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chapter 21 At the Dawn of Plant Taxonomy: Shared Structural Design of Herbal Descriptions in Šammu šikinšu and Theophrastus’Historia plantarum IX Maddalena Rumor* Case Western Reserve University When we think of the first scientific developments in botany we think of Theophrastus (ca. 370–ca. 287BCE), who, for many good reasons, earned the appellative of “Father of Botany”. His treatise Historia plantarum,1 which ap- peared ca. 300BCE, is considered the earliest fully-surviving example of Pre- Linnaean plant taxonomy (a systematic effort to describe, classify and name plants).2 But to what degree are the principles and the reasoning behind this remarkable achievement an exclusive product of Greek culture and the philo- sophical school to which Theophrastus owed so much? Is it possible to recog- nize elements of that same systematic thinking in an earlier scholarly milieu of the ancient world? Focusing merely on one aspect of taxonomy, namely on the description of medicinal plants, the present article explores the simple but important idea that a very precise method was already in place prior to Theophrastus for describing herbal remedies and that this method was not uniquely Greek, even * I feel privileged to have had Mark Geller as my teacher. Not only his deep knowledge, but also his endless enthusiasm and insightful intuition have always been an inspiration during my graduate studies. It is with great pleasure and gratitude that I offer this small essay to him. I would also like to thank Henry Stadhouders for kindly reading the manuscript of this article and for offering many valuable suggestions. Abbreviations of Assyriological works will follow the RlA list. Other abbreviations will be explained in the bibliography. 1 The attribution to Theophrastus is a matter of debate (more below). In this article this text will be referred to as “Theophrastus’ herbal” for mere convenience. 2 Cf. Sivarajan and Robson 1991, 67: “The beginnings of taxonomy are lost in antiquity (…). Anyway, it is Theophrastus (370–287BCE), a student of Aristotle and the most outstanding naturalist of his time, who is accredited with the beginning of plant taxonomy as an orga- nized science (…). In those days classifications were mainly based on habit. He divided plants into herbs, shrubs and trees and recognised annuals, biennials and perennials. He also recog- nised Dicotyledons and Monocotyledons, difference in ovary position and polypetalous and gamopetalous corollas. His monumental works, History of Plants and Enquiry into Plants, are probably the most complete and ordered of all ancient biological works.” © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004368088_022 at the dawn of plant taxonomy 447 though the two most prominent extant herbals were written by Greek authors.3 Rather, it will be shown, the same structure adopted by Theophrastus for plant descriptions was already in place in Mesopotamia at least five centuries earlier. This idea will be tested by comparing the content of two herbals: the ninth book of Theophrastus’ Historia plantarum (and specifically his list of herbal descriptions that begins with various kinds of panaceas in IX, 11.1 and goes to the end of the book) and a lesser known, fragmentary Babylonian treatise on medicinal plants known as Šammu šikinšu, which preserves a number of herbal descriptions, and whose oldest exemplars date back to the 9th century BCE.4 Book IX of the Historia plantarum is often defined as a “herbal” because of its emphasis on the healing properties of the plants it treats. In discussing whether the term can appropriately be applied to such an old text, Stannard (1969, 213) proposed Lawrence’s definition of a “herbal” as “a book on plants of real or alleged medicinal properties, which describes the appearance of those plants, and provides information on their medicinal importance and use”. Adopting this definition, Scarborough conclusively supported the designation of book IX as a herbal; in fact, he noted: “It is the earliest herbal in Greek that has come down almost complete.”5 According to these same criteria, Šammu šikinšu should also be considered a herbal. Elements from the two texts will therefore be compared, inasmuch as they both belong to the same genre of medical literature.6 The structural analysis of these two works is chiefly aimed at understand- ing whether a standard method was behind these two manuals’ descriptions. A positive answer to this query would suggest that not only Theophrastus and his school adopted this system, but also the scribes who first composed Šammu šikinšu did. As indicated above, this preliminary exploration only focuses on these two texts. The same idea, however, could (and eventually should) be checked in other ancient Greek authors of pharmaceutical handbooks whose writings 3 Namely, Theophrastus, Historia plantarum, book IX and Dioscorides’ De materia medica (ca. 60CE). 4 For further comments and references see Böck 2010, 164; Böck 2011. A new edition and transla- tion was published by Stadhouders (2011 and 2012), and this is the edition that will be followed here. 5 Scarborough 1978, 354. 6 This is not to say that other evidence of herbal compositions exists for that time period. Some passages survived, for instance, from botanical treatises of Diocles of Carystus, but these are mostly fragmentary, or mere allusions..

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