Strahil Panayotov

There is to date no comprehensive treatment of eye disease texts from ancient Mesopotamia, and no English translation of this material is available. This volume is the first complete edition and commentary on Mesopotamian medicine from Nineveh dealing with diseases of the eye. This ancient work, languishing in British Museum archives since the 19th century, is preserved on several large cuneiform manuscripts from the royal library of Ashurbanipal, from the 7th century BC. The longest surviving ancient work on diseased eyes, the text predates by several centuries corresponding Hippocratic treatises. The Nineveh series represents a systematic array of eye symptoms and therapies, also showing commonalities with Egyptian and Greco-Roman medicine. Since scholars of Near Eastern civilizations and ancient and general historians of medicine will need to be familiar with this material, the volume makes this aspect of Babylonian medicine fully accessible to both specialists and non-specialists, with all texts being fully translated into English.

This is my partly revised doctoral dissertation concerning the so-called ‘amulet-shaped tablets’ (or ‘tablets with projection’) from Mesopotamia.
It scrutinizes the materiality of these objects, investigating how they were made, for what purposes they were used, and where they were displayed. In addition, the work offers a selection of transliterated, translated, and commented texts preserved on these tablets.
Tablets with projection were made from clay, stone, or metal. They consisted of a quadrangular-shaped body and a quadrangular projection, which was generally pierced but sometimes also left unpierced. To the present state of our knowledge, such artefacts were used during the 2nd and the 1st millennium BC, while the shape seems to be more widespread in areas associated with Assyrian influence.
The shape (format) of the artefact itself was significant. It made the object stand out as easily visible in order to attract the attention of anyone in the domestic or public space.
Such artefacts differ from other cuneiform tablets, since their format was connected with the practicality of protection against harm, disease, and demons. Importantly, the majority of tablets with projection were not worn by persons but instead hung or displayed in private houses, temples or palaces.
There are two distinct semantic fields of usage. Many ‘amulet-shaped tablets’ had an apotropaic, evil-averting purpose suggested by inscribed incantations or short rituals clearly meant to avert evil in domestic or public areas. On the other hand, ‘tablets with projection’ enabled the easy consultation of certain kinds of text, as exemplified by magical calendars. The diverse genres on these artefacts – syllabaries, incantations, magical calendars, royal decrees and inscriptions, lists of priests, the Assyrian Kings List, measurements of temples, rituals, dedications, or administrative texts and etiquettes – all illustrate that this shape was used whenever there was a need for a certain text to be introduced into a particular space. // Add AfO 33, 1ff. reference courtesy of Manuel Ceccarelli

A comprehensive editio princeps of a cuneiform tablet from the Istanbul Assyrian collection inscribed with Egalkura incantations and rituals. The edition is accompanied by a detailed commentary that heavily draws on unpublished Egalkura sources in the British Museum.

The Comparable Body - Analogy and Metaphor in Ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman Medicine explores how analogy and metaphor illuminate and shape conceptions about the human body and disease, through 11 case studies from ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman medicine.

The scope of the paper The present paper aims to critically assess some of the pros and cons of Mesopotamian medical texts, and in particular of eye disease texts. That part of the paper will adhere to traditional Babylonian medicine scholarship and present its conclusions in the best possible light. However, there is a dark side to such a presentation as there is to similar papers. It deals with the broader questions about cuneiform medical texts that add shadowy ramifications to the many hypotheses that have been made by Assyriologists in similar papers. Several factors like taxonomy and identification of ancient medical terminology and drugs have proved to be more elusive than many scholars make them out to be. This quandary and its repercussions will be discussed here.

The scope of the paper The present paper aims to critically assess some of the pros and cons of Mesopotamian medical texts, and in particular of eye disease texts. That part of the paper will adhere to traditional Babylonian medicine scholarship and present its conclusions in the best possible light. However, there is a dark side to such a presentation as there is to similar papers. It deals with the broader questions about cuneiform medical texts that add shadowy ramifications to the many hypotheses that have been made by Assyriologists in similar papers. Several factors like taxonomy and identification of ancient medical terminology and drugs have proved to be more elusive than many scholars make them out to be. This quandary and its repercussions will be discussed here. Intro Mesopotamian eye disease texts form the best-preserved corpus on ophthalmology from the Ancient World. We have only recently begun to place Mesopotamian eye disease texts in the broader history and development of ophthalmological texts from the Ancient World. Therapeutic practices recorded in cuneiform show astonishing similarities with Egyptian, Hittite, Hippocratic, Greco-Roman, Aramaic, Mandaic and Syriac medical sources (see introduction to IGI). These resemblances cannot be a coincidence, but rather point to a global ancient healing system, which calls for an interdisciplinary study in the future. Two mainstays are discernable in Mesopotamian medical texts: a manual one-focusing on the body, and a verbal one-focusing on the mind. The first is made of remedies (drops, salves, pills, bandages, etc.) manufactured from plants, minerals, and animal substances. The second is represented by medical incantations and applications. Both therapies were in use for more than two thousand years-in the case of eye disease texts (see IGI-intro)-and could be applied together or separately depending on the physician's decision and personal case. In both mainstays we have plenty of uncertain cases that need explanation and have not been addressed in literature. A taxonomy concern in the manual therapy Although we can transliterate, transcribe and translate various prescriptions on eye disease we lack understanding of the medical terminology particularly for the drugs, which are crucial for the therapeutic prescriptions. Seemingly simple words for body parts show complex meanings and can be discussed over and over again 2 , but there always will be a slightly different interpretation and connotation. This is due to the fact that first etymology, although being a good starting point, is uncertain, and moreover ancient and modern taxonomies do not correspond to each other, thus making medical terminology hardly translatable. Precise

In 7 century BC Nineveh, in an area located within today's much-troubled Iraqi city of Mosul, an astonishing episode of human history occurred. Thousands of texts from all corners of the Assyrian empire were brought into the royal capital of Nineveh in order to create the rst universal library in human history. The majority of the excavated tablets are now being kept in the British Museum, London. (On these tablets, see this article and this post). Among the texts transported to the Ashurbanipal library, there were works of literature such as the tale of Gilgamesh, written descriptions of rituals and prayers, litanies, explanatory works, and large collections of omens, or royal letters. Numerous collections of healing texts, magical and medical prescriptions , rituals and incantations also found their way into the archives of Nineveh (SAA 7, chapter 7). Among the thousands of manuscripts dealing with healing, one collection stood out. It was written down in cuneiform by highly educated scribes who carefully edited a handbook with medical prescriptions, in-cantations and rituals on behalf of king Assurbanipal. This handbook was arranged into distinctive series , addressing body parts in a sequential order from head to toe. Each series had its own name and chapter called simply 'tablets' in Akkadian. The majority of tablets in this handbook carried the same colophon (i.e. inscription at the end of a tablet with facts about its production): Palace of Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of the land Assyria, to whom (the gods) Nabû and Tašmētu granted understanding, (who) acquired insight (and) a high level of scribal prociency, that skill which among the kings, my predecessor(s) no one has acquired. I (i.e. Ashurbanipal) wrote, checked, and collated tablets with medical prescriptions from head to the (toenail il, non-canonical material, elaborate teaching(s) (and) the advanced healing art(s) of (the gods) Ninurta

* The article discusses differently shaped 'firing holes', arguing that round, triangular, trapezoidal, or even oval 'firing holes' might have been pierced by a tip of the cuneiform stylus. In addition, some 'firing holes' suggest that a cuneiform stylus might have had two different ends: one end having been used for writing cuneiform, and the other for making the 'firing holes'.

The year 2015 saw a French translation and commentary of the Nineveh medical composition on Sick Eyes (IGI). Notably, this work was prepared by the practicing Parisian ophthalmologist Annia Attia, and not by a conventional cuneiformist. Importantly, Attia has mastered cuneiform medical texts, and has worked on the publication for years (Attia 2015: 1). Attia's work incrementally advances our understandings not only of Cuneiform Medicine, but also of Ancient Medicine, since it seriously questions the retrospective diagnosis of ancient terms (Attia 2015: 4). Retrospective diagnosis concerning diseases of the eye is deeply rooted in the works of such prominent scholars as Stol 1989, Fincke 2000 and Scurlock and Anderson 2005 (Attia 2015: 1), and Scurlock 2014. But, as Attia has stressed the ancient terms are too vague for a modern doctor, and more importantly the ancient terms suggest a too wide range of diagnosis. In other words, modern and ancient taxonomies are different. Once a scholar has realized this, there is no need to struggle for an exact retrospective diagnosis or exact identification of an ancient term, since such an approach can be misleading. The same applies in large extent to drug's names (Besnier et al. 2015: esp. 120f.). We can summarize the difference in ancient and modern taxonomies as following: an ancient term could be explained by many modern terms, but never identified as the only one. Attia states that the IGI composition is the " la troisième sous-série du grand traité thérapeutique compilé sous Assurbanipal trouvé dans la bibliothèque de ce roi à Ninive " (Attia 2015: 2). But, we do not have a prove for this, since there is no relevant catch line from Nineveh. Also, the Ashur Medical Catalogue testifies medical compositions quite similar to the known Nineveh compositions, and IGI is the second medical composition on the Ashur Medical Catalogue (Panayotov, forthcoming). This arrangement was suspected by Köcher (1980: ix note 10), and does not come as a surprise, since IGI and UGU 1 share many common topics, and sick eyes' treatments are an important part of UGU 1 2 , especially in the first column, and occasionally of UGU 2 3. This similarity led to a misplacement of UGU fragments into IGI.

The present article publishes newly discovered texts belonging to the largest Neo- Babylonian private archive of the Egibi family. As an introduction a brief history of the purchase of the Egibi tablets in 1876 by George Smith will be provided. It bases itself mainly on unpublished materials kept in British Museum and in archives in Bulgaria.

This article offers new material and a new edition of a unique ritual text from the first millennium BC in Mesopotamia, which describes a ritual for increasing the profit of the innkeeper. One of the text-representatives is written on a tablet with a handle, which was displayed in a Mesopotamian pub, which had the character of a bordello. The new score text presented here is based on collations of all known duplicates and on new copies by M.J. Geller. The primary aim is to publish comprehensive copies, a reliable transliteration, and a translation. Additionally, a publication history and a description of the sources are presented. Furthermore, text and context commentaries will be offered, focussing on one of the representative objects, a so-called 'amulet-shaped' tablet, or tablet with handle.

Marten Stol published extensive paper on ‘Psychosomatic Suffering’ 15 years ago in AMD 1. The present talk aims to continue in a slightly different direction analyzing case studies from texts on ghost’s afflictions, which were made generally accessible through their publications by JoAnn Scurlock in AMD 3.
The term ‘psychosomatic illness’ remains an elusive concept in modern medicine. It could apply to diseases in which malfunction of an organ is associated or due to psychological problems. The present paper will use the general term ‘psychosomatic’ as a temporary solution to describe selected patient’s sufferings in Mesopotamia, which on the one hand, show physical (somatic) symptoms, but on the other hand, show mental (psychical) implications. The talk will raise the question if a patient could have psychological issues, which apparently could lead to a physical suffering? Medical texts do not provide such an answer and much is based on assumptions. Since, identification of such an illness from Mesopotamia is hardly possible. But, one could principally draw a picture of the patient’s symptoms and their relations to each other. On one hand, commentary texts could provide exceptionally useful information on ground principles of the patients symptoms, which otherwise will not be explained in other texts genres. On the other hand, it will be argued that each therapeutic prescription – the combination of magico-medical material, the treatment and/or the incantations – could provide additional clue on the disease and it’s cause.

Fumigation in Babylonian Medicine played a role in the therapy of different illnesses such as “epilepsy”, “heartbreak” or “fever”. On the one hand it had a rash physical effect, because of the swift way of administering drugs, but on the other hand it had psychological effects as well, which could compare with aromatherapy.
The preserved textual information shows that a separate textual series on fumigation emerged first in the last quarter of the 4th century BC. It was compiled by the important Neo-Babylonian scholar Iqīšâ. Analogous information can be found not only in texts from the time of Iqīšâ, but also from 7th century BC Assyria, where different texts on fumigation were probably still not collected into a distinct series. The paper surveys the origins of the Iqīšâ’s series on fumigation and examines how this series was formed, using older material. The paper will scrutinize, which were the internal criteria for building up such a series. Moreover, it will be explored how building up an extensive commentary on that very same series, most probably by Iqīšâ himself, standardized and legitimized the series in his environment.

Hearing and seeing ghosts in Babylonia was harmful and brought about physical and mental illnesses, which could sometimes have a fatal outcome. The rich corpus of mainly first millennium BC Mesopotamian texts differentiated between various ghosts, who could be the spirits of the dead relatives or unspecific, strange ghosts, which emerged from the other world, due to specific reasons, to attack and torture the living. In Babylonia such phenomenon was
11 generally known as the "Hand of Ghost •
The paper will scrutinize encounters with ghosts, the disorders they caused and the way the Babylonians cured and/or protected themselves. The Mind-Spirit aspects of Babylonian medicine in this particular case will be exemplified by the means with which the Babylonians dealt with harms wrought by ghosts: the use of magical utterances repeatedly recited by the patient and/or by the exorcist, in combination with offerings, substitutes, stone amulets, bandages, potions, salves or fumigations, all derived from tested substances selected by a herbalist. Thus, the magico-medical means influenced the patient's body and mind achieving, when possible, his return to normality and health.

From Babylonian medical lore there survived various texts concerned with eye troubles. In the first Millennium B.C. therapeutic texts of the eye were (re)organized at least in one big series, in which incantations one finds metaphors for the sick human eye. There are additional metaphors for the sick eye in a diagnostic handbook.
The present paper is a case study of the metaphors from the eye disease texts and will survey how these metaphors conceptualized medical knowledge in relation to eye disease. It will be argued that the eye metaphors used in the medical texts improved the contextualizing, understanding and description of this specific harm and were not only mere literary devices or etiological explanations, as in creation myths. It will be examined how a specific metaphor could influence a specific transmission of knowledge, which helped healers better defining eye problems, such as appearance, color or movements of the eye.

The heritage of Mesopotamia shows that different gods posses weapons. These are objects as mace heads, daggers, bows or natural powers as the mighty flood – the deluge. They all can be personified, divinized and made into a tool, which enforces the god’s will. The divine weapon and the divinity stay in an analogical relation to each other, and the weapon exercises the god’s will.

The paper aims to discuss the function of slots and holes on some tablets with a handle. These features will be scrutinized first by examining the material aspects of the objects and second by using textual evidence to elucidate the questions raised.
The large majority of tablets with a handle, usually referred to as “amulet-shaped tablets”, consists of apotropaic artefacts. Tablets presented in this paper are written in Assyrian script and date to the Neo-Assyrian period. Such tablets comprise a body and a handle. Thus, their format has six edges and therefore differs from the widespread four-edged clay tablets. The body bears the main text, and often a short invocation to Marduk/Asalluhi, interwoven with double criss-cross lines. The main text of these artifacts typically consists of different Namburbis and a prayer to Marduk, Erra, Ishum and the Sebettu. The handle of these tablets bears the same double criss-cross lines and occasionally includes a short invocation to Ishum. Furthermore, the handle has a borehole. This shows that those tablets were hung, probably on a rope. Thus, they were meant for display in domestic context.
On the left or the right side of the body, slots and holes or holes alone can be found. Nowadays the holes and slots are empty. In antiquity, however, they most probably contained organic material, which gradually decomposed over the past ca. 2700 years. Nevertheless, traces of it are still visible in the slots and holes. This leads to the question what was this material and what was its function? Because of the apotropaic function of the artefacts I would suggest that the holes contained organic materia magica. This suggestion is supported by the textual evidence of one such tablet. Its inscription invokes the power of the well-known apotropaic plant maštakal. Furthermore, there is another tablet with a handle, whose Kultmittelbeschwörung mentions the same plant alongside other apotropaic plants. This evidence strongly suggests that plants were used as materia magica in the slots and holes of such tablets in order to reinforce the power of the protective tool. The combined evidence shows that the tablet with a handle, as an apotropaic concept, was a more complex tool with more features than previously assumed. All the elements of those tablets were used together to provide a magical protective device for safeguarding private houses in Mesopotamia.

Fumigation played an important role in the magico-medical therapies of Mesopotamia. Most of our evidence today reflects the practices of the 1st millennium BC, when healing through fumigation was widespread and a healer could fumigate the patient against a variety of maladies, e.g. fevers, ghosts, demons, witchcraft, depression, headache, eye illnesses, ear illnesses, hamstring problems, foot illnesses, haemorrhoids, or even female illnesses...