Monday, 22nd January 2007
Prof. Mark Geller (University College London)
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF BIBLICAL-TALMUDIC MEDICINE
This lecture will concentrate on medicine contemporary with the Bible, from Mesopotamia, which provides the most complete evidence of medical and healing practices of that time. Passing reference will be made to Talmudic medicine, which also reflects earlier Mesopotamian medicine. The evidence presented will be from actual cuneiform medical tablets and iconography.
Professor Mark Geller is Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at University College London, in which capacity he has organized many conferences and lectures. Although specializing in Assyriology, he is particularly interested in texts on magic and medicine composed in Sumerian, Akkadian and Aramaic. These texts are found on cuneiform tablets (Sumerian and Akkadian), ceramic bowls (Jewish Aramaic magic bowls from Mesopotamia), and in the Babylonian Talmud, which contains a large amount of information on therapy from the second to fifth centuries AD. He has spent the past year in Paris on a grant from the Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine, working on ancient Babylonian medicine.
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