Melothesia in Babylonia: Medicine, Magic, and Astrology in the Ancient Near East

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Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 10.11.2014 - 112 Seiten

This monograph begins with a puzzle: a Babylonian text from late 5th century BCE Uruk associating various diseases with bodily organs, which has evaded interpretation. The correct answer may reside in Babylonian astrology, since the development of the zodiac in the late 5th century BCE offered innovative approaches to the healing arts. The zodiac—a means of predicting the movements of heavenly bodies—transformed older divination (such as hemerologies listing lucky and unlucky days) and introduced more favorable magical techniques and medical prescriptions, which are comparable to those found in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and non-Hippocratic Greek medicine. Babylonian melothesia (i.e., the science of charting how zodiacal signs affect the human body) offers the most likely solution explaining the Uruk tablet.

 

Inhalt

Globalisation of Knowledge
1
I The Uruk taxonomy SBTU I 43
3
II Uruk Astral Magic BRM 4 20 and BRM 4 19
27
Before the Zodiac
47
IV Ancient Aramaic and Greek Parallels
69
V Astrological Interpretation of SBTU I 43
73
VI Melothesia
77
VII Concluding Hypothesis
91
Modern Reflections
95
Indices
97
Urheberrecht

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Autoren-Profil (2014)

Mark Geller, Free University, Berlin.

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