Articles by Maddalena Rumor
ANEToday, 2022
Penetrating the deepest meaning of a word allows our brain not only to make sense of the idea it ... more Penetrating the deepest meaning of a word allows our brain not only to make sense of the idea it conveys, but also to disentangle related concepts, thus generating an intense sense of pleasure and gratification. When dealing with ancient Babylonian names of plants and drugs, alas, that sense of gratification is rare, but not for lack of material. On the contrary, ancient Mesopotamian pharmacopoeia was impressively large, with hundreds of substances known by many names, nicknames, and synonyms. Most of that knowledge, however, passed into oblivion after the Akkadian language died out about two millennia ago, leaving us with the empty shells of plant names with inadequate clues as to their meaning. Yet sometimes, helpful suggestions emerge where we least expect them. This is the case of a plant that the Sumerians called Ú SIKIL, the "pure/purifying plant," which from the 2nd millennium BCE was known as sikillu in Akkadian. We know little about sikillu: it somehow resembled an onion, it had leaves, a stem, flowers, and was used in healing. It was also particularly good for purification (as per its name) and for witchcraft. How exactly it "purified," though, remains a mystery. Unexpectedly, Greco-Roman literature comes to rescue. Here the name of a plant is recorded that is very similar to sikillu, Greek skilla, which is normally translated in English as "sea squill" or "sea onion" from its resemblance to the common vegetable (although quite bigger and more toxic, when not deadly). Leaves of squill (urginea maritima).
Byzantinische Forschungen , 2021
This paper offers a panoramic view of the use of plant substances in ancient
Mesopotamian therapy... more This paper offers a panoramic view of the use of plant substances in ancient
Mesopotamian therapy during the 2nd–1st mill. BCE. It illustrates the nature of the medical ingredients employed, it shows how ancient Babylonians prepared and administered them, and describes the role of the two main health professionals of the day. The written sources, which constitute some of the most ancient evidence for organized pharmaceutical knowledge, archaeological evidence and the problems connected with their study are also examined throughout.
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 111(1): 47-76, 2021
This article identifies the tradition of Babylonian Kalendertexte as the ultimate source for a pa... more This article identifies the tradition of Babylonian Kalendertexte as the ultimate source for a passage in Pliny the Elder's HN 30.95-97, thus establishing a link between Babylonian and Graeco-Roman astral medicine. Implications include the identification of the astrological square aspect (perhaps called é, bītu, "house") in Babylonia, a connection with Hermeticism and the Greek medical theory of Critical Days, and the textual demonstration that Dreckapotheke-names did indeed refer to healing plants, in such a context.
Le Journal des Médecines Cunéiformes, 2020
Most ancient medical traditions, including the Babylonian, record a fair amount of medical ingred... more Most ancient medical traditions, including the Babylonian, record a fair amount of medical ingredients with names that suggest they are made of foul substances, usually referred to as Dreckapotheke. While this label indicates a literal understanding of the substances, it is clear that in some cases they were not to be interpreted literally, neither in Mesopotamia nor elsewhere. How can we explain these names then? Among various suggestions, Franz Köcher in 1995 argued that such names of ingredients, specifically the "aš-names" of Uruanna III, were used in Babylonian medicine as "secret names" (Geheimnisnamen / Decknamen). Because this hypothesis has had such a pervasive influence on our understanding of Mesopotamian pharmacology (as well as the perception of it outside of Assyriology), the purpose of this paper is to examine the validity of the evidence offered to support it, while reflecting upon additional aspects that also contribute to the discussion. The results of this investigation conclude that the foundations upon which such theory was built are unsound. In particular, the aš-names of Uruanna III may have represented alternative names, word puns, synonyms, vernacular names, etc. (with the exact reason for their being collected in the same section still unclear), but do not provide evidence of a system of deliberately hidden names (Geheimnisnamen).
Patients and Performative Identities: At the Intersection of the Mesopotamian Technical Disciplines and Their Clients , 2020
The following essay is divided in two main parts. The first argues for an identification of the A... more The following essay is divided in two main parts. The first argues for an identification of the Akkadian plant sikillu (Sum., Ú.SIKIL) with Greek σκíλλα (Lat., scilla) by means of a comparative analysis of their linguistic characteristics, physical description, habitat, medicinal properties, and use in magic and purification rituals. From these multiple parallels, I suggest that Akkadian sikillu and Greek skilla are one and the same plant.
The identification leads to further observations shedding light on various aspects of both the Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman traditions, which I discuss in the second half of the essay. Here I suggest, for example, that early attested Greek uses of σκíλλα, such as in ritual cleansing or in Hippocratic womb therapy, may not necessarily be explained by concepts of “sympathy” or “antipathy”; instead, they could have developed out of Near Eastern practices involving the use of squill (sikillu) to purify and cleanse the insides of the body mechanically (as an evacuant). Hence, having acquired a reputation as a purifying agent (as its own name indicates), the squill would have also begun to be applied in a translated, prophylactic, or symbolic way to dispel more elusive or external evils such as general pollution, moral stains, grief, marginal persons, and the like, which is how it is employed in the early Greek tradition.
Magic and Medicine in Mesopotamia: Studies in Honor of Markham J. Geller. Edited by S. V. Panayotov and L. Vacin. Ancient Magic and Divination 14 (2018), pp. 446–461.
The present article explores the simple but important idea that a very precise method for describ... more The present article explores the simple but important idea that a very precise method for describing herbal remedies was in place prior to Theophrastus and that this system was not uniquely Greek, even though the two most prominent extant herbals were written by Greek authors. Rather, it shows how the structure adopted by Theophrastus (and probably by his predecessors) for plant descriptions was already in place in Mesopotamia at least five centuries earlier.
ANEToday, 2018
https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2018/05/Alchemy-Between-Two-Rivers
The text edited in this article is part of a series of four (and perhaps more) tablets, numbered ... more The text edited in this article is part of a series of four (and perhaps more) tablets, numbered I-IV, known as the pharmaceutical series Uruanna = maštakal,(1) from the first line of the composition, commonly shortened to Uruanna. The peculiarity of the section analyzed is that the right-hand column always begins with the sign AŠ (hence 'AŠ section') instead of a determinative, as would be expected.
This article explores some of the similarities and differences that characterize two comical figu... more This article explores some of the similarities and differences that characterize two comical figures of the ancient world – the Mesopotamian braggart known as the "aluzinnu" and the possibly equivalent Greek "alazon" – and it uses the resulting observations to strengthen the idea that at least some names of Babylonian medical ingredients, generally labelled as “Dreckapotheke” (excremental material or animal body parts), actually may have referred to real medicinal plants. As it happens, the ambiguity conveyed by this particular class of drug names, and exploited in the comical lines of the Aluzinnu-text, is not detected in the Greek parody of medicine. It is here suggested that this difference may be due to the fact that similar excremental medical ingredients were instead administered literally in Greek medicine.
Dissertation by Maddalena Rumor
This study set out to test the hypothesis that specific elements of Assyro-Babylonian medical the... more This study set out to test the hypothesis that specific elements of Assyro-Babylonian medical therapy were present in the medical/pharmacological literature of the Early Roman Empire (1st-2nd centuries CE), a hypothesis that had hitherto been unexplored by comparative scholarship.
The investigation was conducted by analysing the materia medica (versus other aspects, such as disease concepts or formal structure) of the two cultures, and in particular Dreckapotheke-ingredients, the medicinal efficacy of which is, physically speaking, inexplicable. In so doing, textual connections or interactions that could ultimately validate the research hypothesis were sought.
In the first chapter, the main objectives of the dissertation are introduced, the chronological and geographical boundaries of the sources delineated, and the term Dreckapotheke defined. Here the methodology of focusing on animal-based ingredients as a way around the major obstacles inherent in the field is discussed and justified, and finally a brief history of previous related scholarship is provided.
The next chapter (Ch. 2) sketches the main evidence for contacts and cross-cultural transmission of ideas between the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and the Greek and Roman world in order to provide a plausible context into which to situate the transfer of medical knowledge.
This is followed in Chapter 3 by some reflections about how scholars in Babylonia and in the Early-Roman Empire perceived and dealt with the ambiguity conveyed by Dreckapotheke-like ingredients. Nine case studies are then presented, in which the same (puzzling) medical ingredients are identified as being prescribed for the cure of the same symptoms in both Babylonian and Graeco-Roman therapeutical literature. The cases discussed are almost certainly not coincidental, justifying the theory of a transfer of traditional knowledge concerning the use of these drugs.
Next, an edition of the cuneiform pharmacological list Uruanna III, lines 1-143 (138) is provided in Chapter 4, as this list of drug names was a crucial tool to develop various hypotheses in the thesis. This text has previously been thought to be a list of secret names, but its analysis indicates that the redactors instead attempted to group together non-canonical/alias names of drugs as part of a large-scale project aimed at reorganizing and systematizing the nomenclature of pharmacological substances (which interpretation, it is pointed out, is corroborated by the colophon itself).
The fifth and final chapter concludes that similarities between Babylonian and Greek and Roman medicine are not only to be found in the general structure of the recipes or in a handful of more or less singular healing methods (as was previously argued), but also in the use of specific medical ingredients. Additionally, some elements of Babylonian medical knowledge are shown to have filtered into the West not only before the Greek Archaic period, as is usually believed, but also at a later date through other avenues. Finally, it is argued that some of the Dreckapotheke names found in Graeco-Roman medical compendia are likely to have reflected more ancient practices and traditions, in which these names were not to be interpreted literally, but rather were aliases of real medicinal plants. The implications of these findings are far reaching, and more discoveries await future research.
Other by Maddalena Rumor
This work is generously supported by the DFG-funded Cluster of Excellence Roots (Subcluster Knowl... more This work is generously supported by the DFG-funded Cluster of Excellence Roots (Subcluster Knowledge) and by the Inklusionsfonds at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel. Heartfelt thanks are due to the artists and institutions who allowed us permission to use their work and images from their archives, and to all contributors for their cooperation and efforts. Design: christophgeiger.com IMPRINT Bodies, Guts, Comparisons Ancient Egypt Africa Mesoamerica Comparing guts and East-Asian cultures: on the workings of the ars combinatoria China Anatomical images in Northern Song China Images of the digestive organs in Korea China and Japan in the modern Period The body maps of Master Yan Luo Japan An example of 17th-century Sino-European cross-cultural medical history Tibetan medicine Ming-Qing illustrations of the organs Yoga and Ayurvedic medicine in South Asia Arabic and Persian materials Hunter-fishers of Norway Greenland guts in ritual, myth and daily life Mesopotamia Roman-Etruscan materials Graeco-Roman antiquity Graeco-Roman medical cultures Gut scent-The smell of guts The ancient Stomachion, a Graeco-Roman guts-game Digital imaging and the history of medicine Medieval Europe Birth of modern anatomo-pathology Lightpainting art: der Kreislauf des Lebens Contemporary imaging techniques for medical purposes Contemporary guts Gut feelings The Gut / Der Darm Drawing breath >< Gut feelings Biographies CONTENTS EXPLORING THE INSIDE OF THE BODY THROUGH TIME AND SPACE The images and texts in this catalogue are testimony to a wonderful cooperative effort: the coming together of over thirty anthropologists, artists, and historians to explore the human body from a comparative angle. In fact, our focus is on one particular body part: the innards of the lower torso, what English-speakers sometimes call the "guts", and the way human beings have desired and attempted to learn about them, describe them, and represent them visually. The result of this work was the digital exhibition Comparative Guts (comparative-guts.net), which aimed at overcoming regional boundaries and cultural structures in order to provide space for testimony that was as varied as possible, no matter how particular and specific, far apart, or obscure and eccentric. Comparison and the "comparative disciplines", of course, never allow for straightforward, monolithic projects, and cannot be methodologically innocent in their goal to "make equal", comparare, different things. Comparison is never safe from applying a measure that is disadvantageous to some participants, flattening incommensurable differences, or oversimplifying complex networks of ideas and influences. These and other pitfalls led Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her 2003 Death of a Discipline, to speak of a demise of comparativism as an approach to the human world which divides it into neatly catalogued cultures, generally in translation, within a globalised whole. Instead, she proposed that the field be reshaped into one in which peripheries, local languages, and hybridisation between cultures assume the foreground. This criticism is not to be ignored, and these pitfalls must be a major concern for a project such as ours. Comparative Guts, with its focus on "image" and "body", attempted to address some of these issues in various ways: by questioning definitions of knowledge and who should be its repositories; disrupting the very concept of "image" as stably given and immediately and objectively evident to (primarily visual) perception; undermining the slicing of cultures into discrete regions and eras; and questioning the mapping of the animal body into recognisable, universal "parts".
Comparative Guts: Exploring the Inside of the Body through Time and Space, 2023
This is my contribution to “Comparative Guts: Exploring the Inside of the Body through Time and S... more This is my contribution to “Comparative Guts: Exploring the Inside of the Body through Time and Space,” a comparative virtual exhibition about the human body, and in particular about one body part, the ‘guts’. For these purposes, ‘guts’ refers to everything found inside the lower torso, the organs and parts traditionally linked to nutrition and digestion, but also endowed with emotional, ethical, and metaphysical significance, depending on the representation and narrative.
By offering access to culturally, socially, historically, and sensorially different experiential contexts, Comparative Guts allows the visitor a glimpse into the variety and richness of embodied self-definition, human imagination about our (as well as animal) bodies’ physiology and functioning, our embodied exchange with the external world, and the religious significance of the way we are ‘made’ as living creatures. This dive into difference is simultaneously an enlightening illustration of what is common and shared among living beings.
Exzellenzcluster Roots at CAU, Kiel
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Articles by Maddalena Rumor
Mesopotamian therapy during the 2nd–1st mill. BCE. It illustrates the nature of the medical ingredients employed, it shows how ancient Babylonians prepared and administered them, and describes the role of the two main health professionals of the day. The written sources, which constitute some of the most ancient evidence for organized pharmaceutical knowledge, archaeological evidence and the problems connected with their study are also examined throughout.
The identification leads to further observations shedding light on various aspects of both the Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman traditions, which I discuss in the second half of the essay. Here I suggest, for example, that early attested Greek uses of σκíλλα, such as in ritual cleansing or in Hippocratic womb therapy, may not necessarily be explained by concepts of “sympathy” or “antipathy”; instead, they could have developed out of Near Eastern practices involving the use of squill (sikillu) to purify and cleanse the insides of the body mechanically (as an evacuant). Hence, having acquired a reputation as a purifying agent (as its own name indicates), the squill would have also begun to be applied in a translated, prophylactic, or symbolic way to dispel more elusive or external evils such as general pollution, moral stains, grief, marginal persons, and the like, which is how it is employed in the early Greek tradition.
Dissertation by Maddalena Rumor
The investigation was conducted by analysing the materia medica (versus other aspects, such as disease concepts or formal structure) of the two cultures, and in particular Dreckapotheke-ingredients, the medicinal efficacy of which is, physically speaking, inexplicable. In so doing, textual connections or interactions that could ultimately validate the research hypothesis were sought.
In the first chapter, the main objectives of the dissertation are introduced, the chronological and geographical boundaries of the sources delineated, and the term Dreckapotheke defined. Here the methodology of focusing on animal-based ingredients as a way around the major obstacles inherent in the field is discussed and justified, and finally a brief history of previous related scholarship is provided.
The next chapter (Ch. 2) sketches the main evidence for contacts and cross-cultural transmission of ideas between the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and the Greek and Roman world in order to provide a plausible context into which to situate the transfer of medical knowledge.
This is followed in Chapter 3 by some reflections about how scholars in Babylonia and in the Early-Roman Empire perceived and dealt with the ambiguity conveyed by Dreckapotheke-like ingredients. Nine case studies are then presented, in which the same (puzzling) medical ingredients are identified as being prescribed for the cure of the same symptoms in both Babylonian and Graeco-Roman therapeutical literature. The cases discussed are almost certainly not coincidental, justifying the theory of a transfer of traditional knowledge concerning the use of these drugs.
Next, an edition of the cuneiform pharmacological list Uruanna III, lines 1-143 (138) is provided in Chapter 4, as this list of drug names was a crucial tool to develop various hypotheses in the thesis. This text has previously been thought to be a list of secret names, but its analysis indicates that the redactors instead attempted to group together non-canonical/alias names of drugs as part of a large-scale project aimed at reorganizing and systematizing the nomenclature of pharmacological substances (which interpretation, it is pointed out, is corroborated by the colophon itself).
The fifth and final chapter concludes that similarities between Babylonian and Greek and Roman medicine are not only to be found in the general structure of the recipes or in a handful of more or less singular healing methods (as was previously argued), but also in the use of specific medical ingredients. Additionally, some elements of Babylonian medical knowledge are shown to have filtered into the West not only before the Greek Archaic period, as is usually believed, but also at a later date through other avenues. Finally, it is argued that some of the Dreckapotheke names found in Graeco-Roman medical compendia are likely to have reflected more ancient practices and traditions, in which these names were not to be interpreted literally, but rather were aliases of real medicinal plants. The implications of these findings are far reaching, and more discoveries await future research.
Other by Maddalena Rumor
By offering access to culturally, socially, historically, and sensorially different experiential contexts, Comparative Guts allows the visitor a glimpse into the variety and richness of embodied self-definition, human imagination about our (as well as animal) bodies’ physiology and functioning, our embodied exchange with the external world, and the religious significance of the way we are ‘made’ as living creatures. This dive into difference is simultaneously an enlightening illustration of what is common and shared among living beings.
Exzellenzcluster Roots at CAU, Kiel
Mesopotamian therapy during the 2nd–1st mill. BCE. It illustrates the nature of the medical ingredients employed, it shows how ancient Babylonians prepared and administered them, and describes the role of the two main health professionals of the day. The written sources, which constitute some of the most ancient evidence for organized pharmaceutical knowledge, archaeological evidence and the problems connected with their study are also examined throughout.
The identification leads to further observations shedding light on various aspects of both the Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman traditions, which I discuss in the second half of the essay. Here I suggest, for example, that early attested Greek uses of σκíλλα, such as in ritual cleansing or in Hippocratic womb therapy, may not necessarily be explained by concepts of “sympathy” or “antipathy”; instead, they could have developed out of Near Eastern practices involving the use of squill (sikillu) to purify and cleanse the insides of the body mechanically (as an evacuant). Hence, having acquired a reputation as a purifying agent (as its own name indicates), the squill would have also begun to be applied in a translated, prophylactic, or symbolic way to dispel more elusive or external evils such as general pollution, moral stains, grief, marginal persons, and the like, which is how it is employed in the early Greek tradition.
The investigation was conducted by analysing the materia medica (versus other aspects, such as disease concepts or formal structure) of the two cultures, and in particular Dreckapotheke-ingredients, the medicinal efficacy of which is, physically speaking, inexplicable. In so doing, textual connections or interactions that could ultimately validate the research hypothesis were sought.
In the first chapter, the main objectives of the dissertation are introduced, the chronological and geographical boundaries of the sources delineated, and the term Dreckapotheke defined. Here the methodology of focusing on animal-based ingredients as a way around the major obstacles inherent in the field is discussed and justified, and finally a brief history of previous related scholarship is provided.
The next chapter (Ch. 2) sketches the main evidence for contacts and cross-cultural transmission of ideas between the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and the Greek and Roman world in order to provide a plausible context into which to situate the transfer of medical knowledge.
This is followed in Chapter 3 by some reflections about how scholars in Babylonia and in the Early-Roman Empire perceived and dealt with the ambiguity conveyed by Dreckapotheke-like ingredients. Nine case studies are then presented, in which the same (puzzling) medical ingredients are identified as being prescribed for the cure of the same symptoms in both Babylonian and Graeco-Roman therapeutical literature. The cases discussed are almost certainly not coincidental, justifying the theory of a transfer of traditional knowledge concerning the use of these drugs.
Next, an edition of the cuneiform pharmacological list Uruanna III, lines 1-143 (138) is provided in Chapter 4, as this list of drug names was a crucial tool to develop various hypotheses in the thesis. This text has previously been thought to be a list of secret names, but its analysis indicates that the redactors instead attempted to group together non-canonical/alias names of drugs as part of a large-scale project aimed at reorganizing and systematizing the nomenclature of pharmacological substances (which interpretation, it is pointed out, is corroborated by the colophon itself).
The fifth and final chapter concludes that similarities between Babylonian and Greek and Roman medicine are not only to be found in the general structure of the recipes or in a handful of more or less singular healing methods (as was previously argued), but also in the use of specific medical ingredients. Additionally, some elements of Babylonian medical knowledge are shown to have filtered into the West not only before the Greek Archaic period, as is usually believed, but also at a later date through other avenues. Finally, it is argued that some of the Dreckapotheke names found in Graeco-Roman medical compendia are likely to have reflected more ancient practices and traditions, in which these names were not to be interpreted literally, but rather were aliases of real medicinal plants. The implications of these findings are far reaching, and more discoveries await future research.
By offering access to culturally, socially, historically, and sensorially different experiential contexts, Comparative Guts allows the visitor a glimpse into the variety and richness of embodied self-definition, human imagination about our (as well as animal) bodies’ physiology and functioning, our embodied exchange with the external world, and the religious significance of the way we are ‘made’ as living creatures. This dive into difference is simultaneously an enlightening illustration of what is common and shared among living beings.
Exzellenzcluster Roots at CAU, Kiel