EM

Mesopotamian Medicine Lecture Notes

Approach and Readings

  • Approaching the readings: take notes, note confusing vocabulary, re-read, use the handout

  • Handout on OWL is referenced for additional guidance

Location & History

  • Location: between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (modern Iraq); region of fertile land

  • Geography: most southern point corresponds to the location of Sumer; most prominent city: Ur

  • Early urban development: Earliest Sumerian cities around 5400 ext{ BCE}, flourishing until 2234 ext{ BCE}

  • Renaissance period: 2047-1750 ext{ BCE}

  • History overview:

    • Babylonia: most significant ruler Hammurabi ( 1795-1750 ext{ BCE} )

    • 539 BCE: conquered by the Persian king Cyrus

    • Assyria (northern region): rose to prominence around 1900 ext{ BCE}; city of Ashur founded; collapse in 612 BCE

Religion & Culture

  • No strict separation between natural and supernatural domains

  • Cosmology: all elements have wills or conscious power; physical entity and spirit are one

  • Supernatural entities possess greater power than humans

  • Natural elements (wind, water, plants) are manifestations of greater powers

  • Social hierarchy: gods > spirits > humans

  • Key concepts: obedience and consideration; relationships among entities

  • Symptoms function as encoded messages between patient and community

  • Explanations of physiological processes are not central to understanding medicine

Healing Deities (Selected Deities and Roles)

  • Marduk (Patron of Babylon)

    • Epithets: “Bull-calf of the son” and the son

    • Attributes: wisdom, judgment, magic, water, vegetation

    • Role: head of the divine council; regarded as “Healer of the gods”

  • Gula (Patron goddess of Isin; “Lady of Isin”)

    • Attributes: healing hands, soothing bandages, dangerous scalpels

    • Associations: childbirth (characteristics of divine midwife Ninmah); skin ailments, stomach issues, issues of connective tissue in muscles, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels

    • Capability: can cause disease

  • Asalluhi

    • Paired with Gula in incantations; Son & assistant of Enki (magical powers)

    • Role: assists a midwife (notable as a functional pairing in rituals)

  • Enki / Ea

    • God of the fresh waters and associated with the underworld waters

    • Depicted with water flowing from his arms

    • Attributes: wisdom, magic, arts, crafts; sides with humans

  • Utu / Shamash

    • God of the sun; often compared to Apollo

    • Parent: fathered by Nanna (moon); twin sister: Inana

    • Attributes: truth, justice; protector of humans in legal and medical matters

  • Lamaštu

    • Spirit (a mix of demonic spirit and goddess)

    • Has free will; can target anyone; partial to babies and pregnant women

    • Often described as an “anti-midwife”; arrives on the wind

  • Asag / Asakku

    • Asag: “Smashing force”; Asakku: “Disorder”

    • Nature: capricious; diseases due to free will

    • Affected systems: musculoskeletal system and skin; direct confrontation with Gula

Sources and Texts

  • Types of sources: archaeological and textual (primary and secondary)

  • Medical texts include therapeutic and diagnostic materials

  • Therapeutic texts: describe symptoms, provide instructions for preparing and administering remedies, and give prognosis

  • Example remedy (from a textual fragment):

    • “If a man gets a pulsating of the temple and has numbness, you grind dried e’ru-tree leaves, mix it with wheat flour, sahlû, and hašû- plant and with beer of a tavern keeper into a paste, you bandage him continually with them until they recover.”

  • Challenges: terminology and ratios can be problematic

Therapeutic Recipes and Incantations

  • Ingredients can be unpleasant: ox-dung, gazelle-dung

  • Two approaches to remedies:

    • “Treating like with like”

    • A “code” to weed out charlatans

  • Some remedies include incantations:

    • “Ea, king who created mankind, Marduk, ašipu (magician) of the gods, noble god…”

    • “May his excrement escape and come out, may the whirlwind inside him come out and see the sun! The incantation is not mine, it is the incantation of Asalluhi, exorcist of the gods, he cast it and I took it up.”

  • Diagnostic texts: omen literature with conditional logic, e.g. “if…then…”

  • Example of symptom-based diagnosis:

    • “When a man is heavily feverish and he finds no relief, he burps and coughs and his stomach always turns to vomit, he is sick due to an oath.”

Sins, Confession, and Appeals for Relief

  • Prayers or confessional pleas for relief from disease: “Loosen my disgrace, the guilt of my wickedness; remove my disease; drive away my sickness; a sin I know (or) know not I have committed; on account of a sin of my father (or) my grandfather, a sin of my mother (or) of my grandmother, on account of a sin of an elder brother (or) an elder sister, on account of a sin of my family, of my kinsfolk (or) of my clan…the wrath of god and goddess have pressed upon me.”

  • Emphasizes recognition of multiple spheres of disease and a link to moral or ritual transgressions (as discussed in Week 1)

Healers and Their Traditions

  • Healers owe their skill to Gula; terminology varies by community

  • Asû: “physician”

    • Focus: examines physical symptoms to determine healing technique

    • Healing goal: elicit ritualistic obedience between humans and the divine

  • Ašipu: “Exorcist / magician”

    • Focus: signs of the gods and communication from the gods

    • Healing approach: instrumental or symbolic; both types of healers typically gained their skills via apprenticeships

Things to Consider When Studying Mesopotamian Medicine

  • Based on deities’ attributes and areas of influence, which afflictions appear most common?

    • Skin issues, musculoskeletal issues, gastro-intestinal illnesses, childbirth, fertility

  • Which elements or concepts are common across cultures?

  • How does a society’s religion shape its understanding of medical matters?

  • What (or who) causes disease in their framework?

  • What challenges arise when dealing with the source material (e.g., terminology, translation, transmission of practices)?

CS 2902 Week 2: Additional Readings:

Mesopotamian Medicine:

Therapeutic texts: “If a man gets a pulsating of the temple and has numbness, you grind dried e’ru-tree leaves, mix it with wheat flour, sahlû, and hašû-plant and with beer of a tavern keeper into a paste, you bandage him continually with them until they recover.”

Prescription text: “You shall prepare a large pot, stop up its sides with wheaten dough, boil the brew over a fire, and put a reed tube into it. Then let him draw the steam up so that it strikes against his lungs, and he will recover.”

Incantations: “Ea, king who created mankind, Marduk, ašipu (magician) of the gods, noble god…” “May his excrement escape and come out, may the whirlwind inside him come out and see the sun! The incantation is not mine, it is the incantation of Asalluhi, exorcist of the gods, he cast it and I took it up.”

“Go, my son [i.e. Marduk], pull off a piece of clay from the deep, fashion a figure of his bodily form and place it on the loins of the sick many by night, at dawn make the ‘atonement’ for his body, perform the Incantation of Eridu, turn his face to the west, that the evil plague-demon which hath seized upon him may vanish away from him.’ “Fashion a figure of him in dough, put water upon the man and pour forth the water of the Incantation: Bring forth a censer (and) a torch, as the water trickleth away from his body so may the pestilence in his body trickle away.”

Diagnostic texts: “When a man is heavily feverish and he finds no relief, he burps and coughs and his stomach always turns to vomit, he is sick due to an oath.”

Calling upon help: “Loosen my disgrace, the guilt of my wickedness; remove my disease; drive away my sickness; a sin I know (or) know not I have committed; on account of a sin of my father (or) my grandfather, a sin of my mother (or) of my grandmother, on account of a sin of an elder brother (or) an elder sister, on account of a sin of my family, of my kinsfolk (or) of my clan…the wrath of god and goddess have pressed upon me.”

Egyptian Medicine:

“I know thy name…do I not know thy name?” (incantation for the eye)

Hearst Papyrus 85: “O ghost, male or female, thou hidden, thou concealed one, who dwelleth in this my flesh, in these my limbs – get thee hence from this my flesh, from these my limbs. Lo, I brought thee excrements to devour! Beware, hidden one, be on your guard, concealed one, escape!”

Ebers Papyrus: “Another (remedy) for the illness of half the head: Skull of a catfish, boil in oil, anoint the head with it for 4 days.”

Ebers Papyrus: “O Isis, great in sorcery! Mayest thou loosen me, mayest thou deliver me from everything evil and vicious and red, from the spell of a god or from the spell of a goddess, of a dead man or of a dead woman, of a fiendish man or of a fiendish woman, who will be fiendish within me, like thy loosening and thy delivering thy son Horus.”

Ebers Papyrus: “Remedy to Regulate Evacuation Honey 1 Sasa seeds 1 Wormwood 1 Elderberry 1 Berries of the uan tree 1 Kernel of the ut’ait fruit 1 Caraway 1 aaam-seeds 1 xam-seeds 1 Sea-salt 1 Form into a suppository and put into the rectum.”

Edwin Smith Papyrus: “Case One: Instructions concerning a wound in his head penetrating to the bone of his skull. Examination: If thou examinest a man having a wound in his head, while his wound does not have two lips, penetrating to the bone of his skull, (but) not having a gash, thou shouldst palpate his wound (or, thou shouldst lay thy head upon it); shouldst thou find his skull uninjured, not having a perforation; a split, or a smash in it.

Treatment: Thou shouldst bind it with fresh meat the first day (and) treat afterwards with grease, honey (and) lint every day until he recovers.”

Edwin Smith Papyrus: “Case Thirtty-Five: Instructions concerning a break in his collar-bone. Examination: If thou examinest a man having a break in his collar-bone (and) thou shouldst find his collar-bone short and separated from its fellow.

Diagnosis: Thou shouldst say concerning him: ‘One having a break in his collar-bone. An ailment which I will treat.’

Treatment: Thou shouldst place him prostrate on back, with something folded between his two shoulder-blades; thou shouldst spread out with his two shoulders in order to stretch apart his collar-bone until that break falls into place. Thou shouldst make for him two splints of linen, and thou shouldst apply one of them both on the inside of his upper arm. Thou shouldst bind it with ymrw and treat it afterward with homey every day until he recovers.”