The logo of the Melammu Project

The Melammu Project

The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East


  The Melammu Project
  
   General description
   Search string
   Browse by topic
   Search keyword
   Submit entry
  
   About
   Open search
   Thematic search
   Digital Library
   Submit item
  
   Ancient texts
   Dictionaries
   Projects
   Varia
   Submit link
  FAQ
  Contact us
  About

  The Newsletter
  To Project Information >

 

Talmudic medical recipes (7)

Printable view
Topics (move over topic to see place in topic list)

05 Scientific knowledge and scholarly lore




05 Scientific knowledge and scholarly lore



Keywords
Jews
medicine
Mesopotamia
Period
Neo-Assyrian Empire
Channel
Jewish philosophers and scholars
Neo-Assyrian texts


Text
The text of the recipe in Gittin 68b:
“For blood of the head let him take cypress, myrtle, poplar, olive, grass and marsh grass (ḥylpy dymˀ) and he dries it. He should boil them together (or: equally) and should place 300 “cups” on one side of the head and 300 cups on the other side (of the head).”

The first symptom begins the series at the head, which is the common format to both Akkadian symptom lists in the Diagnostic Handbook as well as the treatise of Diagnosis in the Hippocratic corpus. Nevertheless, as a symptom ‘blood in the head’ is obtuse, since it is unclear what the condition might be. More common in Akkadian symptoms is fever of the head (or brain), perhaps to be related to Greek phrenitis ‘brain fever’, but nowhere is blood of the head attested either in Diagnostic Handbook or the Hippocratic treatise on Diagnosis. The closest Akkadian parallels occur in the Diagnostic Handbook 20: “if a man’s head contains fluid”. Cf. also 20.26 “if his head has convulsions” (šumma qaqqassu idammu, from Akkadian damû “to have convulsions”), which might suggest that the Talmudic text should be understood in the same way.

Each of the ingredients in the recipe has an Akkadian cognate. The plants cypress, tamarisk, and myrtle occur together within Akkadian recipes, although no exact duplicate to the Aramaic recipe can be adduced. Similarly, other Akkadian recipes refer to elpetu ‘grass’ and elpetu mê purki, ‘grass of stagnant water’, corresponding here to Aramaic ḥylpˀ and ḥylpy dymˀ. Ingredients in Akkadian recipes are regularly mixed ‘equally’ (malmališ), similar to the Aramaic terms bhdy hddy.


Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 68b
Diagnostic Handbook (Akkadian) 20

Bibliography

Geller 2000, 16-17Geller, Mark J. “An Akkadian Vademecum in the Babylonian Talmud.” In: S. Kottek and M. Horstmanshoff (eds.). From Athens to Jerusalem. Medicine in Hellenized Jewish Lore and in Early Christian Literature. Rotterdam: Erasmus Publishing 2000, 13-32.

Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (1)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (2)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (3)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (4)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (5)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (6)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (8)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (9)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (10)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (11)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (12)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (13)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (14)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (15)
Cf. Talmudic medical recipes (16)
Cf. Talmudic nosebleed recipes (1)
Cf. Talmudic nosebleed recipes (2)

Mark Geller


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000954.php


Illustrations
No pictures


^
T
O
P