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Two comments of the Talmudic scholar Abaye concerning diet and regimen are based upon puns in Akkadian. These occur in a statement by Abaye in Keth. 10b, in the context of a discussion in Hebrew regarding when it is a good time to eat dates (morning and afternoon, but not noon). Eating dates before ‘bread’ (a meal) is like an ‘axe (nrgˀ) to a date palm’, and after ‘bread’ (a meal) is like ‘a door bolt’. Why should eating dates on an empty stomach be like ‘an axe to a date palm’? Abaye’s point is that eating dates will cause indigestion, make one throw up, or have diarrhea, etc. Why an axe to a palm tree? There are three Akkadian words which are homonyms and hence form a pun: the word ‘aru’ means ‘frond of a date palm’, while the homonym word ‘arû’ means ‘to cut branches’, and can refer specifically to a date palm. A third homonym ‘aru’ means to ‘vomit’. There may also be an association with Akkadian erû, ‘bronze’ alluding to a bronze axe, since the pun was already used in an Akkadian commentary on a medico-magical text dealing with childbirth. The commentary notes, urudu = e-ru-u a-na a-re-e, ‘copper (or bronze) for ‘conceiving’ (erû), although the pun here includes several other possibilities for arû. The second part of Abaye’s proverb is less comprehensible, but it relies upon an Akkadian term for the anus as a ‘door’ or gate (bāb šuburri). Eating dates after a meal causes constipation, described here metaphorically as ‘bolt for the door’ (ˁbrˀ ddšˀ), with ‘door’ being a euphemism for ‘anus’. In this vein, Akkadian sikkuru ‘bolt’ derives from a root sekēru ‘to be stopped up’, referring to parts of the body in the medical texts. Hence, Abaye was using a play on words which makes little sense when translated into Aramaic, without recognising the Akkadian idioms.
Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Babylonian Talmud, Kethuboth 10b
Bibliography
| Geller 2004, 19-20 | Geller, Mark J. Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud. Preprint 259. Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte 2004. [PDF] |
Mark Geller
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