Asmodeus (Ασμοδαίος), as depicted in Collin de Plancy ‘s Dictionnaire Infernal (1863).

Handmade pyrography, adorned on a big Sycamore wooden disc.
• Dimensions: 25 x 1.5cm

“Though Ashmedai now permitted himself to be led off unresistingly, he acted most peculiarly on the way to Solomon. He brushed against a palm tree and uprooted it; he knocked against a house and overturned it; and when, at the request of a poor woman, he was turning aside from her hut, he broke a bone, and asked with grim humor: “Is it not written, ‘A soft tongue [the woman’s entreaty] breaketh the bone’?” (Prov. xxv. 15). A blind man going astray he set in the right path, and a similar kindness he did for a drunkard. He wept when a wedding company passed them, and laughed at one who asked his shoemaker to make him shoes to last for seven years, and at a magician who was publicly showing his skill. Having finally arrived at the end of the journey, Ashmedai, after several days of waiting, was led before Solomon, who told him that he wanted nothing of him but the shamir. Ashmedai thereupon informed the king where it could be obtained.

Solomon then questioned him about his strange conduct on the journey. Ashmedai answered that he judged persons and things according to their real character and not according to their appearance in the eyes of human beings. He cried when he saw the wedding company, because he knew the bridegroom had not a month to live; and he laughed at him who wanted shoes to last seven years, because the man would not own them for seven days; also at the magician who pretended to disclose secrets, because he did not know that under his very feet lay a buried treasure.”