<p>Before Eve, there was Lilith. According to the Alphabet of Ben Sira, a medieval text composed between 700 and 1000 CE, God didn't create Eve first. God created a woman from the same earth as Adam and named her Lilith.</p>
<p>The trouble started immediately. Adam insisted on being dominant. Lilith refused. "We are equal to each other," she told him, "inasmuch as we were both created from the earth." Neither would yield. So Lilith did something astonishing: she spoke the Ineffable Name of God - the Shem HaMeforash - and flew away into the sky.</p>
<p>Adam complained to God, and God dispatched three angels - Sanoy, Sansanoy, and Semangalof - to bring her back. They found her in the middle of the sea, in the very waters where the Egyptians would one day drown. The angels threatened to kill her if she didn't return. Lilith refused. But she made a deal: she would have power over newborn infants - boys for eight days, girls for twenty - unless she saw the names of those three angels inscribed on an amulet. If she did, she'd leave the child alone.</p>
<p>She also accepted a terrible price for her freedom. One hundred of her demon children would die every single day. This became the origin story behind Jewish birth amulets (kame'ot) inscribed with the names of Sanoy, Sansanoy, and Semangalof - a practice that persisted for centuries across Jewish communities.</p>
<p>The text also tells how Ben Sira cured the king's daughter of chronic sneezing by tricking her into holding her sneezes for three days, training her body to stop entirely. It's a strange pairing of stories - cosmic rebellion alongside folk medicine - but that's the Alphabet of Ben Sira for you. For more on <a href='/texts/schwartz-lilith-becomes-god-s-bride.html'>Lilith's later mythological career</a>, she becomes a far more powerful figure in kabbalistic tradition.</p>