She is said to be rebellious, dangerous, free. Yet Lilith barely appears in the Scriptures, but her very absence has fueled the imagination. Sometimes feared, sometimes admired, she emerges where rules falter, where order wavers in the face of what escapes control. But who is she really? A demon cast out of paradise, a shadowy figure forgotten by history, or the first woman erased from official narratives? Exploration.
1. The Mesopotamian origins of Lilith
1.1. The demoness of wind and storms
The earliest traces of Lilith appear in ancient Mesopotamia, long before her integration into Hebrew legends. Her name would derive from the Sumerian líl meaning “wind” or “spirit,” which passed into Akkadian as lilītu (the feminine of lilû).
A small clarification: Akkadian is an ancient language spoken over 4,000 years ago. It is a Semitic language, like Arabic or Hebrew, but it was written with cuneiform characters, a system of signs shaped like small nails, engraved on clay tablets. It is actually the first known Semitic language to have been written down.
In this context, Lilith is not a human woman but a female demon associated with storms and violent desert winds. This creature is described as sterile and dangerous, unable to reproduce, instead seeking to torment humans. Akkadian texts indeed mention demons named Lilû, Lilītu, and Ardat-Lilî, portrayed as harmful spirits wandering in arid places. The female Lilītu and the Ardat-Lilî (literally “ghost young women”) are depicted as lustful entities who seduce men at night and threaten pregnant women and newborns. They prowl at dusk, like nocturnal creatures, entering through open windows to steal the life of infants in their cradles. It was even said that the milk from their breasts was poisonous rather than nourishing...
1.2. A birth in a legendary tree?
But where does she come from? In Sumerian mythology, Lilith appears in an ancient story linked to the Epic of Gilgamesh. A Sumerian poem called Gilgamesh and the Huluppu tells of a goddess planting a Huluppu tree on the banks of the Euphrates (a legendary tree), in Inanna’s sacred garden in Uruk. After years of growth, the tree is inhabited by three intruders: a monstrous serpent at its base, a storm bird (Zu) in its branches, and a demoness settled in the middle of the trunk. This text uses a Sumerian term (transcribed ki-sikil-lil-la-ke) that some Assyriologists have translated as “Lilith.” The hero Gilgamesh then comes to Inanna’s aid: he slays the serpent, drives away the bird, and the terrified demoness destroys her own home before fleeing into the desert.
This would be the oldest literary mention of Lilith as a malevolent spirit of the wild regions. However, this identification is debated: other scholars point out that the word could simply mean an owl or an anonymous spirit of the night rather than the later Lilith. In any case, the image of a winged demon driven toward desert lands does foreshadow Lilith's role as a nocturnal and, above all, untamed creature.
1.3. An assimilation to Lamashtu
Beyond the texts, Mesopotamia has left us images that have been linked to Lilith, at least symbolically. The famous Burney relief, a Babylonian clay plaque dating from around 1800 BCE, shows a naked woman with outstretched wings and clawed feet, flanked by two owls and perched on lions.
Mesopotamian relief called "Queen of the Night" (1800-1750 BCE, British Museum). Source: World History Encyclopedia
Discovered in the 1930s, this panel was initially interpreted as a representation of Lilith, due to the nocturnal attributes (wings, owls) that matched the description of the demoness. However, the current consensus sees it rather as a major goddess of the Mesopotamian pantheon – possibly Inanna (Ishtar) or her infernal double Éreshkigal – because the figure wears the horned tiara of deities and leans on lions, symbols of Ishtar. Even if this relief is probably not Lilith herself, it illustrates the kind of iconography (winged woman, half-woman half-bird creature) that was later associated with Lilith in popular imagination. Moreover, in late Mesopotamia, the figure of Lilith tends to merge with another demoness named Lamashtu. From the Middle Babylonian period (1600 to 1000 BCE), texts equate Lilith with Lamashtu, a fearsome ogress who kills babies and causes mothers to die in childbirth. Against these scourges, the Assyrians placed their trust in the protective demon Pazuzu (the "king of the wind demons"), whose name was invoked to drive Lamashtu/Lilith away from the home. Thus, from ancient Mesopotamia, there is the idea of a malevolent female spirit wandering the deserts, enemy of women and children, and that only rituals or talismans could keep at bay.
2. Lilith in the Hebrew Bible
After millennia of existence in Mesopotamian myths, the name Lilith makes a discreet appearance in the Hebrew Bible. In fact, Lilith appears only once in the Old Testament, as a hapax (a word used only once). This mention is found in the book of Isaiah, chapter 34, verse 14, in the heart of a prophecy describing the desolation of the land of Edom after divine wrath. The Hebrew text of Isaiah lists the strange creatures that will inhabit these ruins: desert animals, satyrs, and Lilith herself, who will find a resting place there. Here is how the Bible describes this scene:
« The desert animals will meet there the hyenas, and the wild goats will call to each other. There too Lilith will rest and find her dwelling. »
The word Lilith is translated in various ways in ancient versions because its precise meaning was questioned. The first translations of the Bible into ancient Greek interpreted Lilith according to their own cultural references. The Septuagint (the very first translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE) presented Lilith as an onocentaur, a fantastic creature half-man half-donkey. This curious translation might be explained by a connection with Lamashtu, depicted riding a donkey in Akkadian iconography. Another Greek translator, Symmachus (2nd century), chose to replace Lilith with Lamia, the name of a child-eating demon in Greek mythology. These equivalents show that ancient scholars understood Lilith as an evil demon, even if they named her differently.
Excerpt from the Septuagint. Source: Aleteia
In later translations, we still find varied interpretations: some medieval Bibles translated Lilith as "witch," "night specter," or "owl," influenced by a popular etymology linking Lilith to layl ("night" in Hebrew). It is only in the modern era that translators generally kept the proper name Lilith as is, aware that it is a unique mythological being.
Apart from this verse in Isaiah, the Bible does not develop a story around Lilith. The sacred text does not explicitly present her as a character, and no allusion is made to a wife of Adam before Eve in Genesis. Thus, Lilith does not literally appear in the Creation story, contrary to a widespread idea. It is later, through exegesis and legends, that Lilith will be linked to the book of Genesis – but the Bible itself remains almost silent about her. The solitude of this name in the Scriptures likely encouraged the imagination of later commentators, who sought to fill the silence of the text by integrating Lilith into the biblical story of Creation.
3. Lilith in the late rabbinic tradition
3.1. Lilith, the winged creature
It is the sages of post-biblical Judaism who first mention Lilith in a somewhat more substantial way. In the Babylonian Talmud (written between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE), Lilith is mentioned precisely four times. Although brief, these Talmudic references already paint a portrait very close to the Lilith of later legends. The rabbis describe Lilith as a winged female demon with abundant hair – an appearance confirmed by two Talmudic passages. Notably, it is taught in the treatise Eruvin 100b that a form of birth defect can present "the appearance of a Lilith", that is, a humanoid creature with wings. Similarly, the treatise Niddah 24b mentions that a woman who has a miscarriage and expels a fetus with the appearance of a Lilith (a child with wings) is nevertheless considered to have given birth to a normal child, confirming that Lilith is seen as a female form, but winged. And you might think this second interpretation is somewhat contradictory, but it becomes clearer when read in its cultural and legal context.
The treatise Niddah 24b explains that a woman who has a miscarriage expelling a fetus resembling a Lilith — that is, a female being with wings — is still considered to have given birth to a viable child, from a ritual standpoint.
This does not mean that the rabbis consider Lilith a “normal” human child in an emotional or biological sense. What the Talmud asserts here is a legal decision. The question the sages ask is not “Is this a strange or demonic creature?” but: “Does this birth trigger the rules of ritual purity or impurity?”
In this specific case, the answer is yes: even if the fetus has an abnormal form — here, a female figure with wings, thus associated with Lilith — it counts legally as a birth. This is a very rabbinic way of reasoning: one can acknowledge that the appearance is strange, even unsettling, without excluding the event from the usual legal framework.
So: yes, Lilith is seen as a supernatural, unsettling, sometimes demonic creature in other parts of the Talmud. But here, in Niddah, the sages are not asking whether Lilith is a monster; they are asking whether a birth of this type has the same legal consequences as others. And the answer is: yes.
These details align with depictions on magical bowls from the same period, where female demons are drawn with long hair and wings to represent Lilith.
3.2. Lilith, the succubus
The Talmud also warns of the danger Lilith poses to men. The sage Hanina ben Dossa even taught that it is inadvisable to sleep alone in a house, for fear that Lilith might come to harm the sleeping man. This warning, reported in Shabbat 151b, reveals the
Note, however, that in these Talmudic sources, Lilith attacks everyone – men, women, and children – and not only infants, unlike some later traditions that portray her mainly as a child killer.
3.3. Incantation bowls against Lilith
Outside scholarly texts, late Jewish culture produced many magical artifacts aimed at protecting against Lilith. Among these, the incantation bowls (or "magic bowls") discovered in Mesopotamia and Iran provide direct testimony of popular fears and remedies related to the demoness. These terracotta bowls, dating from the 4th to 6th centuries CE, were buried under house thresholds to trap or repel demons. Many bowls bear formulas in Aramaic invoking the protection of God and angels against “male and female Liliths”. They even contain the earliest visual representations of Lilith: a small simple drawing at the bottom of the bowl depicting a female figure with raised arms, surrounded by the spiraled text of the incantation. On one of these bowls, kept at the Harvard Semitic Museum, a female-looking demon is seen raising her arms threateningly, her body covered with spots resembling leopard skin—a detail that, according to experts, helps identify Lilith by comparison with other similar bowls. The inscription encircling the figure declares the expulsion of evil spells from the house of a certain Quqai, son of Gushnaï, and his wife Abi, by driving out all the evil spirits that torment them.
Although the name Lilith is not explicitly written on this bowl, tradition has held that it was her, so well established was her reputation at the time. The texts on the bowls accuse "the sorceress" or "the Lilith" of prowling at night to torment sleepers and illicitly unite with them. One of them mentions “Hoblas, the Lilith, granddaughter of Zarni, the Lilith” striking children, boys and girls, and cruelly devouring them. Faced with such threats, the conjurations inscribed on the bowls take the form of magical “divorce letters”: Lilith is sent away (or to the lilith when considered as a category of demons rather than a demon herself), repudiated, and forbidden in writing from approaching the household or the child to be protected.
Thus, between the Talmud and magical practices, Lilith asserts herself in late Jewish culture as a well-defined demon. She is a winged, lustful, and dangerous female demon, seen as responsible for erotic nightmares, sudden infant death, and a host of unexplained ills. The sages debate her existence (some, like the medieval scholar Maimonides later, will reject Lilith as an unfounded superstition), but the people take precautions just in case. Lilith is now firmly rooted in the imagination to the point that amulets are dedicated to her: for example, we find medallions or ancient scrolls bearing the inscription "Adam and Eve, Lilith out", accompanied by the names of the three angels Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof – the only ones said to be able to keep her at bay. It is precisely these three angels that appear in the legend of Lilith as Adam's first wife, a legend that takes shape at the dawn of the Middle Ages.
4. Lilith, Adam's first woman
By the early Middle Ages, the figure of Lilith undergoes a major transformation: she is integrated into an almost midrashic story that presents her as Adam's first wife, preceding Eve.
Before going further, let's explain what a midrash is: when we talk about an almost midrashic story, we mean that the text fills a silence in the Bible, it creates a story from an absence or tension in the text, but it is not officially part of the collections of midrashim recognized by rabbinic tradition. It can come from an anonymous author, a marginal text, a later collection, or a popular writing (some are very serious and legal, others more narrative and imaginative like this passage about Lilith). This clarification is important because while Christianity and Islam take up the story of Adam and Eve from Genesis, neither one nor the other make room for Lilith, because they did not inherit the midrash. That is why she is mainly mentioned in Jewish traditions.
The oldest origin of this story is found in an anonymous text compiled between the 8th and 10th centuries, known as the Alphabet of Ben Sira. This work (falsely attributed to the sage Shimon Ben Sira) is actually a satirical collection of fables and edifying stories compiled in Babylon or medieval Persia. It is there, in a chapter dedicated to the descendants of Adam, that the complete story of Lilith the rebellious woman appears for the first time.
According to the Alphabet of Ben Sira, after creating Adam from the dust of the ground, God shaped Lilith from the same earth to give him a companion. Lilith therefore comes from the same material and the same moment of creation as Adam, which makes her immediately equal to him in nature and status. Very quickly, however, the couple quarrels: Adam wants to impose his authority, while Lilith refuses to submit. Their dispute is vividly illustrated by a scene from married life: at the moment of intimacy, Adam demands that Lilith lie under him, which she cannot accept. Lilith demands equality:
« We are equal to each other, since we were both created from the earth.
Neither willing to yield – Adam refusing to lie beneath, Lilith refusing to lie beneath – Lilith, furious, pronounces the Ineffable Name of God (Yod, Hé, Vav, Hé, sacred and unpronounceable) and flies out of Eden. By using the Divine Name, she gains magical power allowing her to leave the Garden of Eden by air. She then flees toward the Red Sea, demon territory.
Adam, distraught to see his partner gone, implores the Creator to bring her back. God then sends three angels – named Senoï, Sansenoï, and Samangelof – to pursue Lilith and convince her to return to Adam. The three messengers catch up with Lilith at the edge of the Red Sea, where they find her surrounded by demons she has already joined with. Indeed, in the meantime Lilith is said to have taken as a lover the "Great Demon" named Samaël (other versions mention Asmodeus), and fathered many demonic creatures in the waters of the Red Sea. The angels deliver the divine order: Lilith must return to Adam, or she will be put to death. Lilith stubbornly refuses. In retaliation, God's envoys threaten to drown her. Lilith then offers them a deal: she swears she will no longer harm human newborns as long as they bear a sign repelling her – namely, the names of the three angels themselves inscribed on an amulet. The angels accept this compromise: Lilith escapes divine punishment by promising to spare children protected by a talisman, but in return she permanently abandons Adam.
Thus, in this narrative, Lilith acquires the role of a wandering demon who kills children, while retaining her aura as the first free woman. The Alphabet of Ben Sira indeed explains that if Lilith was Adam’s first companion, her departure serves to justify the presence of two creation accounts of woman in Genesis. The book of Genesis presents two versions: Genesis 1:27 states that God created Man "male and female at the same time" (which puzzled many commentators), while Genesis 2:22 narrates the formation of Eve from Adam’s rib. The legend of Lilith resolves this apparent inconsistency: in the first biblical account, the "woman" mentioned would be Lilith, created equal to Adam, while the second account describes the creation of Eve, produced differently after Lilith’s disappearance. Lilith thus becomes the first Eve, the one formed like Adam from dust, but who, by refusing to be dominated, abandoned paradise and made way for another woman, Eve, shaped from Adam and destined to be "bone of his bones".
This late myth of Lilith, although non-canonical, had immense success in Jewish imagination and even beyond. It was spread through manuscript and oral versions, so much so that by the Middle Ages, Lilith the first woman was a widespread idea to explain certain mysteries of sacred texts. From there, interpretations were numerous and varied. For example, the 10th-century scholar Isaac Ben Jacob mentions in his writings that according to some, "Adam had a first wife before Eve, but she was an evil spirit". Later Genesis commentaries briefly mention this "first rebellious woman", not always naming her Lilith, but it is understood to be her.
Moreover, the agreement made between Lilith and the angels in the Alphabet of Ben Sira has direct repercussions on popular customs. From the Middle Ages onward, it became common to hang above newborns' cradles an amulet bearing the inscription "Senoy, Sansenoy, Semangelof, Adam ve-H’ava" ("Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, Adam and Eve") followed by the formula "Lilith out". This apotropaic text (intended to ward off evil) explicitly recalls Lilith’s promise: upon seeing the names of the angels or those of Adam and Eve, the demoness is compelled to leave the child in peace. This practice, documented as early as the 13th century, shows the penetration of the Lilith legend into daily life. Lilith, once the Mesopotamian desert wind, is now integrated into the story of Adam and Eve and feared in children's rooms. Her image as a rebellious demonic woman is firmly established by the end of the first millennium.
5. Lilith in Kabbalah
5.1. From Demon to Queen
In the medieval period, the figure of Lilith was enriched and transformed by Jewish mystical literature, especially the emerging Kabbalah (from the 12th to the 15th century). The Kabbalists, seeking to unveil the secrets of creation and the nature of evil, incorporated Lilith into their dualistic vision of the whole. She was no longer just a wandering demon: she became a key figure in the spiritual architecture of evil, the feminine counterpart of the demonic forces opposed to the divine world.
One of the themes developed by Kabbalah is the idea that Lilith was created not from holiness, but from the residues of impurity left during the creation of Adam. A medieval source (the Yalqut Reuveni, a 17th-century collection compiling older traditions) suggests that Lilith was shaped with “impure earth,” unlike Adam who was formed from pure clay, which would explain her diabolical nature from the start. Other Kabbalistic texts directly link Lilith’s birth to that of a fallen archangel, Samael.
Personification of Samael. Source: Wikipedia
Identified with Satan in Jewish mysticism, he is seen as the “prince of evil.” According to a tradition reported by one of the first Kabbalists (Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob ha-Cohen, around 1260, in his treatise On the Emanation of the Left), Lilith and Samael appeared simultaneously, emanating from each other as an impure couple, an inverted mirror of the sacred couple Adam-Eve. Lilith is then described as Samael’s companion, forming with him the king and queen of the empire of evil. Together, they dominate the “left side” or Sitra Ahra (the “Other Side”), that is, the dark side of existence, opposed to the “right side” embodied by God.
This dualistic conception, clearly presented in the writings of ha-Cohen and then integrated into the Zohar (the great work of Jewish mysticism, compiled in the 13th century), thus makes Lilith the famous “wife of Satan,” the queen of demons sharing Samael’s infernal throne. From then on, the mission of the heavenly forces at the end of times will be to destroy this demonic couple – a necessary condition for the final redemption.
5.2. A Murderess... or a Vengeful Mother?
The Zohar surprisingly contains many passages about Lilith that refine her portrait. It notably distinguishes two Liliths: the Great Lilith and the Little Lilith. The "Great" Lilith is the wife of Samael – the same as the demonic woman from the Adam legend, now elevated to the rank of Queen of demons. It is said that after her refusal to return to Adam, God condemned her to see a hundred of her demon children die each day, which drove her mad with grief. Desperate, she supposedly tried to commit suicide, but the angels saved her by granting her the power to kill human children herself (boys until the eighth day, before circumcision, and girls until the twentieth day). Thus was sealed her fate as a murderer of innocents. Later, according to these accounts, Lilith met Samael and united with him. Samael is also called Adam Belial when paired with Lilith, suggesting he is the dark reflection of Adam united with a perverse woman. Together, they father countless demons who populate the lower world. Kabbalistic tradition even claims that Lilith took revenge on the original couple: she is the one who, disguised as a serpent, seduced Eve and caused the Fall. The Zohar and other texts indeed present her as the tempting serpent of Eden, combining her forces with those of Samael (sometimes identified as the serpent itself) to cause Eve's transgression and the loss of innocence. Moreover, Lilith is credited with inciting their son Cain to kill Abel, implying she is the origin of the first human murder. After Abel's death, the legend says that Adam, overwhelmed, separated from Eve for 130 years – a period during which Lilith returned to Adam in his sleep and "diverted his seed" to father new demons by the legion. These dark children, born without physical bodies, form the army of evil spirits that have tormented humanity ever since.
Adam and Eve before the temptation. Notre Dame de Paris.
The "Little" Lilith, for her part, is sometimes distinguished as another female demon, subordinate to the Great one. She is associated with Asmodeus, a lower-ranking demon prince, and is counted among the four demon queens with whom Lilith shares infernal power (the other three being named Igrat, Mahalath, and Naamah). This subdivision into two figures allows Kabbalists to explain the multiple facets of Lilith described in the texts: sometimes the wife of Satan (the Great Lilith), sometimes a succubus tempting men in their beds (the Little Lilith). In all cases, these traditions agree in making Lilith a pillar of the Sittra Achra, the Evil Other Side opposed to the forces of Good. Yes, Lilith has since been considered the origin of all evils... if not the evils themselves.
Kabbalistic tales incorporate Lilith even into unexpected biblical legends. For example, a 15th-century work, Livnat Ha-Sappir by R. Joseph of Agrigento, offers an esoteric reading of the story of King Solomon where the Queen of Sheba would actually be a manifestation of Lilith who came to test the wise king. Similarly, this text identifies Lilith as the prostitute pleading before Solomon in the episode of the judgment of the disputed child, making her a hidden demon involved in the affairs of the great king. These interpretations testify to Lilith's ubiquity in symbolic imagination: for the Kabbalists, she can slip behind many ambivalent female figures in the Scriptures.
Despite the importance given to her by these mystical currents, not all medieval Jewish thinkers embraced these elaborations. Rationalist rabbinic authorities, such as Maimonides (12th century) or his successor the Meiri (13th century), explicitly rejected the reality of demons and Lilith stories, calling them baseless superstitions. These sages denied that Lilith had any real existence or role in Jewish theology. Nevertheless, Lilith's popular and esoteric influence was such that even these attempts at demystification failed to make her disappear. At the dawn of the Renaissance, Lilith was firmly established as the queen of impure spirits, the original temptress and mother of demons. Her legend, transmitted by the Kabbalah, even traveled beyond the Jewish world to inspire art and literature in the centuries that followed.
6. From legend to modern culture: the legacy of Lilith
Marginal figure of ancient texts who became a heroine of medieval myths, Lilith has endured into modern culture. Her image as a rebellious demonic woman has fascinated far beyond religious circles. From the Christian Middle Ages, artists incorporated her into their works: for example, Lilith appears in certain interpretations of the temptation of Adam and Eve, where the serpent of the Garden of Eden is unsurprisingly depicted... with a woman's head or bust. This iconography, common in European art from the 12th century onward, directly draws from the tradition identifying Lilith as the tempting serpent. Michelangelo himself, in his monumental fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508–1512), portrayed the serpent of the tree of knowledge with the torso of a graceful woman wrapped around the trunk, suggesting to initiates (like you now) the presence of Lilith in the scene of the Fall.
Lilith, Adam's first wife (painting from the Sistine Chapel). Source: Toysondor
In the Romantic and Victorian era, Lilith became a muse for many artists and poets. The poet Goethe mentions her in his Faust (1808) – "Lilith, Adam's first wife, beware of her beauty" says Mephistopheles – recalling her... fatal charm. Painters took up the theme: Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted “Lady Lilith” (1867), showing her as an enchantress with long hair, a symbol of narcissistic seduction. His contemporary John Collier created in 1887 a famous portrait of Lilith naked, winding around a tree, explicitly recalling her role as the tempter of Eden that clings to her skin. These works fix in the collective imagination the image of a sensual and dangerous Lilith, the perfect embodiment of the femme fatale.
The name Lilith continues to appear in the 20th century in various contexts. In psychoanalysis and anthropology, authors like Siegmund Hurwitz (in Lilith, the First Eve, 1980) or Raphael Patai (The Hebrew Goddess, 1967) explored Lilith as an archetype of the dark or repressed feminine. At the same time, the feminist movement of the 1970s rediscovered Lilith in a new light: no longer just as a demon, but also as a symbol of the unsubmissive woman facing patriarchy. The Jewish feminist magazine Lilith Magazine, founded in 1976, adopted her name in reference to this first woman who claimed her independence. Similarly, the music festival Lilith Fair (1990s) celebrated female artists by invoking this figure of emancipation. Lilith thus moved from the status of monster to that of icon for some activists, proof of the symbolic versatility of this character.
No, Lilith cannot be grasped at a single glance. She even escapes all definitions. She crosses eras, beliefs, and fears like a shadow that refuses to be silenced. People have tried to erase her, imprison her, exorcise her. Yet, she is still here. Intruder, demon, queen, killer, dominator. Or manipulated, hunted, wounded. And if her name exists, it may be because she has never stopped asking the same question: what becomes of a woman who is refused to be heard?
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