, as recurring literary clichés, for instance, demonstrate. We have so far only looked at incantations and rituals directly concerned with love and potency. We have seen that the context of love-magic allowed a much wider range of emotions to be expressed, such as envy, jealousy and possessiveness, whereas the traditional poetic medium only celebrated the joyful and positive aspects of love. If one looks at mantic texts generally, the subject of love and sexuality is treated from several perspectives and betrays considerable ambiguity.
