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One of the most popular recurring characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels is Death.
Yes: the Grim Reaper himself. Instantly recognisable as such in the novels, due to his skeletal body, heavy black cloak and, of course, scythe. That these images should be so instantly recognisable speaks to the deep cultural roots of the personification of Death. From the Destroying Angel of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) to the Pale Rider of the Apocalypse. The Angel of Death was duly appropriated by Islam, as the Malak-ul-Maut of Surah 32.
The personification of death in Semitic mythology goes all the way back to the 12th and 13th centuries BC. The famous Ba’al Cycle of tablets from Ugarit describe how Ba’al defeated El’s two sons, the tyrant Yam, or sea, and the ravenous Mot, or death. While Ba’al became king of the gods, Mot was left to rule the underworld and continue to consume the living.
Of course the battle between Ba’al and Yam, or the sea, is part of the larger Chaoskampf, or primeval struggle against chaos in the ancient Near East. Whether it’s the struggle of Marduk against Tiamat in the Enuma Elish, or the Babylonian creation story, or the remains of a very similar kind of story which actually lingers in the Hebrew Bible in places like Job, and quite clearly in Psalm 74.
The Canaanite Ba’al cult was, of course, defeated by the rise of the Israelites and their God. In a characteristic example of syncretism, previous mythological elements were absorbed into the developing Israelite mythology. Ba’al, the chief competitor of the Hebrew God, naturally became a deity of evil. The struggle with Yam, the sea, echoes in the sea monster Leviathan: Yam’s chief captain was Lotan, the Coiled One, “the mighty one with seven heads” (an image which persists all the way to Revelations).
Death, or Mot, also seems to have become part of the divine council or retinue, becoming a kind of servant of the Israelite god. While the phrase Malakh ha-mavet, or the angel of death, only appears kind of once in the Hebrew bible, there in a non-theological usage, and actually in the plural, an analogous entity does make an appearance.
This is the Malakh ha-mashit, or the Angel of Destruction. Sometimes just referred to as the Messenger or Angel of the Lord, this entity seems primarily to have the grim task of mass execution striking down Israelites, Assyrians and Egyptians alike. In fact the only vivid description we get of this entity is a vision had by King David where we’re told of the titanic proportions of this angel such that they, quote, were standing between heaven and earth with a drawn sword in his hand extended over Jerusalem.
Perhaps the most terrifying appearance of the hamashit or the Destroyer is the final of the ten plagues set upon the Egyptians.
During the period of the Babylonian Exile, the Angel of Death has a bit of a holiday. Satan steps up as the great adversary, in Apocalyptic Judaism dominated by the struggle of good and evil.
However by the composition of the Babylonian Talmud, which was redacted sometime around 500 to 600 of the Common Era the Malakh ha-mavet or the Angel of Death makes a dramatic reappearance, as such, and there are numerous cameos up for the Angel of Death. In this text the mythology is incredibly rich and manages to be at times both creepy and, well, comedic. I mean. what better way to deal with the dread horror of death than than humor.
From this earliest strata of literature on the Angel of Death, we learned that they were created on the first day of creation, and that once judgment is made by God the Angel of Death can not at all be deterred.
Among the mythos gathering around the Angel of Death is the unusual sensitivity of animals, primarily dogs, to its presence. It is also said that at the hour of the death, the Malakh ha-mavet stands at the head of the dying with a drawn sword, to which clings a single drop of lethal poison. When the dying person sees the angel they’re seized with a kind of convulsion, their mouth falls open and the poison drops in. In other descriptions, the Angel of Death carries a butcher’s knife rather than a sword.
Although the Angel of Death supposedly could not be deterred from its mission, there are tales of sages who managed to outwit Death.
For instance we read [of] Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi […] we’re told that Yehoshua’s time of death had been decreed, but he was given the choice of how he would die, given his righteous life, so he requested to see what his portion in Paradise would look like. Along the way, walking with the Malakh ha-mavet, Yehoshua demanded to hold the knife that the Angel of Death used to dispatch mortals, because it was, well, the thing was freaking him out. This makes total sense.
When they got to the wall separating Paradise and this world, well Yehoshua wasn’t quite tall enough to see over the wall separating the worlds. So he asked the angel to lift him up to see his portion, and Yehoshua ben Levi promptly jumped over the wall into Paradise, well, despite being tricked the [Malakh ha-mavet] actually grabbed a hold of Yehoshua’s cloak. But because he had never broken an oath – he was that righteous – the angel had to let him go into Paradise alive.
Yehoshua thus becomes one of the very few people in Jewish mythology, such as Elijah and Enoch, untouched by the Angel of Death.
As it happens, the idea of attempting to trick the Malakh ha-mavet endures to this day. There is a custom of changing the name of a dying person. Thus when the Angel of Death shows up looking for, say David ben-Moses, there’s now just some guy called Aaron ben-Moses. Dave’s not here, so to speak.
I’m actually told that every once in a while you will come across a single gravestone with two names and two sets of birth and death, actually indicating that that person actually tricked Death at least once. May we all be so lucky.
YouTube/Esoterica
But while Death would be personified in Christianity as the Pale Rider of the Apocalypse, he would no longer be an Angel proper. Because, of course, Christ has defeated Death.
Still, the image of the Grim Reaper persisted in Christianity. In this image, we may see the fusion of the Hebrew Angel with his sword or butcher’s knife with Greco-Roman mythology: the scythe and hourglass of Chronos or Saturn.
Even today, Death is given a new life, so to speak, as Santa Muerte, a Mexican folk saint, a fusion of the pre-Columbian obsession with death and the new Christian faith. Santa Muerte combines familiar and novel aspects of the personification of Death: there’s the skeletal figure in long robes, with a scythe and globe. But the skeleton is female, and the robes can be of any colour.
