Lecture: Barbara Böck

Lexico-pharmacological cuneiform manuscripts: Thoughts on the tradition of Uruanna-mashtakal

Professor Dr Barbara Böck (Institute for Mediterranean and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures)

Sometime in the second half of the 7th century BCE the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal decided to issue a new edition of the lexico-pharmaceutical treatise Uruanna. The title comes from its first word, which is a plant name meaning literally ‘plant whose place is in heaven’. If we believe this statement which is unique among all the colophons produced in the king's scriptorium, Ashurbanipal wrote the treatise himself. In this paper we reconstruct the alleged state-of-the-art of the cuneiform manuscripts which might have led Ashurbanipal to engage in the extensive editorial work, analyse the tradition of the different manuscripts, and discuss their structure and possible use.