The comparable body: analogy and metaphor in ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Greco-Roman medicine

457 Pages·2017·2.76 MB·English

by  Wee

The Comparable Body
Studies in Ancient Medicine
Edited by
John Scarborough (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Philip J. van der Eijk (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Ann Ellis Hanson (Yale University)
Joseph Ziegler (University of Haifa)
VOLUME 49
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sam
The Comparable Body
Analogy and Metaphor in Ancient Mesopotamian,
Egyptian, and Greco-Roman Medicine
Edited by
John Z. Wee

LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Terracotta depiction of the Mesopotamian monster Huwawa, perhaps exaggerating the
distinctness with which a diviner might perceive its image from coils of animal intestine, somewhat
akin to the manner of a Rorschach test. A Neo-Babylonian inscription on its back reads, “If the coils of
the intestine resemble the head of Huwawa, it is an omen of Sargon who ruled the land.” From Abu Habba
(ancient Sippar), southern Iraq, ca. 1800–1600 BCE. Height 9 cm × Width 9.5 cm. AH 83-1-18, 2598.
British Museum ME 116624. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wee, John Z., editor.
Title: The comparable body : analogy and metaphor in ancient Mesopotamian,
 Egyptian, and Greco-Roman medicine / edited by John Z. Wee.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2017] | Series: Studies in ancient medicine,
 ISSN 0925-1421 ; volume 49 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017044900 (print) | LCCN 2017047300 (ebook) |
 ISBN 9789004356771 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004356764 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Medicine, Assyro-Babylonian. | Medicine, Egyptian. | Medicine,
 Greek and Roman.
Classification: LCC R135 (ebook) | LCC R135 .C66 2017 (print) |
 DDC 610.938—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017044900
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface
issn 0925-1421
isbn 978-90-04-35676-4 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-35677-1 (e-book)
Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Figures and Tables viii
Abbreviations x
Transliteration Notes xiv
Periodization of Ancient Mesopotamia xv
Contributors xvi
Introduction: To What May I Liken Metaphor? 1
John Z. Wee
1 Analogy and Metaphor in Ancient Medicine and the Ancient Egyptian
Conceptualisation of Heat in the Body 12
Rune Nyord
2 From Head to Toe: Listing the Body in Cuneiform Texts 43
M. Erica Couto-Ferreira
3 The Stuff of Causation: Etiological Metaphor and Pathogenic
Channeling in Babylonian Medicine 72
J. Cale Johnson
4 Aristotle’s Heart and the Heartless Man 122
Lesley Dean-Jones
5 Earthquake and Epilepsy: The Body Geologic in the Hippocratic Treatise
On the Sacred Disease 142
John Z. Wee
6 The Lineage of “Bloodlines”: Synecdoche, Metonymy, Medicine,
and More 168
Paul T. Keyser
7 Eye Metaphors, Analogies and Similes within Mesopotamian Magico-
Medical Texts 204
Strahil V. Panayotov
vi contents
8 The Experience and Description of Pain in Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi
Logoi 247
Janet Downie
9 Concepts of the Female Body in Mesopotamian Gynecological
Texts 275
Ulrike Steinert
10 Pure Life: The Limits of the Vegetal Analogy in the Hippocratics and
Galen 358
Brooke Holmes
11 Animal, Vegetable, Metaphor: Plotinus’s Liver and the Roots of
Biological Identity 387
Courtney Ann Roby
Index Locorum 415
General Index 429
Acknowledgements
This volume grew out of a selection of papers presented at the symposium on
Body and Metaphor in Ancient Medicine (1–3 May 2014) at the Oriental Institute
of the University of Chicago. We are immensely grateful to Christopher Woods
for providing the impetus for planning this symposium and his unwavering
support throughout the process. We would also like to thank Martha Roth and
Margot Browning for their valuable advice in planning the budget and apply-
ing for grants. The symposium owed much of its smooth organization to its
host, the Oriental Institute, for which we thank Gil Stein, Steven Camp, and
D’Ann Yoder Condes; as well as Jack Green for his guided tour of the Museum,
and staff members including Mariana Perlinac, Brittany Mullins, and Leslie
Schramer for their help with logistics and publicity. We are, moreover, indebted
to Judith B. Farquhar, Donald Harper, Jennifer Kosak, Vivienne Lo, and Robert
K. Ritner for their lively contributions to discussion during the symposium,
but whose papers do not appear in this volume; as well as to Elizabeth Asmis,
Robert Biggs, Janet H. Johnson, Robert Richards, Michael Rossi, and Theo van
den Hout for their insightful perspectives and commentary as the chairs of var-
ious sessions. Special thanks goes to Philip van der Eijk, series editor of Studies
in Ancient Medicine (Brill), and the anonymous reviewers of the individual
chapters for their careful and detailed suggestions that helped us improve the
quality of this volume, as well as to Jennifer Pavelko, Tessel Jonquière, Giulia
Moriconi, and Gera van Bedaf at Brill for their advice and assistance. Last but
not least, we express our gratitude for the financial sponsorship and enthusi-
astic support of the symposium and this edited volume by the following at the
University of Chicago:
The Oriental Institute
The Franke Institute for the Humanities
The Center for the Study of Ancient Religions
The Visiting Committee to the Division of the Humanities
Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine &
The Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science
The Department of Classics
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Robert Biggs and Clay Anderson
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
1.1 Pathogenesis of heat-related symptoms of the interior in three glosses
from Papyrus Ebers 36
4.1 Diagram of heart with open foramen ovale. Red area indicates
oxygenated blood from the lungs to the heart, while blue area indicates
deoxygenated blood from the rest of the body to the heart. Labels added
to modify original image of “Atrial septal defect” (ASD), whereby the
foramen ovale fails to close after birth. Original image by Manco Capac
(Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons 131
4.2 Aristotle’s conception of the heart 131
6.1 Google N-grams (https://books.google.com/ngrams), for English,
1800–2008. Phrases “blood relative” and “blood heritage” have much
smaller values than those displayed. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v.,
“miscegenation”: cited from 1864 197
9.1 The sign sal from the archaic to the first millennium BCE (Neo-
Assyrian) form. After: R. Labat 1988, No. 554 289
9.2 The signs tur5(tu) and tùr in the archaic script (after A. Falkenstein
1936, no. 213 and 239) 293
9.3 Design of a stone trough from Uruk (P. P. Delougaz 1968, 187 Fig. 5) 293
9.4 Cylinder seal from Khafajah (Sîn Temple; P. P. Delougaz 1968, 187
Fig. 4) 293
9.5 Stamp seal, ca. 5th/4th millennium BCE. After B. Buchanan and P. R. S.
Moorey 1984, pl. 4 no. 54. Illustration Y. Lindner 295
9.6 Clay plaque (Louvre) from the Old Babylonian period (1st half of the
2nd millennium BCE); after E. D. van Buren 1933–1934, 167 fig. 2. Drawing
Y. Lindner / U. Steinert 296
9.7 Dorsal view of the cow’s reproductive system; after R. Cooke,
A. Villarroel and C. Estill 2007, 6 fig. 2.3 (A), http://oregonstate.edu/
dept/eoarc/sites/default/files/641.pdf (accessed September 29, 2017).
Illustration Y. Lindner 296
9.8 The sign arḫuš (3rd millennium and Neo-Assyrian form). After Labat
1988, No. 271 302
9.9 The fetus in utero and an infant jar burial (Tell Fekheriye, ca. 12th/11th
century BCE). The jar containing the baby was blocked with a brick (vis-
ible as a faint outline), which may symbolize the brick of birth. From:
P. V. Bartl 2011, 8 Fig. 6. Illustration Y. Lindner 302
list of figures and tables ix
Tables
1.1 Body parts affected by heat in the prescriptions for ‘driving out (dr)
heat.’ Abbreviations of medical text references according to Grapow
1958 27
1.2 Other verbs for treating heat. Abbreviations of medical text references
according to Grapow 1958 28
1.3 Prescriptions for ‘cooling’ body parts. Abbreviations of medical text
references according to Grapow 1958 31
2.1 Main anatomical sections in Ugu-mu 45
2.2 Main physical body features described in the Göttertypentexte 50
2.3 List of Inanna’s / Ištar’s me’s corresponding to the body part on which
they are placed 52
2.4 Body parts to be protected against the actions of the Udug-hul (text
Ni 630, with corrections in Geller, Healing Magic and Evil Demons,
543–44) 54
2.5 Body parts arranged from head to toe in the series SA.GIG, tablets
3–18 60
2.6 Tablet 31 of the omen series Šumma ālu, describing the significance
of a scorpion that stings (izqut) a person in different parts of the body
(based on Freedman’s edition of the text) 64
3.1 Comparison between Recipe-driven medicine (asûtu) and Incantation-
and-ritual-driven exorcism (āšipūtu) 114
Abbreviations
Languages
Akk. Akkadian
Heb. Hebrew
Sum. Sumerian
Egyptian Texts
Bln Berlin Medical Papyrus
Bt Papyrus Beatty
CT Egyptian Coffin Text
Eb Papyrus Ebers
H Hearst Medical Papyrus
pBerlin Papyrus Berlin
pBritish Museum Papyrus British Museum
pLondon Papyrus London
pLouvre Papyrus Louvre
Ram Ramesseum
Sm Papyrus Edwin Smith
Mesopotamian Texts
Alamdimmû Physiognomic Series
AMC Assur Medical Catalogue
En. El. The Babylonian Creation Myth Enūma Eliš
Erimḫuš Bilingual vocabulary list
IGI Nineveh Treatise on Sick Eyes; Therapeutic sub-cor-
pus on the EYE, preceded by the sub-corpus UGU =
CRANIUM
Izi Kassite acrographic word list, with Old Babylonian
precursors
SA GÚ Therapeutic sub-corpus on the BRONCHIA, followed by
the sub-corpus SUALU = STOMACH
Malku Akkadian list of synonyms
Nabnitu Old Babylonian encyclopedic list
SA.GIG Diagnostic-Prognostic Series, or Diagnostic Handbook