Freie Universität Berlin

‘Sprache, Literatur und Kultur – 50 Jahre Semitistik an der Freien Universität Berlin’ lautet der Titel der Internationalen Tagung, mit dem das Institut Prof. Dr. Rainer Voigt zum 70. Geburtstag gratuliert. BabMed Principal Investigator Mark Geller präsentiert am Freitag, den 4. Juli 2014 einen Vortrag zum Thema
Akkadian and Talmudic-Aramaic medical terminology: examples of a Sprachbund?

Alle Tagungsveranstaltungen vom 2. bis 5. Juli 2014 finden im Akademischen Senatssaal des Henry-Ford-Baus der Freien Universität Berlin statt.
Das ausführliche Tagungsprogramm finden Sie hier.

Agnes Kloocke

The Vienna conference “Transforming Tibetan Anatomy” of the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences ws held on June 12th and 13th, 2014. Ulrike Steinert represented the Berlin BabMed Project with a lecture on

“Concepts of the Female Body in Mesopotamian Gynaecological Texts”
In contrast to the Greco-Roman medical literature on women’s diseases, Mesopotamian gynaecological texts lack general theoretical statements about the anatomy and physiology as specific to the female body, i.e. the anatomical differences between men and women, the female reproductive system, and processes restricted to women such as menstruation, menopause, pregnancy, gestation and birth. Yet, the extant sources on women’s healthcare from the 2nd and 1st millennium BCE Mesopotamia, notably diagnostic and

therapeutic texts, contain a wealth of implicit and explicit information regarding the indigenous healers’ knowledge and concepts of female anatomy and physiology. Our reconstruction of these concepts has to take into account that on the one hand, the information preserved in the medical texts stems from the necessities to diagnose and treat women’s complaints, and as such focuses on morbid and abnormal processes (e.g. bleeding, not menstruation). On the other hand, concepts of physical processes are mainly expressed through metaphors and comparisons with phenomena in nature and everyday life, which are found especially in the incantations that accompanied medical treatments. This contribution will discuss the available information to assess the questions: What did the Mesopotamian healers know about the anatomy of the female body and the processes pertaining to it? Do these concepts share traits with comparable theories found in other medical traditions of the ancient world?

See the complete programme of Transforming Tibetan Anatomy Conference.

Tanja Hidde

Of the Berlin BabMed project, Ulrike Steinert and Strahil V. Panayotov will take part in the Tel Aviv event (see detailed programme of June 19, 2014).

Israel Science Foundation
The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem
Tel Aviv University
Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures
Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology

RESEARCH WORKSHOP OF THE ISRAEL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

Transmission, Translation, and Reception – Three Thousand Years of
Textual Production and Dissemination in the Ancient Near East

Contact and further information:

Dr. Amir Gilan
Lecturer in Hittite and Anatolian Studies
Dept. of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures
Tel Aviv 69978
Israel
Office Tel: 03-6409590

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

June 17, 2014 (Day One)

Lecture Hall 01 Webb Building
09:45-10:00 Greetings

Textual Production and Dissemination from the Third Millennium into
the First Millennium
10:00-11:30
Walther Sallaberger (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Updating Primeval Wisdom: The Instructions of Shuruppag in Early
Dynastic and Old Babylonian Perspective

Andrew George (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
The Transmission and Reception of Babylonian Scholarly and Literary
Texts on the Basis of New Finds from Dur-Abieshuh, the Sealand and
Tigunanum

11:30-11:45 Coffee Break

11:45-13:15
Nili Samet (Bar-Ilan University)
The Motif of Vanity in Ancient Near Eastern Literature: Transmission,
Reception and Adaptation

Maurizio Viano (Tel Aviv University)
Searching for Nippur in the Western Periphery: The Transmission of
Sumerian Literature between Northern and Southern Babylonian
Traditions.

13:15-14:45 Lunch

14:45-16:15
Marco Bonechi (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Roma)
Broadcasting from Kish, Receiving at Ebla (and back?): The Circulation
of Written Texts between Mesopotamia and Syria in the Third Millennium
and the Limits of our Knowledge

Yoram Cohen (Tel Aviv University)
Les neiges d’antan: The Transmission of Mesopotamian Wisdom Literature
in the Ancient Near East and Beyond

16:15-16:30 Break

16:30-18:00
Takayoshi Oshima (University of Jena)
Transmission of Babylonian Prayers during the Second and First Millennia BCE

Uri Gabbay (Hebrew University)
From Temple to Temple: The Transmission and Dissemination of Emesal Prayers

June 18, 2014 (Day Two)

Seminar Room 496 Gilman Building
09:30-11:00
Klaus Wagensonner (University of Oxford)
Linking Assur: The Transmission of Lexical and Literary Texts in
Middle Assyrian Assur

Mark Weeden (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
Lexical Lists in the Cuneiform Periphery

Alexandra Bourguignon (University of Brussels)
Lexical Lists: From Mesopotamia to Greece

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break

A Comparative Perspective of the Transmission of Literary and Scholarly Texts
11:15-12:00
Tzvi Langermann (Bar-Ilan University)
The Transmission of Babylonian and Indian Knowledge to Islamic
Civilization and Their Transformation

12:00-14:00 Lunch

Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem
14:00-15:30
Jonathan Ben-Dov (University of Haifa)
Influence or Participation? On the Inadequacy of the Term ‘Influence’
in Biblical Studies

Noam Mizrachi (Tel Aviv University)
Faithful Creativity: Textual and Literary (Re-) Generation of a Prophetic Oracle

15:30-17:00
Wayne Horowitz (Hebrew University)
The Transmission and Reception of Cuneiform Script in the Ancient Near
East – The Bible Lands Museum Collection

Noam Mizrahi (Tel Aviv University)
The History of Discovery and Publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls – The
Shrine of the Book

June 19, 2014 (Day Three)

Literary Transmission and the Conceptualization of Hittite kingship

Seminar Room 496 Gilman Building
10:00-11:30
Beate Pongratz-Leisten (New York University, Institute for the Study
of the Ancient World)
The King and the Media: Assyrian Ideological Discourse as Part of the
Broader Syro-Anatolian Scene

Doris Prechel (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
The Hittite Substitute King Ritual – A Prime Example of Transmission?

11:30-11:45 Coffee Break

11:45-13:15
Amir Gilan (Tel Aviv University)
Sargon in Anatolia? The Hittite Legends of the Kings of Akkad

Noga Ayali-Darshan (Bar-Ilan University)
The Dissemination and Reception of ‘The Grain-God, the Sea and the
Goddess Theme’ in Hurro-Hittite and Egyptian Literature

13:45-14:45 Lunch

Transmission and Translation of Scientifc Texts as Promoters of Knowledge

14:45-16:15
Ulrike Steinert (Freie Universität Berlin)
The Transmission of Medical Texts and Knowledge in the Ancient Near
East: A Case Study of Women’s Healthcare

Strahil Panayotov (Freie Universität Berlin)
On the Textual Production of the Babylonian Medical Series on Fumigation

16:15-16:30 Break

16:30-18:00
Jeanette C. Fincke (School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London)
The Transmission of Celestial Omens from Mesopotamia to the Hittites

Wayne Horowitz (Hebrew University)
The Mesopotamian Uranology Texts:  From Assyria to Babylon and Uruk

Closing Discussion

Das BabMed-Mitglied Strahil V. Panayotov wird auf der Konferenz “Meditation & Healing in Asian Traditions”, welche am 8.5.14 in der Wonkwang Universtity, Iksan, Korea stattfindet einen Vortrag mit dem Thema “Hearing and Seeing Ghosts in Babylonian Magical Medicine” halten. Das komplette Programm der Konferenz kann hier eingesehen werden: Meditation and Healing in Asian Traditions Conference

BabMed wird auf der Konferenz “Body and Metaphor in Ancient Medicine”, welche vom 1. – 3. Mai 2014 im Oriental Institute der Universität Chicago stattfinden wird mit drei Vorträgen der Projektmitglieder Ulrike Steinert, J. Cale Johnson und Strahil V. Panayotov vertreten sein. Das komplette Programm der Konferenz kann hier eingesehen werden:
Body and Metaphor in Ancient Medicine Conference Program

Marius Hoppe

Mit seinem Vortrag zum Diagnosehandbuch eröffnet der bekannte Altorientalist PD Dr. Nils P. Heeßel von der Universität Würzburg am 24. April 2014 die Veranstaltungsreihe Babmed Seminar. Der Seminar-/Vorlesungszyklus setzt sich im Sommersemester 2014 mit dem Thema Medizin und Heilkunde im Altertum, von Mesopotamien über Griechenland bis nach China auseinander und stellt aktuell erarbeitete Forschungsergebnisse zur Diskussion. Die Eröffnungsveranstaltung wird der Frage nachgehen, in wie weit das babylonisch-assyrische Diagnosehandbuch Einfluss auf die tatsächliche Praxis mesopotamischer Medizin gehabt hat und ob Spuren davon in den therapeutischen Corpus wie auch in Texten des Alltagslebens zu finden sind.

BabMed Seminar, Do 16:00-18:00 Uhr im TOPOI-Haus, Dahlem: Programm

Eric Schmidtchen

PD Dr. Nils P. Heeßel: Eröffnungsvortrag BabMed Seminar

Auf der diesjährigen Langen Nacht der Wissenschaften am 10. Mai 2014 präsentiert sich das BabMed-Projekt erstmals einem breiteren Publikum. Dafür vermitteln die BabMed-Wissenschaftler einen Einblick in die Welt der medizinischen Keilschrifttexte Mesopotamiens und präsentieren antike Vorstellungen über Anatomie, Krankheitsursachen und verschiedene Formen der Therapie.

Ein besonderes Anliegen der Langen Nacht ist die Vermittlung von wissenschaftlichen Inhalten an den künftigen Nachwuchs: Kinder können ausprobieren, wie antike “Mediziner”Amulett-
ketten zur Heilung z.B. von Kopfschmerzen oder Nervosität
herstellten. Zum Programm…

BabMed im Programm zur Langen Nacht der Wissenschaften von der Freien Universität Berlin und von weiteren Wissenschaftseinrichtungen in Dahlem und Steglitz ist nun auf den Internetseiten der Freien Universität online.
Ulrike Steinert

The BabMed Project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC Grant agreement no. 323596.

The Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology, the Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Exellence Cluster TOPOI at Freie Universität Berlin are hosting a Workshop on Food an Urbanization on March 27-28, 2014.

Practices connected to the procurement, processing and consumption of food as well as methods for auditing these activities are crucial elements of social process generally and were at the very heart of the urbanization that arose in fourth millennium BCE southwestern Asia (Mesopotamia). The first highly stratified societies in ancient Mesopotamia were instituted, to a great degree, on basis of elite control over food resources of one kind or another. And it was in the process of tracking the storage and distribution of these foodstuffs that Mesopotamian bookkeeping came into existence, which was the first writing system in history, but more importantly for our purposes a concrete means of auditing the movement of foodstuffs through the administrative and social apparatus of the early state.

The workshop will bring together researchers specializing in the material culture and the textual evidence from Mesopotamia and the adjoining regions in the late fourth millennium (ca. 3600–3000) BCE in order to catalyze and move beyond existing analyses of food procurement, processing, consumption and administration in what is, after all, one of the earliest examples of urbanization and social stratification in human history. View the workshops’ programme and flyer online here.

The BabMed Project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC Grant agreement no. 323596.

The first of three posts, entitled “Like an alien in a strange old world – Reading Mesopotamian cuneiform texts on women’s healthcare” has been released on the research blog “The Recipes Project: Food, Magic, Science, and Medicine”. This amazing blog, initiated by Elaine Leong (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin) and by Lisa Smith (University of Saskatchewan, College of Arts and Science) is a treasure chest with contributions investigating a broad range of topics, related to the diverse aspects of recipes in history and culture, from antiquity to the early modern period.

Go to The Recipes Project | Food, Magic, Science, and Medicine

and stay tuned for my upcoming two posts on fumigation in Mesopotamian and Hippocratic medical recipes for women!

Ulrike Steinert

The BabMed Project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC Grant agreement no. 323596.

A cuneiform tablet throws new light on an old story: Irving L. Finkel’s breaking news and book “The Ark Before Noah”

The release of BabMed project advisor I.L. Finkel’s recent book “The Ark Before Noah” about the discovery of a hitherto unknown cuneiform tablet containing the Babylonian Flood Story and a surprising description of the Ark has caused a phenomenal press and media response worldwide. Read all about this fascinating discovery and listen to Irving’s account of  how a small tablet revolutionises our image of an enormous life boat and what the Flood Story can tell us about an ancient culture’s experiences with environmental disasters.

Go to The British Museum blog or The Guardian book review.

And click here to listen to an interview with project advisor Irving Finkel that was broadcasted in the BBC radio (43 mins).

Ulrike Steinert

The BabMed Project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC Grant agreement no. 323596.