Long before Dracula, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation raised the world's oldest vampires

The vampire is an archetypal symbol of late-medieval folklore and gothic literature. However, the idea of the restless dead: spirits of the prematurely deceased who were believed to walk again and cause harm to the living, is ancient, seemingly entangled deep within the fears of the human psyche.

But just how far back does the story of vampires really go? That’s the question that historian John Blair, author of Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to The New World discussed on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast.

As he reveals, the origin story of vampires and other images of the living dead emerged not with Bram Stoker in 19th-century Europe, nor even in the medieval period, but in the ancient cities of Mesopotamia, where some of humanity’s earliest surviving texts describe a fear that's been present through thousands of years. And, it might be even older than that.

Mesopotamia's living dead

Humans seem to have feared the dead long before the first written languages were created.

Archaeologists have uncovered prehistoric burials that appear intent on keeping the dead in the ground, with bodies pinned beneath stones, decapitated, or bound tightly – actions that seem designed to prevent them from rising again.

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Blair refers to this practice, noting that “there is some archaeological evidence from prehistory, including way back to the Palaeolithic.” But it’s only with the emergence of writing that more concrete evidence becomes available.

The beliefs “first appear in written sources, and the earliest written sources are from Mesopotamia.”

Mesopotamia, a network of the world’s most ancient civilisations found in what it now modern Iraq and parts of Syria, Turkey and Iran, was home to the world’s first cities of Uruk, Ur and Babylon. It was also where the first writing system, cuneiform, emerged.

The earliest Mesopotamian texts are silent on the undead. But by the Neo-Assyrian period of the 7th century BC, the picture changes.

“We start to get some texts which do appear to refer to what happens,” Blair says, “and what you should do, if corpses start walking around; if they rise up and fight against the living.”

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These texts instructed priests on how to restore order when a corpse became spiritually dangerous, which tells us that fear of the living dead was part of established Mesopotamian religious practice. In fact, this concern was deeply rooted in the broader Mesopotamian cultural context of beliefs about life and death.

In ancient Mesopotamian belief, death didn’t automatically close the book on a person’s existence. A peaceful death, ideally at an old age, with proper rituals and descendants to continue offerings, allowed the life force to dissipate cleanly.

But that wasn’t the case with a sudden death.

That’s a recurring theme in vampire mythology, explains Blair. Becoming a vampire “often happens to people whose lives have been cut short untimely,” he says. “An important factor in all this is lack of completeness. The people are cut short and their life forces have not dissipated in the normal way. They are still pent up in the body, and that means trouble.”

Why young women were especially feared

One of the most persistent features of these early beliefs is the gender of the dangerous dead.

“There is one category of people that’s very important here: young women,” Blair says. “In many cultures, the dangerous dead have been largely female and, in particular, women between the ages of about 15 and 25.”

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This age bracket of women was particularly vulnerable to the idea that, if they were to die, their roles in society would be seen as ‘cut short’. For example, death in childbirth was common. Unmarried young women could die before fulfilling their expected social roles. Both scenarios left unfinished business, and according to ancient Mesopotamian beliefs, meant there was a higher chance of becoming ‘dangerous dead’.

And, in some cultures – including Anglo-Saxon England, millennia later – young women were believed to possess heightened spiritual power. Blair explains there was a belief that this power would fade away as women grew older, passing down to younger women, “But if they die young, then the ‘powers’ are still caught up in the body.”

Again, that’s a motif that can be seen in the mythology of ancient Mesopotamia. Blair explains that there was a demon named Lilitu, who was “childless, and therefore preys on the children of other people,” while Lamashtu, another demon who had been “thrown out of heaven,” was feared for harming infants and pregnant women.

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These demons weren’t vampires, and nor were they the living dead. But they fit into a broader sense of fear about unfulfilled lives, and how they might come back to haunt the living.

How these ideas spread across the ancient world

Mesopotamian culture profoundly influenced the wider ancient Near East. As its cities traded, conquered and interacted with surrounding cultures, supernatural beliefs moved with them.

Greek myths of lamiae, child-harming female monsters, strongly echo their Mesopotamian predecessors. Hellenistic magical texts include spells to ward off the returning dead. Roman writers describe corpses rising to demand justice. Early Christian theologians, inheriting this tradition, warned of improper burials leading to spiritual disturbances.

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And none of that’s a surprise. Many elements of Mesopotamian mythology were passed down into later beliefs: the Biblical flood may even be a version of an older Mesopotamian story.

By the Middle Ages, these ideas of the undead had evolved into the better-known revenants and vampires of European folklore. Looking across these traditions, the consistency is striking. And, Blair argues, such beliefs emerged from innately human concerns: the trauma of sudden death and the fragility of social bonds.

Long before gothic fiction, priests and healers in ancient Mesopotamia were recording what to do with unruly corpses – proof, in Blair’s eyes, that we can look much further back in history to find proto-vampire stories.

John Blair was speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.