Charming Snakes (and Kings), from Egypt to Persia
-
Philippe Clancier
und
Damien Agut
Abstract
The war between Assyria and Egypt resulted in the deportation of scholars from the Nile Valley to Mesopotamia. Among them were the so-called “snake charmers.” While it was a well-known profession in Egypt, this was not the case in Assyria or Babylonia, where the treatment of snakebites and scorpion stings was left to exorcist doctors. A number of clues from the late Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid Persian periods suggest that the “snake charmers” from Egypt enjoyed success with the kings of the great empires in the Middle East. Their presence most likely resulted from the professional structure and visibility of the Egyptian “snake charmers,” which were relatively absent in Mesopotamia.
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© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Scholars, Priests, and Temples: Babylonian and Egyptian Science in Context. Introduction
- Part I. Priests, scholars, and their communities
- Charming Snakes (and Kings), from Egypt to Persia
- The Descendants of the Sîn-lēqi-unnīnī during the Late Achaemenid and Early Hellenistic Periods – A Family of Priests, Scribes and Scholars and Their Archival and Learned Texts
- Priestly Scholars in Late Egypt: The Theoretical Side
- Stellar Scientists: The Egyptian Temple Astrologers
- Part II. Developments in scholarship
- Berossus and the Creation Story
- From Tablet to Talmud: Canonised Knowledge in Late Antiquity
- The Religious Sciences in Ancient Egypt
- Egyptian Scholars, Priests and Temples between Autonomy and State Authority
- Weather Prediction in Babylonia
- The Continued Relevance of MUL.APIN in Late Babylonian Astronomy
- Writing History Under Empire: The Babylonian Chronicle Reconsidered
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Scholars, Priests, and Temples: Babylonian and Egyptian Science in Context. Introduction
- Part I. Priests, scholars, and their communities
- Charming Snakes (and Kings), from Egypt to Persia
- The Descendants of the Sîn-lēqi-unnīnī during the Late Achaemenid and Early Hellenistic Periods – A Family of Priests, Scribes and Scholars and Their Archival and Learned Texts
- Priestly Scholars in Late Egypt: The Theoretical Side
- Stellar Scientists: The Egyptian Temple Astrologers
- Part II. Developments in scholarship
- Berossus and the Creation Story
- From Tablet to Talmud: Canonised Knowledge in Late Antiquity
- The Religious Sciences in Ancient Egypt
- Egyptian Scholars, Priests and Temples between Autonomy and State Authority
- Weather Prediction in Babylonia
- The Continued Relevance of MUL.APIN in Late Babylonian Astronomy
- Writing History Under Empire: The Babylonian Chronicle Reconsidered
