In order to perform the service of the gods with sacrifice and offering, to take part in religious rituals or to carry out effectively rites involving magic (especially those directed against sorcery), it was necessary for the participants to be ‘pure’.

Most purification rites involve the performance of actions which are metaphors. Sweeping and water-sprinkling clear the shrine and settle the dust, (metaphorically) purifying the locality. The burning of incense and other aromatics cleanses the air and (metaphorically) purifies the atmosphere. Bathing and hand-washing by the participants clean the body and (metaphorically) purify the person.

On occasion animal sacrifices can have a purificatory effect, as in the New Year ceremonies: on the fifth day of the ceremonies, a magician entered and cleaned the vacant shrine of the god Nabu within the Esagil complex. (The cult statue of Nabu had not yet arrived from Borsippa, the neighboring town where Nabu normally resided.) The magician summoned a slaughterer to decapitate a sheep, with the corpse of which he would purify the shrine of Nabu. (The word used, literally ‘wipe clean’, is often used in a transferred sense.) In due course the corpse was thrown into a river which passed by the temple; likewise the slaughterer disposed of the sheep’s head. The details of this ritual are very similar to nam-burbu rituals, intended to avert the effect of future evils. Clearly it concerns the shrine of Nabu, and not that of Marduk, usually thought of as central to the New Year ceremonies.