BabMed Youtube Channel is open now, featuring the BabMed Imagefilm and a short video on the Medical Commentaries conference held in September 2017 at MPIWG Berlin.
July 31st, 10am-6pm. Topoi Haus Dahlem, Hittorfstraße 18, 14195 Berlin.
PhD thesis – Vérène Chalendar on animals in Mesopotamian therapeutic practices
In September 2017, Vérène Chalendar of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) in Paris, successfully defended her PhD thesis “Quand l’animal soigne… Les utilisations thérapeutiques de l’animal dans le corpus médical cunéiforme assyro-babylonien”. Part of the jury were among others Gilles Buisson and Nils P. Heeßel, both well known from several BabMed events.
https://www.ephe.fr/recherche/soutenances/verene-chalendar
Abstract:
This thesis focuses on the use of animals in Mesopotamian therapeutic practices. It explores the animal used as ingredient for the preparation of medications, as well as the animal, which took part in the healing rituals. The first part reviews the cuneiform sources available for the reconstruction of medical practices and offers an exploration of Mesopotamian fauna through an overview of the taxonomy and the symbolic values attached to animals. It also investigates the practical issues resulting from the use of animals in pharmacopoeia (supply, conservation, methods of implementation etc.). The second part of the study consists in establishing a catalogue of animals encountered in the cuneiform medical texts. It lists and highlights the therapeutic uses of each animal and explores the reasons for their use in specific pathological contexts. The third part is devoted to the cultural and intellectual context in which these scientific Mesopotamian tablets were written. On this occasion, the concepts of “secret” and “encryption” of knowledge are considered. The main interest of this third chapter consists of a presentation and a new proposal for Uruanna = maštakal. This text has been the subject of several assumptions, which question the use of animal ingredients in the pharmacopoeia.
Workshop on Materia Medica in Topoi Haus Dahlem, July 31st 2018
BAM 9 – Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Text Catalogues now available for open access via de Gruyter publishing
Assyrian and Babylonian Scholarly Text Catalogues
Medicine, Magic and Divination
We are happy to break the news that the ninth volume of ‘Die babylonisch-assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen’ (BAM) is now available for open access on the website of de Gruyter publishing: https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/477148
It was edited and contributed by BabMed Senior PostDoc Researcher Ulrike Steinert and features further contributions by Francesca Rochberg and Irving L. Finkel as well as of course most of the BabMed team, namely Markham J. Geller, J. Cale Johnson, Strahil V. Panayotov and Eric Schmidtchen.
The reconstruction of ancient Mesopotamian medical, ritual and omen compendia and their complex history is still characterised by many difficulties, debates and gaps due to fragmentary or unpublished evidence. This book offers the first complete edition of the Assur Medical Catalogue, an 8th or 7th century BCE list of therapeutic texts, which forms a core witness for the serialisation of medical compendia in the 1st millennium BCE. The volume presents detailed analyses of this and several other related catalogues of omen series and rituals, constituting the corpora of divination and healing disciplines. The contributions discuss links between catalogues and textual sources, providing new insights into the development of compendia between serialization, standardization and diversity of local traditions. Though its a novel corpus-based approach, this volume revolutionizes the current understanding of Mesopotamian medical texts and the healing disciplines of “conjurer” and “physician”. The research presented here allows one to identify core text corpora for these disciplines, as well as areas of exchange and borrowings between them.
Legitimising Magic – Scientific colloquium at Marburg University, July 13/14, 2018
Altorientalistik at the Philipps-University of Marburg warmly invites to attend the scientific colloquium “Legitimising Magic” in Marburg, Germany, July 13–14.
“Magic” is one of the most colourful terms used to describe phenomena in the history of religions. From the beginning, magic acquired a distinct negative connotation. Early scholars of the history of religion used it intentionally to describe to describe certain knowledge, crafts and practises in ancient pre-Greek and modern indigenous cultures to stress the “otherness” of those cultures in comparison to that of the modern western world and its perceived foundation, the bible on the one hand and the Graeco-Roman world on the other. Despite the term’s obvious shortcomings as a just description of ancient and modern practices, it has never been dropped, probably for lack of a better term in modern western languages and in the respective ancient cultures. In Ancient Near Eastern studies, and by us, it is used faute de mieux, but with an explicit negation of any pejorative meaning, solely as a convenient, established term to describe an ancient belief system consisting of practices, incantations and rituals to influence the world…
Read more and workshop programme:
https://www.uni-marburg.de/de/cnms/altorientalistik/aktuelles/nachrichten/workshop-legitimising-magic
Website:
https://www.uni-marburg.de/de/cnms/altorientalistik
Contact:
Nils Heeßel (nils.heessel@staff.uni-marburg.de)
Elyze Zomer (elyze.zomer@staff.uni-marburg.de)
Netanel Anor at RAI 2018, Innsbruck
Netanel Anor, member of the BabMed-seminar and PostDoc researcher for BabMed-PI Markham J. Geller, will give a talk at this year’s Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in Innsbruck on:
Babylonian Seers as Medical Practitioners (July 17th, 16:00-16:30)
Please find the full preliminary programme here.
Die Babylonisch-Assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen: BabMed at de Gruyter publishers
Monographs of the BabMed – Babylonian Medicine project will be made available as Open Access publications by de Gruyter publishers in the series initiated by Franz Köcher Die Babylonisch-Assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen.
For the announcement of the series at de Gruyter publishers’ homepage please click here.
Netanel Anor at Berner Altorientalisches Forum 2018
Netanel Anor, member of the BabMed-seminar and PostDoc researcher for BabMed-PI Markham J. Geller, will give a short talk at this year’s Berner Altorientalisches Forum (BAF) on:
The Extispicy Rituals: Theory and
Practice (Panel 3: Belief & Action, June 15th 13:45-14:00)
The Forum is a is a joint venture of the universities of Bern, Basel, Fribourg, Zürich and Geneva, the first meeting was in 2016.
Please find the full programme here.
A congress on the history of surgery in muslim heritage
The 6th international congress on history of medicine in muslim heritage will focus on the topic of surgery. The venue is the Medical School of Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University in Fez (Morocco) and the congress will take place from the 3rd to 6th of October 2018.
For more information and registration see the conference website.
Medicine in Bible and Talmud – Helsinki SBL/EABS international conference 2018
Medicine in Bible and Talmud
all sessions of the EABS Program Unit
convenors: Markham J. Geller and Lennart Lehmhaus (SFB 980 “Episteme in Motion”, Freie Universität Berlin)
The Conference Program Book is available online.
1-17
Medicine in Bible and Talmud (EABS)
8/01/2018
9:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Room: Room 403 – Fabianinkatu 26, Kielikeskus
Theme: Magico-medical Knowledge and Practices among Jews and Others in (Late) Antiquity, Part 1
Markham Geller, Freie Universität Berlin, Presiding
Mihi Yang, Claremont School of Theology
Comparison of Hezekiah’s Healing (Isaiah 38) (40 min)
Annette Weissenrieder, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
Spittle in Biblical Texts and “Popular” and Rational Medicine (40 min)
Lennart Lehmhaus, Freie Universität Berlin
Textual Healing: Magico-medical Practices in Rabbinic Texts Reconsidered (40 min)
2-15
Medicine in Bible and Talmud (EABS)
8/02/2018
9:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Room: Auditorium II – Fabianinkatu 33, Päärakennus
Theme: Magico-medical Knowledge and Practices among Jews and Others in (Late) Antiquity, Part 2
Annette Weissenrieder, Graduate Theological Union, Presiding
Rebecca Lesses, Ithaca College
Women and Ritual Healing in the Aramaic Incantation Bowls (40 min)
Markham Geller, Freie Universität Berlin
A Recipe is a Recipe: Medicine in the Talmud (40 min)
Rivka Elitzur-Leiman, Tel Aviv University
A Magic Recipe from the Book of Mysteries (Sefer Ha-Razim) in a Late-Antique Jewish Amulet (40 min)
3-11
Medicine in Bible and Talmud (EABS)
8/03/2018
9:00 AM to 11:00 AM
Room: Room 21 – Fabianinkatu 33, Päärakennus
Theme: Magico-medical knowledge and practices among Jews and others in (Late) Antiquity III
Lennart Lehmhaus, Freie Universität Berlin, Presiding
Emunah Levy, Bar Ilan University
Magic and Rational Medicine in the Twelfth-Century Manuscripts of the Book of Medicines of Asaf the Physician (40 min)
Zahra Kazani, University of Victoria, Canada
Magic Embodied: Rethinking the Relationship between Script, Geometry, and Magical Ideas in the Kitab al-Diryaq (Book of Antidotes) (40 min)
Ferda Barut, Anadolu University
The Anargyroi (Physician Saints) in Early Christianity and Their Reflections on the Painting Programme of Byzantine Churches in Cappadocia (40 min)
This research unit and its panels at the EABS/SBL meetings are supported by the Collaborative Research Center – SFB 980 Episteme in Motion of Freie Universität Berlin and the German Research Foundation/Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
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