Gallu- Mesopotamian DemonDemon

The Inescapable

The Gallu, known in Sumerian as galla, were the enforcement arm of the underworld. When Ereshkigal issued a decree, the Gallu carried it out. When a substitute was required to take someone's place in death, the Gallu hunted them down. They traveled in groups, typically seven, and they could not be bought, bribed, or turned aside.

Sumerian texts describe them through negation: beings "who know not food, who know not drink, who eat not flour offerings, who drink not libation offerings." No sacrifice would deflect them. They "accept no pleasant gifts," never enjoy a wife's embrace, never kiss sweet children, tear the son from the father's knees, snatch the bride from the wedding house.

Inanna's Escorts

When Inanna was revived and sought to leave the underworld, the law was absolute: no one ascends unmarked. She must provide someone in her place. The Gallu accompanied her back to the upper world to enforce this decree. When Inanna returned and found her husband Dumuzi enthroned in splendor rather than mourning her absence, she fixed the eye of death upon him and declared: "Take him!"

The Gallu seized him immediately. They poured out his milk, scattered his flock, and broke his shepherd's crook, systematically destroying every marker of the life he had known.

The Hunt

Dumuzi fled. The sun god Utu aided him, transforming him into a gazelle, then a snake, to evade capture. But the Gallu tracked each form. Again and again Dumuzi slipped away; again and again they found him. They pursued him through the steppe, through the marshes, until they caught him at last in the sheepfold of his sister Geshtinanna.