Die babylonisch-assyrische Medizin in Texten und Untersuchungen

Die bisherigen Bände von Franz Köchers Reihe zu babylonisch-assyrischen Medizintexten enthalten eigenhändige Umzeichnungen der Keilschrifttafeln medizinischen Inhalts und ausführliche Indices zur Auflistung aller bekannten Parallelstellen. Der nun vorgelegte Band ediert alle Tafeln aus den Bänden 1 bis 6, die sich mit Erkrankungen der Niere und des Darmausgangs befassen. Viele der Quellen aus dem Britischen Museum sind aus Fragmenten bekannt, die R. Campbell Thompson in Kopie wiedergegeben hat (Assyrian Medical Texts, 1923). In der Zwischenzeit wurden jedoch zahlreiche joins erkannt, was eine Neubearbeitung notwendig machte. Die Tafeln zu Nieren- und Darmerkrankungen werden daher im vorliegenden Band kopiert und ediert. Nach Teilübersetzungen durch R. Campbell Thompson (1929 und 1934), die nach heutigem Standard zudem als unzulänglich gelten, wird der Großteil dieser medizinischen Texte Assyriologen und Medizinhistorikern hier erstmals zugänglich gemacht. Eine interessante Beobachtung dabei ist, welch geringe Rolle Magie und magische Rituale in dieser Sammlung medizinischer Heilanweisungen spielen.

This book brings together ancient manuscripts of the large compendium of Mesopotamian exorcistic incantations known as Udug.hul (Utukku Lemnutu), directed against evil demons, ghosts, gods, and other demonic malefactors within the Mesopotamian view of the world. It allows for a more accurate appraisal of variants arising from a text tradition spread over more than two millennia and from many ancient libraries.

The reconstruction of ancient Mesopotamian medical, ritual and omen compendia and their complex history is still characterised by many difficulties, debates and gaps due to fragmentary or unpublished evidence. This book offers the first complete edition of the Assur Medical Catalogue, an 8th or 7th century BCE list of therapeutic texts, which forms a core witness for the serialisation of medical compendia in the 1st millennium BCE. The volume presents detailed analyses of this and several other related catalogues of omen series and rituals, constituting the corpora of divination and healing disciplines. The contributions discuss links between catalogues and textual sources, providing new insights into the development of compendia between serialization, standardization and diversity of local traditions. Though its a novel corpus-based approach, this volume revolutionizes the current understanding of Mesopotamian medical texts and the healing disciplines of "conjurer" and "physician". The research presented here allows one to identify core text corpora for these disciplines, as well as areas of exchange and borrowings between them.

There is to date no comprehensive treatment of eye disease texts from ancient Mesopotamia, and no English translation of this material is available. This volume is the first complete edition and commentary on Mesopotamian medicine from Nineveh dealing with diseases of the eye. This ancient work, languishing in British Museum archives since the 19th century, is preserved on several large cuneiform manuscripts from the royal library of Ashurbanipal, from the 7th century BC. The longest surviving ancient work on diseased eyes, the text predates by several centuries corresponding Hippocratic treatises. The Nineveh series represents a systematic array of eye symptoms and therapies, also showing commonalities with Egyptian and Greco-Roman medicine. Since scholars of Near Eastern civilizations and ancient and general historians of medicine will need to be familiar with this material, the volume makes this aspect of Babylonian medicine fully accessible to both specialists and non-specialists, with all texts being fully translated into English.

This volume contains the first comprehensive edition of the most important medical compendium on gastrointestinal ailments, bile-induced diseases, and fever from ancient Mesopotamia: the Stomach Treatise from Ashurbanipal’s royal library at Nineveh. Assembled three millennia ago from symptom descriptions, drug recipes, incantations, and healing rituals, this treatise formed part of the only authoritative source of knowledge on therapeutic medicine at the time, the Nineveh Medical Encyclopaedia. With numerous textual improvements based on first-hand examinations of the manuscripts and more than a dozen new joins, the Stomach Treatise now finds its rightful place alongside the Ebers Papyrus and the Greco-Roman medical traditions as one of the key representatives of ancient medical thought.

Ancient Mesopotamian medical texts remain a little-known field within the history of medicine, since only few of the preserved texts are accessible in the form of recent editions. This volume contributes to the study of Mesopotamian healing systems by presenting the first comprehensive edition of the corpus of cuneiform texts concerned with women's health issues.

The book, which includes several hitherto unpublished tablets, contains diagnostic and therapeutic texts, ranging from medical prescriptions to incantations, rituals and fertility tests, written between the 3rd and the late 1st millennium BCE. Selected scholarly commentaries on diagnostic or therapeutic texts from the 1st millennium BCE are also included in the volume. While the main thematic focus of Mesopotamian gynaecology lies on female fertility, pregnancy and birth, the corpus covers an impressive range of health problems spanning from haemorrhage to cosmetic treatments.

Complemented by philological commentaries and an introduction that provides an overview of the textual history and a discussion of medical theories and practices, this text book forms an up-to-date survey for both specialists and non-specialist readers interested in Mesopotamian medicine.

Das babylonisch-assyrische Diagnosehandbuch, eines der am frühesten belegten Kompendien zur systematischen Beobachtung des menschlichen Körpers, gibt nicht nur einen faszinierenden Einblick in die Interpretation krankhafter Anzeichen in Mesopotamien, sondern auch in die Krankheitsätiologie. Neben Untersuchungen zu Rekonstruktion, Struktur und Terminologie werden in diesem Band zahlreiche neue Ergebnisse hinsichtlich regelhafter Verbindungen zwischen Zeichen- und Deutungsebene und den zugrundeliegenden heuristischen Techniken präsentiert. Einen weiteren Schwerpunkt bildet die Betrachtung der in Diagnosen und Ätiologien erkennbaren Berührungspunkte zu religiös-kosmologischen Vorstellungen, damit verbundenen überweltlichen Akteuren als Verursacher krankhafter Zustände sowie die Rolle des menschlichen Handelns als potenzielle Ursache. Den zweiten Hauptteil stellt die Neubearbeitung des umfangreichen zweiten Kapitels des Diagnosehandbuches (Tfl. 3–14) dar, in welcher der Text, unter Berücksichtigung aller neuen Textzeugen, in Partitur-Transliteration, gebundener Umschrift und Übersetzung samt Kommentar präsentiert wird. Ergänzt wird die Bearbeitung durch Keilschriftkopien der neu- und spätbabylonischen Fragmente aus dem British Museum.