(with Maddalena Rumor) Near Eastern Origins of Graeco-Egyptian Alchemy, in K. Geus, M. Geller, Esoteric Knowledge in Antiquity, Berlin, MPIGW Preprints, 2014 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Wiener Offene Orientalistik 6 (Wien 2011), 49-70, 2011
In ancient Mesopotamia, "the whole of its "science" consists in the enumeration and classification of all natural and cultural entities". (M. Civil 1995(M. Civil : 2305 [0] Those who work in any field of the humanities are well aware of the alleged gap between the two academic cultures: the natural sciences-which are the socalled -hard sciences‖-and the broad field of historical, philological, and social research. Since C.P Snow's famous work The Two Cultures, which deals with the deplorable breakdown in communication between the sciences and the humanities, 1 much ink has been spilled in the attempt to fill this gap. In the humanities and cultural studies the result has often been an apologetic attitude, with some scholars mimicking the hermeneutics and the methods of -hard science.‖ Similar and connected is the still prevailing opinion that with regard to Antiquity we should differentiate between materials related to the fields of -magic‖ and -religion‖ on the one side, and more rational, pre-scientific approaches on the other. 2 Consequently, even today the often truly empirical methods of ancient Mesopotamian scholars are, to a larger extent, still ignored and the glory developing scientific method is credited exclusively to the Greek. Indeed, works of divination, -mantic texts,‖ do form the largest body of Mesopotamian scholarly endeavour extant. But if we presuppose a dichotomy between magic-religious and -pre-scientific‖ texts, we will end with a misinterpretation of our sources. This short article attempts to shed some light on ancient Mesopotamian -epistemic cultures.‖ 3 One of its aim is to improve our understanding of why and how the written tradition Once again I am grateful to Craig Crossen who edited this paper and made my Englishhopefully -understandable.
The ancient scholar at work – Some glimpses from the ancient Near East
This short essay aims to provide a few glimpses into the life of scholars in ancient Mesopotamia. What we focus on here, in particular, are textual sources that highlight his or her work ethics, tasks and aspirations. It is not the intention in this paper to discuss every aspect in the life of scholars in the ancient Near East, since a thorough study would go far beyond the scope of this paper. 1 It is, nonetheless, important to highlight certain key aspects, which set apart the Mesopotamian scholar from a common scribe engaged in tasks such as performing administrative duties or drafting letters. Some of these key aspects are vividly described in the well-known Autobiography of the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, in which the king states as follows: 2 I learnt the lore of the wise sage Adapa, the hidden secret of all scribal art. I can recognize celestial and terrestrial omens (and) discuss (them) in the assembly of the scholars. I can deliberate upon (the series) " (If) the liver is a mirror (image) of heaven " with able experts in oil divination. I can solve complicated multiplications and divisions which do not have an (obvious) solution. I have studied elaborate composition(s) in obscure Sumerian (and) Akkadian which are difficult to get right. I have inspected cuneiform sign(s) on stones from before the flood, which are cryptic, impenetrable (and) muddled up. This famous statement is suitable to set the stage. The king portrays himself as a devout scholar capable of reading obscure inscriptions, deliberate upon difficult treatises, and engage in scientific discourse with other experts. How much of this account is mere fiction, to what extent the king received an education that allowed him to excel in these tasks, has been subject of I would like to thank the organisers of the colloquium Écriture, Pouvoir, Légitimité, Affichage culturel, politique et identitaire en Orient & Méditerranée. IIIe millénaire av. – IIe millénaire ap. J.-C., Paris, 6–7 October 2016, for offering to publish my paper in the colloquium's proceedings. Much of the work for this study benefited from my participation in the project " Episteme als Konfigurationsprozess: Philologie und Linguistik im 'Listenwissen' des Alten Orient " (under direction of E. Cancik-Kirschbaum and J. Klinger, Freie Universität Berlin) within the framework of SFB 980 " Episteme in Bewegung. " A comparative study, investigating scholarly work in Egypt and Mesopotamia is currently being published (Cancik-Kirschbaum and Kahl 2018). Abbreviations in this study follow those of CDLI (http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/abbreviations\_for\_assyriology). For primary sources referred to in footnotes, the respective entry in the database of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI;
Scholarship and Inquiry in Early Mesopotamia
Thousands of texts documenting the activities of scribes and scholars that shed light on the social context of scholarship and scientific inquiry survive from the first half of Mesopotamian history (c. 3400 BC to c. 1600 BC). Since these texts provide ample evidence that scholarship occupied a central place in Mesopotamian culture and society during the period in question, examining their content is essential to reconstructing what can be known about scientific knowledge and practice in the ancient world. In this chapter some of this evidence will be considered in order to present a modest overview of the social position and intellectual processes of knowledge acquisition and inquiry during the first phase of Mesopotamian history and to address preliminarily some of the many questions that can be asked about scholarship and inquiry in early Mesopotamia. Textual sources relating to scholarship and inquiry in early Mesopotamia come from nearly all of the major historical periods from the invention of writing at Uruk (ca.3400 BC) until the end of the Old Babylonian Period (ca.2000–1595 BC), when the city of Babylon was conquered by the Hittite king Mursili I. 1 Since the texts from the main periods vary in quantity and type, and provide different forms of evidence for scholarly and intellectual practices for each period, as well as for continuity and changes in these practices over time, it is essential to consider them from a diachronic perspective. The conventional terms for the historical periods and sub-periods as they will be referred to throughout the chapter and the approximate dates assigned to them are as follows:
Masters' writings and students' writings: school material in Mesopotamia (2012)
By nature, school drafts of Mesopotamia were meant to destruction. But, thanks to clay support of writing and ancient recycling practices, they reached us in vast amount. These school tablets were mainly produced along a quite short period, between 18th and 17th century B.C. They contain principally exercises for learning writing, Sumerian language and mathematics. These sources bear witness of phenomena linked with those which are examined in this book: change of knowledge medium, from memorisation to writing; standardisation processes, notably in the field of writing and metrology, in which scribe schools played a key part; emergence of a set of ideological references specifically linked to a scholar milieu. This contribution relies on school sources, particularly mathematical ones, in order to bring to light some aspects of these phenomena. In particular, it endeavours to identify authors, users, function and status of different types of mathematical writings produced in the context of scribal schools.