Notes

The Hippocratic text on prognosis is not a reasoned argument but a description of signs that bode ill or well. This was uncomfortably close to the soothsayers’ practice of seeking signs in entrails or the flights of birds, particularly since both practices were based on a knowledge of what was normal, in order to identify the abnormal. No doubt Galen remembered being called a soothsayer when he first made a prognostication in Rome. (French 2003: 51)

13 I am grateful to Gilles Buisson for the reading of Hammurabi’s name in this tablet. There are several potential problems with this reading. First, Hammurabi is mentioned without his title “lugal,” except that a similar reference to Hammurabi appears in another medical text from Assur, BAM 159 iv 22, in another recipe for eye disease: te-qit igi.min-šú šá^mHa-am-mura-bi lat-ku, “a tested salve for Hammurabi’s eyes”; see also BAM 382: 11, another New Babylonian tablet from Babylon with a salve for Hammurabi (te-qit šá Ha-am-mu-ra-bi). A third Late Babylonian Uruk tablet with eyedisease recipes has a similar line, “tēqītu šá Ha-mu-ra-bi la-tík-tú, a proven salve of Hammurabi.” The second problem with our Hammurabi’s mother tablet is the fact that Hammurabi is spelled with “pi” rather than “bi,” although this is also not a decisive objection. According to Streck 1999: 659f., attested late Old Babylonian references to Hammurabi’s name from Larsa spell the name with “pi” (e.g. Ha-am-mu-um-ra-pi).

21 See Marti 2005: 1, a letter from Aqba-Ahum to the King of Mari which includes the following clause: aš-šum [ša]-am-mi-im ša ek-ke-tim [ša] be-lí ú-wa-e-ra-an-ni [a-n]a giš.kiri₆ša às-qú-di-im aš-pu-ur-ma [ša-a]m-mu-um šu-ú iš-te-en-ma […] is-sú-hu-ni-iš-šu [ù a]-na e-er be-li-ia [a-ar-d]a-aš-šu, “regarding the drug against ekketum-disease, which my Lord instructed me (to acquire), I sent (someone) to the garden of Asqudum; the drug was a simplicium and they dug it up and I have just sent it to my Lord.” Marti translates the crucial phrase, “il y en avait une seule,” but it is somewhat difficult to imagine that Asqudum’s garden only had one variety of plant in it. Since sammum can also mean “drug,” in this case the drug for ekketumdisease, it is likely that Aqba-Ahum wished to specify that he was sending this particular plant (or drug) because it was a simplicium, and hence other ingredients would not be necessary. A further intriguing question is whether the owner of the medicinal garden, Asqudum, was the well-known bārû haruspex in Mari (see Durand 1988: 593f.).

A man with the knowledge of how to produce by regimen dryness and moisture, cold and heat in the human body, could cure this disease too provided he could distinguish the right moment for the application of what is beneficial, without recourse to purifications and magic. (Trans. Loeb; see Lloyd 2003: 71)

50 One bilingual incantation begins, “I am the man of Nammu, I am the man of Nanše, I am the šim.mú, the ‘plant-grower,’ who heals the land, I am the great maš.maš who walks around in the city, I am the ka.pirig of Eridu who performs the mouth-washing” (Geller 2007: 106, 200). The Akkadian translation renders both šim-mú and ka.pirig as āšipu. Maš.maš gal.gal.la is translated as mašmaš rabû, the “great Mašmaššu-exorcist.”
The fact that it was the exorcist and not physician who was expert in diagnostic and physiognomic omens is obvious from Esagil-kīn-apli’s listing of the curriculum of the art of exorcism (mašmaššūtu), in which he lists the series sakikkū (the Diagnostic Handbook) as well as the physiognomic omen series alamdimmû, nigdimdimmû, and kataduggû as components of the training of an exorcist (KAR 44: 6; see Jean 2006: 64; see also Finkel 1988).

59 It used to be taken for granted that in the second millennium the bārû was a priest (see Renger 1969: 203–23). The assumption of the bārû being a priest is an easy one to make; like a priest, he performed rituals invoking gods when performing extispicy. The bārû, however, was more closely associated with the palace rather than with the temple, and his chief role was to advise kings on matters of state importance. This presumes that the bārû would have found animals for extispicy among the many banquets and meals served within the palace, rather than relying upon sacrificial animals used by the temple. The problem is that the bārû required numerous animals, over a long period of time, to create his bārûtu “database,” from which he could derive the basic information he needed for predictions. If an event (to be interpreted as good or bad) happened on a certain day, associated with a particular shape of animal liver examined under special conditions, the database would provide crucial diagnostic information for the bārû: did this same peculiar liver shape ever occur previously, and, if so, what were the events at that time associated with it? The analogy would provide the bārû with a clue as to the interpretation of present circumstances, and whether events associated with the later extispicy were to be interpreted as favorable or unfavorable. See also Parpola 1983, with clear evidence from the seventh century BC for the bārû as a scholar, with similar interests to other scholars, such as exorcists and scribes.

65 See Attinger 2008: 3, 50–1. The Code is often cited for the wrong reasons by historians of medicine, usually as an example of how cataract surgery was performed in Mesopotamia, or assuming the physician to be a type of priest (see Meyer-Steineg and Sudhoff 1927: 14). The value of the Code for medical history is limited, since the procedure described cannot be verified by evidence from the medical corpus itself. Nevertheless, the Code is one of the few documents from the period offering insight into the social context of medicine, and it shows that in the first quarter of the second millennium BC, the asû-physician was the only healing professional taken into consideration by the Code. The exorcist, on the other hand, did not have the same status or recognition and was probably seen as a priest (perhaps not even a designated priest) who recited incantations and performed rituals, but not in the professional capacity of being an exorcist. In other words, in this period, the priest was an exorcist, while in later periods the exorcist was a priest.

169 The family pedigree of a scribe was often considered worth mentioning in colophons. A few colophons (from Assur and Sultantepe) use a special word, ligimû, to indicate that the scribe is the “scion” of a certain family. For instance, the Sultantepe scribe who copied the literary text, Ludlul Bēl Nēmeqi (Poem of the Righteous Sufferer), refers to himself as an apprentice (šamallû) and “scion” of Ašû the priest (see Hunger 1968: 351 [= STT 33]). Another Sultantepe tablet (Hunger 1968: 360 [= STT 92]), a medical tablet assigning appropriate medicinal plants to various diseases, was signed by an apprentice (šamallû), “scion” (ligimû) and son of an Assyrian scribe. This term corresponds to another term popular among Assur scribes, līpu and līp līpi, “descendant.”

178 The term ummânu would be the modern equivalent of calling one’s teacher Grossmeister, which is a title only used honorifically or behind his back. However, some colophons come close to identifying the owner of a tablet as the ummânu, such as the following:

but-u lat-ku šá šu² um.me.a dub ^mki-ir-^daš-šur maš.maš aš-šur (BAM 303: 24′–25′)

tested recipe from the hands of the ummânu, a tablet of Kiir-Aššur, Assyrian exorcist.

Could Ki images ir-Aššur be the ummânu? It is difficult to tell, since a similar reference occurs in an eye-prescription text within the recipe itself: te-qí-tu ša-lim-tu ša šu um.me.a la-ti-ik ba-r[i], “a reliable eye-salve which has been tested and checked by the hand of the ummânu” (BAM 516 iv 4). The ummânu in this latter case is anonymous.

183 George 1991: 152 gives the scribe’s name as ^mden-líl-en-šú-nu^lúmaš.maš [tur^?] a-šú^mna-ir^lúkul.lum ^den-líl a ^mab.sum.mu šu-me-ru₆-u, “Enlilbēlšunu’s junior exorcist, son of Na images

ir, divination priest of Enlil, descendant of Absummu the Sumerian.” George suggests that the term “Sumerian” here may indicate that the scribe was from Nippur (George 1991: 160). The reading of the father’s name is based upon badly damaged signs, and there is little evidence for the Sumerogram ^lúkul.lum to indicate “divination priest” (bārû). However, this same scribe appears again in Uruk, in a learned text, allowing us to correct the reading of the patronymic: ^den-líl-en-šú-nu maš.maš.tur a šá^m_den-lil-zi-tim-šeš ^lúkul^la.lum_x (MUL) a ^mšu.^d30, “Enlil-bēlšunu, ‘junior’ exorcist, son of Enlil-napišta-u images

ur, brewer,” descendant of Gimil-Sīn. The esoteric writing ^lúkul.la.mul for ^lúkul.lum is based upon a convention that signs can occasionally be read backwards (i.e. /lum/ from /mul/). The meaning of this title is far from certain, despite lexical evidence relating it to Akkadian sirāšu “brewer,” but this may be a pun on Akkadian kullumu “to reveal,” which can refer to esoteric knowledge.
The ancestor given as “Absummu the Sumerian” occurs elsewhere in a Louvre tablet which may also come from Uruk, a scholarly explanatory text from the Persian period (reign of Artaxerxes) giving offerings associated with various groups of gods (Nougayrol 1947: 35, 28–32; Linssen 2004: 162 n. 277; see Hunger 1968: No. 123), and the author is given as “Zēr-kitti-lišir, son of Bēlšunu, ‘junior’ scribe, descendant of Ab-sum-mu the Sumerian.” One wonders whether the name Bēlšunu in this colophon may be a hypocoristic writing of Enlil-bēlšunu, the same author of the Uruk commentary discussed above and descendant of Absummu the Sumerian. Furthermore, the name Zēr-kitti-lišir also appears in the patronymic of the scribe of the commentary (also probably from Uruk) which is edited below in the Appendix. All these scribes, Zēr-kitti-lišir, Enlil-bēlšunu, and Enlil-napišta-u images

ur, may belong to various generations of the same family of scholars, and all of these scholars put their names to commentaries and explanatory texts, which may not be coincidental.