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Traditions of Written Knowledge in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia Alter Orient und Altes Testament Traditions of Written Knowledge Veröffentlichungen zur Kultur und Geschichte des Alten Orients und des Alten Testaments in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia begründet von Manfried Dietrich und Oswald Loretzf Band 403 Proceedings of Two Workshops Held at Goethe-University, Frankfiirt/Main in December 2011 and May 2012 Herausgeber Edited by Manfried Dietrich • Ingo Kottsieper • Hans Neumann Daliah Bawanypeck and Annette Imhausen Lektoren Kai A. Metzler • Ellen Rehm Beratergremium Rainer Albertz • Joachim Bretschneider • Stefan Maul Udo Rüterswörden • Walther Sallaberger • Gebhard Selz Michael P. Streck • Wolfgang Zwickel 2014 Ugarit-Verlag Münster Table of Contents Introduction.................................................................................................................1 Die ^Ä^w-Lehrtexte der heilkundlichen Literatur des Alten Ägypten Traditionen und Textgeschichte Tanja Pommerening....................................................................................................7 What you see is what you get? Comments on Early Akkadian magical tradition based on physical aspects of incantation tablets Nathan Wasserman................................................................................................... 47 Normative structures in Mesopotamian rituals A comparison of hand-lifting rituals in the second and first millennium BC Daliah Bawanypeck.................................................................................................. 71 Contexts and elements of decanal star lists in Ancient Egypt Sarah Symons.............................................................................................................91 Late Babylonian ziqpu-star lists: Written or remembered traditions of knowledge? John M. Steele..........................................................................................................123 Normative structures in ancient Egyptian mathematical texts Annette Imhausen.....................................................................................................153 Written mathematical traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia Daliah Bawanypeck and Annette Imhausen (ed.): Knowledge, ignorance, and reasonable guesses Traditions of Written Knowledge in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Jens Hoyrup.............................................................................................................189 Proceedings of Two Workshops Held at Goethe-University, Frankfurt/Main Textstufen altbabylonischer Rechtssammlungen? in December 2011 and May 2012 Guido Pfeifer........................................................................................................... 215 Alter Orient und Altes Testament, Band 403 Index....................................................................................................................... 229 © 2014 Ugarit-Verlag, Münster WWW. ugarit-Verlag, de All rights preserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Printed in Germany ISBN; 978-3-86835-085-2 Printed on acid-free paper Introduction Researchers working on ancient scientific texts face a variety of issues that distin­ guishes their research from that of their colleagues working on (more) modem mate­ rial.’ One problem, that has become more and more prominent within the last dec­ ades, is the relation of an ancient categorization of knowledge and a modern classifi­ cation, which may have some overlaps but also significant differences. This has consequences for the translation of ancient texts, e. g. it raises the question, if it is appropriate to use modem scientific terminology at all, or, if used, under which con­ ditions and with which confinements it is historically sound to translate an ancient scientific term or concept with a modem term that obviously comes with its own sci­ entific implications, that are mostly if not always different from those of the trans­ lated word.^ Another problem of similar importance for researchers who focus on ancient mate­ rial is the situation of the source material. The vagaries of preservation have almost everywhere led to gaps in the textual transmission of ancient knowledge. In some areas, prominent examples may be Egyptian mathematics and astronomy, only very few texts are extant at all (in the case of astronomy, Egypt only has sources that present the result of the experts who observed the sky, no texts that would detail what these experts actually did have survived - if they ever existed; in the case of mathematics a total of only six school texts all dating within a period of about 200 years are extant but again no texts that would record the work of those who devel­ oped the knowledge found in the school texts). Likewise, while it is possible to follow a more continuous development of mathematics in Mesopotamia, there are still uneven distributions of individual text types over time, as is exemplified by the cumulation of sophisticated problem texts from the Old Babylonian Period. Because the available sources are mostly silent about reasons for the appearance of these clusters at specific times, it is difficult to answer the question of the disappearance For the area of ancient Mesopotamian mathematics this was once expressed by Jim Ritter (1995, 44-45) as follows: ‘Thus it is that the few historians who work on the earliest traces of mathematics are generally considered by their colleagues to be exotic specimens, content with childish babblings long since surpassed and quite rightly forgotten by both working mathema­ ticians and those who study them.’ If this sounds, taken from its context, a bit negative, we recommend to read the full article, from which it will be obvious that the criticism is not directed towards the early mathematicians and their output but rather towards the former attitude of modem historians of science concerning the ancient sources. ^ This specific issue is tackled in a series of workshops jointly organized by Tanja Pommere- ning and Annette Imhausen, which aims at the creation of a handbook for the translation of ancient scientific texts. On the translation of aneient scientific texts cf Imhausen / Pommere- ning, 2010. 2 Introduction Traditions of written knowledge 3 of text types - is it really the ancient disappearance of a genre or is our assessment is most likely not only a precursor to modern science but deserves to be studied in due to the vagaries of preservation? In some instances materials from a neighboring its own right and needs to be understood from its own inherent concepts and formal culture may be used to argue for the existence of a text genre. An example of this structures, has led to a new bloom in the field of the history of early science that is can be seen in the contribution by Daliah Bawanypeck, which focuses on Akkadian shared by historians of early science and historians of these ancient cultures, most hand-lifting rituals (su-ila). These rituals support the petitioner who is appealing to a prominently Egyptologists and Assyriologists, alike. This has also fiirthered a devel­ deity on various concerns, like the plea for health. While earlier su-ilas are attested opment in the methodology of these sciences to base concepts and demarcations on only from the Syro-Hittite area, similarities with the Mesopotamian texts of the first indigenous terminology (as opposed to identifying counterparts of modem termino­ millennium BC indicate that they must also have existed there during the second logy in the ancient sources). The questions of the context and cultural roles of sci­ millennium BC. ence in ancient cultures have further contributed to raise the awareness of their im­ This then raises another question, namely that of what kind of knowledge is put portance for the study of ancient cultures. into writing? Again, it is obvious that not “everything” related to the creation of a body of knowledge in a certain field is documented. For the area of mathematics it is In December 2011 and May 2012, we organized two workshops at the Goethe-Uni- mostly agreed that the extant mathematical texts originate from an educational back­ versity Frankfurt/Main that had the aim to investigate and compare “Traditions of ground. Nothing, however, indicates a written tradition on “mathematical research”, written knowledge in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia”.^ The point of departure of i. e. the question how the mathematical knowledge was obtained cannot easily be the contributions resulting from these workshops is an observation that could be answered. made in most areas where systems of knowledge were put into writing, namely that there are several characteristics (formal and with regards to content) that allow us to Apart from the vagaries of preservation, our modem knowledge of the available identify a text as belonging to a specific group of texts. Thus, even very small frag­ sources is by no means complete. Ongoing archaeological work produces new ments of texts can be allocated to their individual areas, if they only contain enough sources that will enrich and alter our knowledge in various ways. In addition, there of these characteristics.^ These attributes may change over time, or, they may also are sources that have been discovered some time ago, but have not yet been edited. continue, and thereby provide a means by which a tradition of written knowledge A prominent
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