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  • Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine
  • John A. C. Greppin
H. F. J. Horstmanoff and M. Stol, eds. Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine. Leiden, Brill Academic Press, 2004. xv, 407 pp. $148.

For over a half century, scholars have earnestly attempted to show a link between ancient Mesopotamian medicine and early Hippocratic thinking. This effort has accelerated in the last half century with the growth of known Akkadian texts, including abundant translations, and with an increase in relevant archeological and linguistic materials. Linguistic loan relations between the two cultures are clear, with the Greek language revealing deposits from Mesopotamian speech. The Greek word for the horn, kéras, cognate with Latin cornu, for example, is a loan word from the Semitic *KRN (Hebrew, keren); and the Greek kánnabis is from the Sumerian KANIBU, hemp, via Akkadian and perhaps Scythian. Evidence for cultural contacts from at least the second millennium cannot be denied. In addition, there are clear parallels between the Babylonian and Greek creation myths, in which the Akkadian Apsu and Tiamat correspond almost exactly to the archaic Greek gods Oceanus and Tethys and are included in a wider succession myth. This much is sure.

The purpose of Horstmanoff and Stol's collection of essays is to explore the medical relationship to see if the Mesopotamian world had any influence on Hippocratic medicine. It is, on its surface, a difficult task, since Hippocratic medicine is overwhelmingly scientific in approach, while Mesopotamian medicine is largely magical. Yet there are certain parallels. An Akkadian clay model of the liver dating from the eighteenth century BCE with cuneiform inscriptions has a shape and format most similar to an Etruscan bronze liver with Etruscan writing from the third century BCE. Indeed the Latin term for a hepatoscopist, haruspex, is joined by loan with a Sumerian ideogram, ĤAR, "seer of liver"—good evidence for Mesopotamian medical contact with the classical world.

We might look back to Asclepius, a primal god of medicine, to see if he provides a link between Mesopotamian medicine and later Hippocratic thinking. And though Asclepian medicine has elements of magical [End Page 217] thought, e.g., the resurrection of the dead, it lacks any reference to Hippocratic principles. The Mesopotamians derived illness from external forces, "Gods, demons, insects, wind" (Gellar, in Horstmanoff and Stol, p. 16), while Hippocratic thought posited a system of four humors that created illness through imbalances in the qualities of hot, cold, wet, and dry. One might consider the possibility of an Egyptian influence, since Egyptian culture made a great impression on the Greeks. But beyond admiration, little evidence of that influence can be found (David, in Horstmanoff and Stol, p. 133). Though the Babylonians made vague attempts at a materia medica, their intentions were not scientific. Their materia medica was used to influence the body in a religio-magical way, rather than physically. In addition, the Babylonians left nothing that was systematic. Even the eleventh-century Babylonian Diagnostic Handbook, a text that lent itself to systematization, showed only an approach similar to a divinatory text (Heessel, in Horstmanoff and Stol, p. 97). One might also hunt for parallel traditions originating from or transferred by Minoan and Mycenaean medicine. Arnott doubts that Hippocratic medicine could have been wholly original, but states that it must have reflected a "systemizing of an original body of medicine" (Arnott, in Horstmanoff and Stol, p. 170). Yet no such evidence exists.

The problem is exasperating. No one is comfortable with the idea that Hippocratic medicine grew singularly, by itself. Yet no one can find anything in any culture that predicts it. Just as Greek grammar, which influences us to this day, grew solely from the Greek tradition, so perhaps a systematic materia medica grew from a great archaic Greek mind, but certainly not from Mesopotamia.

John A. C. Greppin
Program in Linguistics, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio 44115.

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