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In the Wake of the Compendia Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures In the Wake of the Compendia Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures Edited by Markus Asper Philip van der Eijk Markham J. Geller Heinrich von Staden Liba Taub Volume 3 In the Wake of the Compendia Infrastructural Contexts and the Licensing of Empiricism in Ancient and Medieval Mesopotamia Edited by J. Cale Johnson DE GRUYTER ISBN 978-1-5015-1076-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0250-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0252-1 ISSN 2194-976X Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin Typesetting: Meta Systems Publishing & Printservices GmbH, Wustermark Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Notes on Contributors Florentina Badalanova Geller is Professor at the Topoi Excellence Cluster at the Freie Universität Berlin. She previously taught at the University of Sofia and University College London, and is currently on secondment from the Royal Anthropological Institute (London). She has published numerous papers and is also the author of ‘The Bible in the Making’ in Imagining Creation (2008), Qurʾān in Vernacular: Folk Islam in the Balkans (2008), and 2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch: Text and Context (2010). Siam Bhayro was appointed Senior Lecturer in Early Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, in 2012, having previously been Lecturer in Early Jewish Studies since 2007. He graduated in 1997 with a First Class Honours de- gree in Hebrew from the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University Col- lege London. He was also awarded the Faculty of Arts Prize and Medallion for that ses- sion. He gained a PhD from the same department in June 2000 for his research into the Book of Enoch, which served as the basis for The Shemihazah and Asael Narrative of 1 Enoch 6–11: Introduction, Text, Translation and Commentary with reference to Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical Antecedents (2006). In addition to a number of articles, he has re- cently published (with S. Shaked and J. N. Ford) Aramaic Bowl Spells: Jewish Babylonian Ara- maic Bowls Volume One (2013). Markham J. Geller is Professor of Semitic Languages at University College London, cur- rently on secondment to the Freie Universität Berlin as Professor für Wissensgeschichte. He is the author of Renal and Rectal Disease Texts (2005), Evil Demons (2007), Ancient Babylo- nian Medicine (2010), and Melothesia in Babylonia (2014). He is Principal Investigator of Bab- Med, an Advanced ERC project. J. Cale Johnson is currently Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at SFB 980: Episteme in Bewe- gung and Deputy Head of the BabMed Project at the Freie Universität Berlin. He has published a number of papers on Sumerian literature and early Mesopotamian intellectu- al history and is the author of Unaccusativity and the Double Object Construction in Sumerian (2010) and (with Markham J. Geller) The Class Reunion – An Annotated Translation and Commentary on the Sumerian Dialogue Two Scribes (2015). Lennart Lehmhaus is currently a research associate (Post-doc) at the Freie Universität Berlin in a research project on “The Transfer of Medical Episteme in the ‘Encyclopae- dic’ Compilations of Late Antiquity” (A03 within the SFB 980 “Episteme in Motion”). He studied Jewish Studies, Literature, and Political Sciences in Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Jerusalem and Kraków. His doctoral dissertation (PhD, 2013, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Witten- berg) examined innovative features of the work Seder Eliyahu and other later traditions in its early Islamicate context. His main research interests include the interplay between liter- ary form and content in rabbinic literature, discourses on identity and authority, Talmudic culture, rabbinic thought and knowledge, as well as figurations of Jewish traditions in contemporary culture. Mathieu Ossendrijver is Professor of History of Ancient Science at the Humboldt Univer- sität zu Berlin. His main interests are Babylonian astronomy and mathematics between 750 BC and 100 AD, in particular Babylonian mathematical astronomy, transformations of sci- ence and contextual aspects of Babylonian science during this period. He is the author of Babylonian Mathematical Astronomy: Procedure Texts (2012) as well as numer- ous papers on the Babylonian astral sciences. A second volume devoted to the tabular texts of this corpus is in preparation. vi Notes on Contributors Lucia Raggetti is Wissenschaftliche Assistentin at the Freie Universität Berlin (Arabistik- Wissensgeschichte). She graduated from Università l’Orientale of Naples, with degrees in Ara- bo-Islamic Studies (MA) and Near Eastern and Maghreb (PhD). She has published several articles on Arabic medicine, natural sciences, and their manuscript tradition and is currently preparing a critical edition of ʿĪsā ibn ʿAlī’s Book of Useful Properties Obtained from the Parts of Animals, one of the earliest Abbasid technical compendia dedicated to the properties of the different parts of animals and their uses as materia medica and magica. Francesca Rochberg is Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, the Office for the History of Science and Technology, and the Graduate Group in Ancient History and Medi- terranean Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Aspects of Babylonian Celestial Divination: The Lunar Eclipse Tablets of Enuma Anu Enlil (1988), Babylonian Horoscopes (1998), The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (2004 and 2007), and In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celes- tial Divination and Its Legacy (2010). She is co-director (with Alan Bowen) of EKOH – Early Knowledge of the Heavens: A Digital Library for Mediterranean, Near Eastern, and South Asian Contexts. Ulrike Steinert studied Assyriology and Social Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin in 1997–2004 and at the University of Göttingen in 2004–2007. During 2011–2013, she held a Medical History and Humanities Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust London for a research project on women’s illnesses in Babylonian medical texts. She currently works as a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project BabMed – Babylonian Medicine at Freie Universität Berlin. Ulrike’s publications include a study of the body, self and identity in the Mesopotamian culture (Aspekte des Menschseins im Alten Mesopotamien. Eine Studie zu Person und Identität im 2. und 1. Jt. v. Chr., 2012). John Z. Wee is Assistant Professor of Assyriology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Knowledge and Rhetoric in Medical Commentary (2015) and several articles on medicine and astronomy in the ancient world. He graduated from Yale University with degrees in History (MA) and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (PhD). Acknowledgements The question of the formal patterning and institutional regimentation of textual compendia, particularly in the earliest phases of scientific thinking in the ancient Near East, was the primary impetus for a panel held at the Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society in Portland, Oregon, on March 15th, 2013. That panel, entitled ‘Empiricism in Mesopotamian Technical Literature’, consisted of seven of the ten contributors to this volume and the panel discussions that day are well reflected in the individual contributions. Thanks to Naʾama Pat-El for fitting the panel into the American Oriental Society meeting and Tzvi Abusch for chairing the session. Rochberg, Raggetti and Lehmhaus were, after the fact, asked if they might contribute papers in order to contextualize larger issues or fill major thematic gaps and they graciously agreed to do so. I would like to thank all of the participants for their contributions to the volume. I would also like to thank Markus Asper for accepting the volume into the series Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures at De Gruyter and an anonymous reviewer for numerous useful corrections and comments on the indi- vidual papers. Travel expenses for a number of the participants in the original panel were provided by the DFG-funded SFB 980: Episteme in Bewegung, which also support- ed me during the time in which I was assembling the individual contributions. I would also like to thank Markham J. Geller and Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum for sup- porting the panel and the volume in numerous other informal ways. J. Cale Johnson Berlin, May 15th, 2015 Contents Acknowledgements vii J. Cale Johnson Introduction ‘Infrastructural Compendia’ and the Licensing of Empiricism in Mesopotamian Technical Literature 1 A. The Infrastructural Compendium M. J. Geller Encyclopaedias and Commentaries 31 Mathieu Ossendrijver Compendia and Procedures in the Mesopotamian Astral Sciences 47 Lennart Lehmhaus Listenwissenschaft and the Encyclopedic Hermeneutics of Knowledge in Talmud and Midrash 59 B. Licensing Empiricism: Replication and Authority in Mesopotamian Technical Literature Ulrike Steinert ‘Tested’ Remedies in Mesopotamian Medical Texts A Label for Efficacy Based on Empirical Observation? 103 Siam Bhayro Theory and Practice in the Syriac Book of Medicines The Empirical Basis for the Persistence
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