The human body has not changed significantly during recorded history—we share sensory faculties, metabolism, sexuality, aging, and mortality with even our distant ancestors. Concepts of body and self, on the other hand, evolve as cultural and historical constructs that vary widely between time and place. Drawing upon ancient texts and visual representations, Ulrike Steinert discusses how categories of “body” and “mind” were construed in Mesopotamia more than three thousand years ago and will consider social aspects of the body at the intersection of cultural norms, ideals, and gender.
Ulrike Steinert, Research Associate, Babylonian Medicine, Department of History and Cultural Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
Presented by Harvard Museums of Science & Culture in collaboration with the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
Recorded September 19, 2017
Transcript
[00:00:11.48] See, some people like long introductions and believe in them. I do not. I would much rather hear what the speaker has to say. So I will keep it short.
[00:00:23.04] Our body is a constant in history. Biologically, we are, mostly anyway, indistinguishable from our ancestors who lived 4,000 years ago. Our physical functions and, hopefully, intellectual faculties have remained unchanged across time and culture.
[00:00:39.99] Our perception of body and self, on the other hand, is in constant flux. Changing views on gender and race and body and mind have guided the course of history.
[00:00:50.78] Engaging with concepts of body and self in time and across space allows us to pose fundamental questions about ourselves and the society we live in, and to address what is nature and what is culture.
[00:01:04.46] This is a point that I hope to impress upon my wonderful students in the class that I'm currently teaching in the Harvard College program in general education on ancient society called Ancient Lives. They're here tonight.
[00:01:16.32] Our lecture is part of their learning activity, in which we think about and deal with key aspects of human culture and development over time.
[00:01:25.64] To help us address that fascinating topic, we're fortunate to have with us one of the most foremost scholars of ancient mind and body, Dr. Ulrike Steinert, senior researcher at the Babylonian Medicine Project on the European Research Council, which is hosted by the Freie Universitat in Berlin.
[00:01:45.23] With a team of about a dozen researchers, she's currently working on the first comprehensive study of Babylonian medical science. At the same time they're making the largest collection of medical texts known from before Hippocrates available to a wider public. This is bound to affect the ways we write about medical history and the history of science and philosophy more broadly.
[00:02:08.23] Dr. Steinert has an MA in Assyriology and social anthropology from Berlin, and her PhD is in Assyriology from the University of Gottingen. She was a fellow in medical history at the Welcome Trust of University College London for several years before moving back to Berlin and the Babylonian Medicine Project.
[00:02:27.85] Dr. Steinert's research focuses on women's health, body, and gender in particular. She combines linguistic, historical, and comparative perspectives, using her dual background in Assyriology and social anthropology to produce some of the most compelling analyses of ancient concepts of self and identity.
[00:02:46.56] Her 2012 monograph entitled Aspects of Being Human in Ancient Mesopotamia, or at least that's the English translation, comprises the first detailed investigation of Babylonian concepts of personhood.
[00:02:58.09] She examines the characteristic attributes attached to human beings in Mesopotamia and looks at notions of the person as a composite of body and parts, the self, and elements of personhood that we might call souls.
[00:03:10.64] She expounds upon problems of self-obligation and self-consciousness, and looks at issues of personal autonomy, intellect, and reason, situating them in a social setting of pride, fame, honor, and shame.
[00:03:25.16] These are some of the topics that Dr. Steinert will also address with us tonight in her wonderfully named talk on Cracking Bones, Gnawing Flesh, and Pondering Hearts. So, without further delay, please join me in welcoming our speaker this evening, Dr. Ulrike Steinert.
[00:03:40.02] [APPLAUSE]
[00:03:49.81] Good evening, and thank you very much for the kind introduction and for having me here tonight. It's a very exciting and wonderful experience to be here.
[00:04:00.91] Ladies and gentlemen, more than any other discipline in the history of science, medicine has striven and struggled to understand the body and the processes of life, sickness, and decay, to uncover the nature and causes of diseases befalling the body, to cure them or to alleviate pain and suffering.
[00:04:25.91] It is only by looking back in time at the earliest records of this very struggle that we can fully appreciate the sophistication of today's medical knowledge and the immense progress of medicine in the last 150 years.
[00:04:43.85] At the same time, looking at the ancient history of medicine makes us aware of the common foundations of human existence, that we still share the same bodily makeup and struggle with many similar health problems as people in the past.
[00:05:01.88] On the other hand, ancient views of the body also show us that our own concepts have had a long history, characterized both by long-term traditions as well as by revolutionizing discoveries and changes.
[00:05:19.47] Comparing ancient and modern body concepts and recognizing how considerably they vary across cultures and different periods makes us aware how deeply body concepts are shaped by culture.
[00:05:35.26] In my talk today, I would like to introduce you to the world of ancient Mesopotamian medicine and to its views of the body as they can be grasped from texts and other sources produced between 4,000 and 2000 years ago.
[00:05:52.99] In doing so, I would like to trace both culture-specific aspects as well as elements of medical thought that are common also in other medical cultures, past and present.
[00:06:06.21] But my aim is not only to trace ancient body concepts, but also to share with you some of the problems of decipherment and interpretation that we encounter analyzing ancient medical texts.
[00:06:20.89] Reconstructing ancient Mesopotamian body concepts and medical knowledge is often a challenging enterprise, not only because we are dealing with mostly fragmentary textual sources written in a totally different script and in extinct languages, but also because of cross-cultural differences in medical knowledge and in the perception of the body.
[00:06:46.78] My approach to the interpretation of textual sources is comparative. Thus, my aim is to link or contrast body concepts found in texts with visual representations and other artistic media. Second, I would like to elucidate Mesopotamian ways of seeing the body through cross-cultural comparisons.
[00:07:11.77] And to first give you an outline of my talk, first I will introduce a few key approaches or ideas that come from the social sciences and that can help us to elucidate ancient Mesopotamian concepts.
[00:07:28.21] Then I will give an overview of the ancient sources that we have to reconstruct medical thought and ideas of the body. Then I turn to the major components of the human person, the terms for the body in the ancient languages, and to aspects such as the mind.
[00:07:49.73] And then, in the fourth part of the lecture, I will turn to the main questions of, what did the ancients know about anatomy and physiology and the processes in the body?
[00:08:02.35] And fifth, I would like to share with you a few insights from my research of the last years dealing with women's health care texts, and ask how they portray processes in the female body, especially regarding conception and pregnancy.
[00:08:20.59] So let us start by asking the simple question, what is Mesopotamian medicine? Well, we can say it is a complex system of healing, embracing several aspects and strategies to health. It involves not only drug-based treatments and a few surgical interventions, but is often compared with strong religious and ritual aspects.
[00:08:49.20] And it would take into account not only the patient and his or her body, but also the environment, that is, the natural and the social world around him or her, which could also be inhabited not only by humans and animals, but also by powerful beings such as demons, gods, and ghosts.
[00:09:12.28] While the strong religious aspects of Mesopotamian medicine have triggered the question whether Mesopotamian medicine deserves the designation scientific at all. But I think we should not deny Mesopotamian medicine a place in the history of science, because it has developed several approaches which can be compared even with modern biomedicine.
[00:09:40.93] So this system of healing took into account also processes in the body and attributed causes of illness to processes in the body. And it did not cure every illness and disease with ritual or a prayer.
[00:09:58.60] And Mesopotamian medicine has developed a very systematic concept of healing. And also the texts display a very systematic approach to describing illness processes, which we can compare with modern medicine even today.
[00:10:21.08] So outlining a few approaches that can help us engage with Mesopotamian medicine, we have to say that in the last 50 years in the social sciences, we have seen something that has been called a somatic turn, which is connected with a critique of the Western body and mind dualism , which is deeply entrenched in the history of science and also in biomedicine.
[00:10:53.16] And this dualism of body and mind goes back at least to Descartes, the philosopher Descartes, who described the mind as distinctively human, while the body was something we share also with animals, including sensations and passions.
[00:11:10.20] And he described the body as a machine, and this metaphor of the body as a machine has been very influential up to this day. Think only of the metaphor of the brain as a computer, or the computer as a brain.
[00:11:28.21] Now, in the medical anthropology and the anthropology of the body, there have been several approaches to studying body concepts. And these can be compared also with terms that we have for the body in the European languages.
[00:11:48.66] So one approach to the body is to see it as the body container enveloped by the skin. So the term body itself reaches back to old English, bodig, which is related to German, Bottich, which actually means vat or barrel or tub.
[00:12:07.71] The second aspect of the body is the lived body, that it is something that we live with and experience suffering, pain, emotions. And this aspect can be compared with the German term leib, which is related to the English term life, and entails the idea of the body as an individual having emotions and so on.
[00:12:33.49] Now, anthropology of the body has also noticed that the body is a cultural construct and product. Think only of techniques of the body, of cultivating the body, for instance in sports or cosmetics, which is also related to body ideals and norms, which also differ from culture to culture.
[00:13:00.86] Another aspect of the body is that it is often used as a cultural symbol to think about human society, and the other way around. The body can also be understood in terms of social phenomena.
[00:13:17.45] So to illustrate this, here are two representations. On the left side, you see a Hinduistic painting depicting the cow as the mother of the world. So the cow was the first being that was created in Hinduistic mythology. And here it is represented on his body, the parts of the cow's body, to show the divine pantheon.
[00:13:49.67] And on the right side of the slide you see an example which is closer to today's talk, which shows the different functions of the internal organs in terms of different administrative offices or household tasks that are performed in these organs.
[00:14:12.86] And the last very important approach to study body concepts comes from cognitive sciences, especially the conceptual metaphor theory developed by Lakoff and Johnson, who claim that the mind is deeply embodied. How we think and talk about ourselves and the world is connected to our bodily structures and how we interact with the world.
[00:14:40.65] And second, they noticed that how we think and talk about our bodies is fundamentally shaped by metaphors. And we can see this also in the world of medicine and in medical theory in general, past and present.
[00:14:56.79] So just as an example, think of the idea of viruses or diseases as an enemy force attacking the body. Or think of the idea of the body as a container, which is illustrated here on the right side of the slide, which comes from a Jewish medical manuscript and displays the function of different organs by comparing it with the rooms in a house and with the activities going on in the house.
[00:15:31.04] And another very important metaphor in medicine is the so-called body technologic, so that different processes in the body can be compared with different technologies that are used in various cultures.
[00:15:49.76] Now let me give you an overview of the ancient sources that are available for studying Mesopotamian body concepts and medical thought in general.
[00:16:01.52] First we have a huge corpus, quite an enormous corpus, of medical texts in cuneiform script. And we can divide these texts into several genres. So we have the diagnostic texts, which usually do not include therapies but describe bodily symptoms and give a diagnosis.
[00:16:25.55] Then we have therapeutic texts, which can be divided into medical prescriptions. And we have a large corpus of incantations and rituals, and sometimes these texts are combined with medical prescriptions.
[00:16:42.62] Then there are drugs compendia. These can be lists of plants and minerals, sometimes supplied with instructions how they are to be applied to the body. And last we have commentaries on medical compendia, which, for instance, give explanations on the meanings of words and expressions.
[00:17:08.97] And these texts come from the Mesopotamian heartland, mainly, which is Babylonia in the south, so around here. And texts come from various cities such as Babylon and Nippur and Uruk. And then we have Assyria in the north, and texts can come from places like Nineveh and Assur.
[00:17:39.28] And they were written over and copied over a long period of time, which also means that we encounter changes in the texts.
[00:17:50.85] Now medical cuneiform texts are attested in several formats, which also point to their use and practice. Here I have included in the slide a few examples of representative medical tablets. They are written on clay tablets.
[00:18:14.00] And we can divide them into recipe collections. He gave one example. These are huge compendia, usually on multi-column tablets. And they served as reference works for ancient healing specialists.
[00:18:31.34] Then we find excerpts, like the one on the left side. They just contain a few prescriptions or procedures. And they often contain hints that they were applied, that they were embedded in a practical application, so used for concrete healing events.
[00:18:59.09] And third we have student tablets, which belong into a school context, like the one in the middle. They are very small tablets, often. And sometimes you can recognize them by a clumsy script.
[00:19:16.87] But Moreover, we have other text genres written in cuneiform which often throw interesting light on concepts of healing and the body. So there's a huge genre of omens. So for instance, omens of extispicy, making predictions from the appearance of animal entrails.
[00:19:39.77] And there is teratology, so omens drawing on the appearance of monstrous or stillbirths among humans and animals. And there's physiognomy, so omens drawing on the appearance of the human body and human behavior.
[00:19:57.44] Then there's a large group of lexical lists, which can include lists of anatomical terms or disease terms. And also literary texts often deal with illness and health. And there are daily life documents, such as letters, among them letters written by healing professionals.
[00:20:19.80] And on the bottom of the slide you see another example of a piece of evidence, which are inscribed models of animal organs. Here you see inscribed livers. And their use points to a context in divination.
[00:20:40.59] But it is possible that the healing specialists also studied these materials. And we can be quite sure that they drew on the knowledge of animal anatomy and used them to interpret the human body and what's going on inside.
[00:21:03.78] But there are not only texts. We can also use, for instance, visual representations, such as these two examples here on the top of the slide, which, for instance, show healing rituals. Or we have apotropaic amulets, for instance, which were worn on the body for the purpose of healing.
[00:21:28.63] We have objects of material cultures, such as surgical instruments. And there's also evidence from paleopathology, which are mostly bones from Mesopotamians. So we have no mummies, like Egyptology has, to investigate ancient bodies.
[00:21:55.37] Now let us turn to the third part of the talk. And if we approach concepts of the human body, if we try to investigate them, let us first look at the terms in the Mesopotamian native languages for the body.
[00:22:12.57] So we have two main languages. The first is Sumerian. This is the most ancient language attested in Mesopotamia. And we have Akkadian, which is a Semitic language related, for instance, to Hebrew.
[00:22:27.89] Now, if we look as a start at the terms for the body in Sumerian, we notice that there are several terms. And they are often combined and set into parallelism, portraying the human body as a bipartite thing.
[00:22:48.32] So there's su or subar, body or outer form, which is often combined with sagdu or sag, head. And second there is alan, which means body form or statue, also combined often with sagdu head. And, on the other hand, subar, outer form, body, can be set in parallelism with sa, heart or inner body.
[00:23:19.97] And I have depicted on the bottom of the slides just the most archaic sign forms in cuneiform for these words in Sumerian. And especially the signs su and alan could be compared with the shape of the trunk.
[00:23:45.24] Now, in Akkadian there is also a wealth of terms for the body. I would like to point out pagru, which you can refer to the living body and the corpse. And zumru, which mainly refers to the living body. And there's siru, flesh, which can use parts per total for the whole body.
[00:24:07.19] All these terms are often equated with the word ramanu, which means self. So they stand parts per total for the person.
[00:24:17.12] And we find in Akkadian also parallel formulations, such as [INAUDIBLE], well-being of the flesh, and [INAUDIBLE], well-being of the heart, which stand, on the one hand, for physical health, and for emotional well-being.
[00:24:36.62] Now, these body terms often occur in descriptions of illness, suffering, and emotions, as is illustrated by this text here on the slide from a prayer for well-being, which says, "Removed shall be the sickness of my body. Driven away shall be the suffering or sighing of my flesh." And so on.
[00:25:04.84] Another way of describing the body is by listing several aspects or body parts. And these body parts often stand for the functions that are performed by these body parts.
[00:25:25.36] So they stand for aspects of the person, as you see here in this incantation against witchcraft, which says, "The witch has roared at me like a drum. She has seized my head, my neck, my skull. She has seized my seeing eyes, my walking feet, my knees which cross over obstacles. She has seized my load-bearing arms." And so on.
[00:25:52.42] Now, if we compare these descriptions of the body to depictions of human beings from Mesopotamia, we see different ways of depicting the body which are also connected to ideals of the human person.
[00:26:13.68] So on the right side of the slide you see two depictions from the Neo-Assyrian palaces. These are reliefs. And they put quite an emphasis on muscles, for instance. And here, a depiction of the Assyrian King.
[00:26:34.35] And these depictions, with their emphasis on muscles, can be connected with the ideal of the male body as a strong body with prowess and strength.
[00:26:51.72] On the other hand, we have these statues on the left side. These are votive statues devoted and dedicated to temples. And they do not focus on muscles, but rather on the smooth appearance of the skin and on certain gestures, like the folded hands, which stand for devotion and piety.
[00:27:15.75] And they can be linked to positive aspects such as shiny skin, purity, and devotion. And these statues would represent the person in the temple, and they would constantly pray to the gods.
[00:27:38.28] Now let me draw your attention to another interesting aspect of the body, which is the breath of life, expressed by the word napistu in Akkadian, which is related to Hebrew nephesh, breath and soul.
[00:27:55.41] So this word napistu not only means throat or breath, but also life or life force, and even living being or individual. So we have a range of meanings connected to this word.
[00:28:13.65] And humans and animals mainly possess this life force, and they are said to be provided with life. This life force is bestowed by the gods, who also can take it away. So napistu comes to an end upon death when the person dies.
[00:28:36.22] Now, interestingly, in contrast, for instance, to the creation myth in the Bible in the Genesis, the bestowing of breath is hardly ever encountered in Babylonian creation myths.
[00:28:50.31] Let us illustrate this with one Babylonian creation myth, where the creation of the first human being is described, which is the Atramhasis epic. Here we see a focus on mixing different ingredients and shaping the first human being.
[00:29:11.35] So the mother goddess, Nintu, mixes clay with the flesh and blood of a slain god. And the text says that the main characteristic of this god was his intelligence, temu.
[00:29:26.64] And the text also says that there is a divine aspect in the created human being. And we can speculate that this divine aspect is the spirit, etemmu, which seems to be related in this text to the drum, which may be a metaphor for the heartbeat. So the sign of the spirit and the living being would be the heartbeat.
[00:29:51.24] And this etemmu, spirit, would survive death. It would travel to the nether world, and it would be needed to be fed by the deceased's descendants. Otherwise, if it wasn't fed, it would turn into an evil ghost which could haunt the living.
[00:30:14.33] Another quite intriguing aspect of Mesopotamian body concepts is the idea of a sentimental body, namely, that inner organs are deeply connected with emotions and psychological processes. And in Akkadian texts we find a number of inner organ terms which are used to express or in which the emotions are situated.
[00:30:44.85] And I have included here a list of these terms, and they outline or illustrate an aspect of anatomical terminology, namely, that these words have several meanings. And thus it is often very difficult to find out the exact meaning such a term can have in a specific context.
[00:31:11.04] And what is interesting is that these organ terms are not specialized. They are not differentiated. So not one specific organ is connected with one specific emotions. They all are associated with a range of emotions between joy, anger, grief.
[00:31:34.98] Let me illustrate the multiplicity of meanings of inner organ terms with the word libbu, which, first, means heart. So we find references to the beating libbu in literary texts, which clearly denote the heart as an organ. But in many, many literary texts, the beating heart stands for fear and anxiety.
[00:32:04.32] Now, in the medical texts, the term libbu most of the time rather means stomach or belly, or, in other texts, womb, rather than heart.
[00:32:19.53] But then we encounter illness terms in the medical texts, such as hip libbi, heart-break which are deeply connected with psychological distress, and can be compared with the modern condition of depression even.
[00:32:38.56] And we see in the descriptions connected to this ailment, hip libbi, that they took into account also social factors involved in illness. So we find very often descriptions of symptoms such as suffering economic , losses, suffering from social conflict, being hated by other people.
[00:33:08.34] But now mental and psychological processes are not only connected with internal organs, but also with the self or the mind, temu, which we encountered in the Atramhasis epic already. So, for instance, activities like remembering or forgetting are connected to this temu, mind.
[00:33:34.69] Another interesting aspect is that some texts draw a connection between the skull, muhhu, and the mind, temu. That is, they observed a connection between injuries to the skull and loss of reason, derangement, or insanity, as illustrated by these two textural examples here.
[00:34:01.39] Now, the words, muhhu, can not only mean skull or brain-- and one could ask if they connected mental processes with the brain-- but it seems rather that the connection between the skull or brain and the mind relied on empirical observation rather than theoretical knowledge of the brain's functions.
[00:34:26.96] But what is interesting is that in the medical texts, the temu, mind, often occurs in connection with mental derangement or insanity, as is pointed out here by the examples from medical texts. And we notice that similar symptoms are connected with a range of different etiologies or diagnoses.
[00:34:55.79] So derangement of the mind could be caused, for instance, by a roaming ghost possessing the person. They could be caused by special demons. Here we have the wind demons. Or, it could be caused by wrath of a deity, or the personal god especially.
[00:35:19.25] However, there is an interesting text which is a disease taxonomy dating to the fifth century BCE, and it attributes illnesses to four different internal organs-- the heart, the stomach, the kidneys, and the lungs.
[00:35:39.81] And here it is striking that to the heart are attributed only what we would call psychological or neurological conditions, so heart-break which we encountered already-- which can be associated with depression-- and different types of epilepsy or seizures.
[00:36:03.17] Now, if we turn to the question, how are illness processes described in and represented in texts and visual representations, we notice that illness narratives written in the first person describe illness as a global phenomenon, involving several aspects which can range from loss of divine protection and personal deities, to loss of social status and respect, loss of economic means, moving over to psychological distress and mental disturbances, as well as a range of bodily symptoms which have a debilitating effect or can lead, in the worst case, to death.
[00:36:53.29] But on the other hand, visual representations of ill or sick persons are very limited and restricted only to a few representational forms. So usually ill persons are represented lying in bed, or are depicted for instance in a reed hut and are attended to by healing specialists, as you see here on the slide.
[00:37:23.73] Now let us turn to the question, what did they know about human anatomy and physiology? We have to say that of course their knowledge of the body and internal processes was limited and seems to us rather vague.
[00:37:38.67] So ancient Mesopotamian healers did not perform dissection of corpses. Neither did Mesopotamian culture perform mummification.
[00:37:53.64] So their knowledge of the body and internal processes stems mainly from medical practice itself, which relies on close observation of external symptoms and phenomena. And from these external observations they drew conclusions about what's going on inside the body.
[00:38:13.69] But we also know that they observed injuries and treated injuries. And moreover, they were aware of animal anatomy stemming from that knowledge connected with butchering and extispicy.
[00:38:30.86] The texts then describe a number of different substances and structures of the body, which can be divided into solid structures, fluid substances, and gaseous substances such as breath or wind.
[00:38:49.88] Solid structures were divided also into three sections. These are the bones. And then cord-like structures, which include veins, sinews, arteries, tendons, and nerves. And there are the flesh-like structures of the body, which can be equated mainly with internal organs and body parts.
[00:39:21.24] Now we notice in the anatomical terminology that Mesopotamian healers used a lot of metaphorical terms for the body parts. And here I show just a few examples.
[00:39:36.37] The first is [INAUDIBLE], which means pouch or bag, but it also can mean stomach or liver. And this reflects on the metaphor of the body as a container or the organ as an container.
[00:39:52.20] And it can be compared with medical illustrations stemming from other cultures, such as from Tibet. And you see here an illustration from a Tibetan manuscript which compares the gall bladder with a sack filled with spices.
[00:40:12.37] The second prominent metaphor for body part terms is that of the body as a house. And we encounter it in anatomical terms such as crossbeam of the belly or wall of the belly, which stand for the diaphragm.
[00:40:31.54] And a similar metaphor is again found in a Tibetan manuscript here, which compares the diaphragm with a silver curtain dividing two floors of the house, which stand for the upper trunk and the lower trunks, so chest and abdomen.
[00:40:53.68] And moreover, there seems to be a metaphor of the water clock, which can stand for the body and the human organism. So processes in the body were portrayed as a movement of fluids or a trickling down, a regular movement of fluids through the body.
[00:41:15.88] Similar metaphors are also encountered, for instance, in disease terms such as sasisa, straight bowels, which is a term for diarrhea, which can be compared with the normal appearance of the bowels, namely as coiled, which is also depicted, as here in this model of a sheep's colon.
[00:41:42.74] So the idea involved is that diarrhea is an opposite process of the normal process in the body, namely, that the fluids and food in the bowels would move slowly, whereas in diarrhea the straight bowels can be compared to a drainpipe with the water rushing through.
[00:42:06.99] And similar metaphors are found, then, in medical incantations, which are a rich treasure chest for illustrating and studying the body concepts.
[00:42:19.78] So here I would like to illustrate the prominent metaphor of the internal body as compared with rivers or canals, and with vessels or containers.
[00:42:31.44] The first incantation illustrates this very nicely. So the sick belly is compared with a closed up basket. Nothing can go in. The person cannot digest. But then this is also compared with bodies of water which do not move, like water in a well.
[00:42:51.69] And another important metaphor is that of the fermenting vat. And the fermenting vats is a container which has two openings, like the body itself, one at the top and one at the bottom.
[00:43:07.11] And it would be closed off at the bottom by a stopper, so that after fermentation the stopper could be removed and the fermented liquid would trickle out.
[00:43:21.06] And now, in indigestion the orifice of the belly is covered like a fermenting vat, whereas in diarrhea it is said that the stopper of the fermenting vat has popped out so there is an uncontrollable flowing out of fluids.
[00:43:45.98] I would like to close my talk with looking at the female body and how it is described and perceived in the texts. And we can find here as well a rich use of metaphors, which is encountered, for instance, in the terms for the womb.
[00:44:03.71] So we have in Sumerian a word, satur, which means uterus, and literally, inside of the cow pen or cow pen of the inside. And the word tur, which means pen, is also depicted in the archaic script by reed huts.
[00:44:26.84] And similar reed huts are also attested in contemporary art, where they are shown in the context of animal husbandry. And they have been interpreted as birthing huts for animals. So the womb was seen as the organ or a house of giving birth.
[00:44:49.40] The second prominent metaphor, again, is that of the womb as a container, which is entailed, for instance, in the term agarin, Sumerian again, which can mean beer mash container or crucible, and then also refer to substances such as sourdough or the fertile soil. But it also means womb or mother.
[00:45:12.73] And a similar idea is expressed in the cuneiform signs used to write this word, angarin, which is a combination of the sign for mother and of the sign tun, standing for bag or stomach.
[00:45:29.98] This idea is also reflected in cultural practices such as infant burials in pots, which is reminiscent of the position of the fetus in the uterus shortly before birth.
[00:45:46.22] Now I would like to turn to concepts connected to conception. So how did they portray the roles of men and women in conception? And the dominant idea found in Mesopotamian texts is that the man is the active agent.
[00:46:07.94] He engenders the baby with his semen, while the woman or her womb is like a passive receptacle. The womb has to open to receive the semen and then close up again to retain it, as is expressed in this text here.
[00:46:29.20] However, there are some hints that there is an alternative idea about conception as well, which is related to female fluids, so the idea that also women produced fluids in conception.
[00:46:46.78] And here we should add that there is no evidence that the Mesopotamians were aware of the ovaries and their function. So the idea of female fluids may relate to concrete experiences of fluids emitted by women during intercourse.
[00:47:09.55] And we can trace this idea maybe here in this text, which is a prescription for conception and fertility which prescribes a tampon of different ingredients inserted into the womb, which will have the effect that the woman will open up and get pregnant, but that she will also discharge fluids.
[00:47:34.27] And these fluids may also occur by allusion in an incantation for childbirth. Here we find the description that the baby is produced from the waters of intercourse.
[00:47:54.41] So the bone of the baby is created from these waters, and the rest of the baby's body is created from the flesh of the mother muscles, which probably refer to the mother's womb.
[00:48:10.46] But then the text goes on by describing two different oceans in which the baby dwells. So this is a reference for the amniotic fluid. But the text refers to two different ocean, which have a gendered aspect to them.
[00:48:29.48] So one is the freshwater ocean, which is male, and the second is the saltwater ocean, which is female. And in a creation myth, the Babylonian epic of creation, it is from these two oceans and their mingling, their unity, that the whole cosmos started.
[00:48:52.51] So they were the first aspects of the cosmos, and from their sexual union everything else was created. So we may see here an allusion to the fluids of man and woman having a contribution to conception.
[00:49:12.47] And there's also an ideal of female semen, which is not only found in Mesopotamia but also in the Jewish tradition, for instance. And this is alluded to in another incantation against a disease affecting the lower extremities.
[00:49:29.26] And here the disease is compared with a plant, and it is wished that its roots may wither, its trunk may dry out, but that also its semen may dry out like that of an infertile woman.
[00:49:47.45] And last but not least, how did they conceptualize pregnancy and gestation? So gestation is described as the shaping of the fetus. And this is an action of the woman, so the real female contribution to the creation of the baby.
[00:50:10.49] And this incantation here on the slides seems to conceptualize conception and pregnancy as a sort of division of labor. So we have here a god impersonating the male aspect, which cultivates the field and seeds his semen into the furrow. And field and furrow are clearly metaphors for the womb.
[00:50:40.34] Whereas the woman here makes the seed sprout and creates or shapes the offspring. So we see here a comparison of the female powers to create with Mother Earth, with the fertile earth.
[00:50:57.77] So we see here a rich agricultural metaphor involved in this description. But agricultural analogies are not the only ones in connection with pregnancy. We also find a comparison of pregnancy with other production processes, such as metallurgy, or with baking and pottery production.
[00:51:24.44] So the womb can be compared with a pottery oven. And this relates also back to myths such as we have seen in Atramhasis, where the first human being is shaped from clay as the main substance.
[00:51:44.03] So after this tour through Mesopotamian medical texts, let us sum up and ask, what does Mesopotamian medicine contribute to the history of medicine as science, and what can we still learn today from these texts?
[00:52:01.97] Although the religious components of Mesopotamian medicine are in fact strong, I hope to have shown that this medical system nonetheless deserves a place in the history of medicine as science, because Mesopotamian medicine has also strong empirical elements, because it developed a complex and systematic classification of diseases, and also because it developed some theoretical approaches to understanding the body through metaphors, which are similar to and can be compared with theories in the history of Western medicine, beginning with the Greeks and up to modern biomedicine.
[00:52:49.49] So the metaphors and body concepts we encountered do not only deeply reflect the life world specific to ancient Mesopotamia. We have seen that some of these metaphors are shared cross-culturally, or reflect common themes in the history of medicine.
[00:53:11.16] But at the same time, we have seen that these body concepts and metaphor have developed throughout history in accordance with broader cultural changes.
[00:53:22.00] And I think another aspect is that what we can learn from the ancient Mesopotamian approaches to healing is its holistic understanding of health and illness. Thus, they understood bodily and psychological processes as deeply linked.
[00:53:43.02] And they were also aware of social factors of illness, especially in connection with psychological conditions. And this is a factor that still sometimes in modern biomedicine tends to get neglected.
[00:54:01.71] Thank you very much for your attention.
[00:54:04.41] [APPLAUSE]