Ancient Near East
Mesopotamian Medicine and Religion: Current Debates, New Perspectives
By , Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge (June 2008)
Sections: Ancient Near East
Subjects: Ancient Near East Religions, Historiography, Archaeology, History, Study of History, Religion, Anthropology, Medicine, Mesopotamian Studies.
Period: 3500 BCE - 1 CE.
Key Topics: purity, historians, health , inscriptions.
Abstract
The study of Mesopotamian medicine, while unprecedentedly productive, is stuck in a historiographical rut that cognate disciplines left some years ago. I review the current state of the field from a peripheral vantage point and use case studies from Sumerian literature and Neo-Assyrian royal letters to exemplify alternative approaches that do not sacrifice philological rigour for anthropological attention to socio-intellectual context.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2008.00082.x
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