Band 7 Renal and Rectal Disease Texts

Previous volumes of Franz Köcher’s series on Babylonian and Assyrian medical literature have provided autograph copies of cuneiform medical tablets with extensive indices listing all known parallel passages. The present volume edits all of the tablets listed in volumes 1–6 of Babylonisch-assyrische Medizin dealing with renal and rectal diseases. Many of the British Museum sources have been known from fragments, copied by R. Campbell Thompson in his Assyrian Medical Texts (1923), but many new joins have been made since that time, and hence tablets dealing with renal and rectal diseases have been copied and edited in the present volume. Although some of these medical texts have been previously translated by R. Campbell Thompson in 1929 and 1934, these translations are now generally considered to be inadequate by modern standards. Most of these medical texts are being made available to Assyriologists and medical historians for the first time. One interesting feature is how seldom magic and magical rituals feature within these medical recipes.

Markham J. Geller is Professor of Semitic Languages in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London, Great Britain.

"[...] what a wonderful conceptulization! [...] The work is a giant step forward, providing invaluable new copies and replacing long outdated editions by R. Campbell-Thompsen."
JoAnn Scurlock in: Journal of the American Oriental Society 128.2/2008