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Tablets from the Sippar library XII. A medical therapeutic text

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Nils P. Heeßel  and
Farouk N. H. Al-Rawi
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Extract

It has been noted with some regret, although with little surprise, that most of the tablets belonging to the Neo-Babylonian library discovered within the temple of Šamaš at Sippar duplicate texts already known to us. The medical tablet presented here, apart from being a welcome addition to the scarce number — compared to the Assyrian medical tablets — of medical texts from Babylonia, is therefore especially interesting as it contains an excerpt text for which no duplicate has been hitherto identified.

The tablet IM 132670 (Sippar 8/352, which measures 215 × 133 mm) contains four columns of text and is almost completely preserved; only the upper right and the lower left corner are broken and a crack and some rubbing impede the understanding of column iii. The text is a collection of thirty-eight prescriptions that treat diseases affecting the head, temples, ears, eyes, nose, teeth and lungs. Their arrangement follows the scheme known in Akkadian as ištu muḫḫi adi šēpē “from head to foot” (literally: “from the cranium to the feet”). All major text collections that treat parts of the body are thus arranged, like the therapeutic, diagnostic and physiognomic series and the lexical list Ugu-mu. Numerous prescriptions of the new text have parallels in other medical texts. In most cases these parallels encompass only one or two entries. In two Assyrian texts, however, several consecutive prescriptions are paralleled. The text AO 11447 parallels §§3–12 while in BAM 44 §§ 33–8 are noted. BAM 44 lists the prescriptions in the same order, only inserting two additional prescriptions at one point. AO 11447, on the contrary, not only adds several other prescriptions but lists them in a different order to the effect that the same prescriptions are used for different symptoms.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 65 , 2003 , pp. 221 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2003

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References

1 Al-Rawi, F. N. H. and George, A. R., Iraq 52 (1990), p. 149 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Explicitly stated in a text by the scholar Esagil-kīn-apli ( Finkel, I. L., in: Leichty, E. et al. (eds.), A Scientific Humanist, Gs. Sachs, Philadelphia (1988), p. 148 Google Scholar, 1. 25′ and Heeßel, N. P., Babylonisch-assyrische Diagnostik, AOAT 43 (2000), pp. 104–5)Google Scholar. Sometimes it was even called ištu muḫḫi adi ṣuprī “from the cranium to the nails (of the feet)”, as for example in the colophon type q of Aššurbanipal (Hunger, BAK, no. 329).

3 Published by Labat, R., RA 53 (1959), pp. 1–18 Google Scholar.

4 While BAM 44 was actually found in Assur, AO 11447 very probably comes from this site, as the colophon mentions that the forefathers of the scribe were from Assur. The colophon is also classified as coming from Assur in Hunger, BAK, no. 244.

5 For example, whereas §§ 10 and 11 in the Sippar text are used against a pain in the inner ear that is reminiscent of the “hand of a spirit”-disease (cf. § 8) the same prescriptions are used in AO 11447 (rev. 27 and 29-30) against pus filling the inner ears (rev. 25).

6 Furthermore, alternations of ana and a–na as well as ina and i–na are common.

7 For this series and its chapters see Köcher, F., in: Habrich, Chr. et al. (eds.), Medizinische Diagnostik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Fs. Goerke, Munich (1978), pp. 19–20 Google Scholar.

8 The title šumma amēlu muḫḫasu umma ukāl “If the the cranium of a patient contains fever” was used to designate the complete medical series of 45 tablets as well as to name its first chapter of 5 or more tablets.