The function of canonization in the transmission of knowledge in Mesopotamia

Project leader: Prof. Dr. Annette Warner (Imhausen)

The study focuses on ancient oriental knowledge cultures. With the invention of cuneiform writing towards the end of the 4th millennium BC, the systematic recording and transmission of written knowledge began in Mesopotamia. The transmission of cuneiform writing and the associated fields of knowledge (e.g. divination, medicine, mathematics, astrology and astronomy, the art of ritual and incantation) was the responsibility of comprehensively trained scribes who possessed specialist knowledge and belonged to the social elite. Over the course of 3,000 years, an extensive corpus of scholastic and scholarly texts emerged, providing insight into the professional and educational practices of Mesopotamian experts. These collections of knowledge were predominantly found in the context of palace and temple libraries and expert houses, which indicates that both the training of the experts and the exercise of their activities took place within an institutional framework (royal court, temple, private houses of scholars).

The project, which is based on the evaluation of previously published knowledge texts, is concerned with the conditions under which Mesopotamian knowledge cultures were formed and examines their bearers and the special features of knowledge transfer. Of central importance are the formal orders that played a role in the creation, collection, maintenance and transmission of written knowledge. It is examined whether the texts contain standardizations, what types of standardizations are involved and what purpose they served. This involves a) the structure of lexical lists according to graphic, phonological, lexical-semantic and content-related criteria, as well as the occurrence of list-like arrangements in other text genres used by the experts; b) the casuistic structure of the text collections from the disciplines of law, medicine and divination; c) the canonicity of the cuneiform texts (fixed sequence of clay tablets within a series, special textual features and other standardizations that distinguish these tablets) and d) the canonization of knowledge, i.e. the adoption of authoritative writings in the curricula. This raises the question of whether membership of the canon was determined by the palace or temple institutions and their interests. In these cases, local and temporal differences in the curricula could reflect power-political and religious relationships and their changes.

First of all, the project created an overview of the chronological development of the knowledge texts (What kind of texts are they? How are they structured? To which scientific disciplines do they belong?) The starting point was the time of the invention of cuneiform writing (around 3200 BC). In addition to economic texts, (lexical) lists of concepts and topics were already created in this early phase, which are sorted either according to the form or sound structure of individual characters or according to factual content criteria and offer the earliest indications of the conscious organization and transmission of scholarly knowledge. Closely linked to the chronological development of knowledge texts is the question of the places where knowledge was passed on and the experts involved.

Since the use of lexical lists was of considerable importance for the transmission of knowledge throughout the entire existence of the Mesopotamian cuneiform culture, these form a further focus of research. In this context, the Sumerian-Akkadian bilingualism of scribal training and the functioning of cuneiform as a combined word/syllabic script must be taken into account, which shaped the thinking of scholars and led to a particular hermeneutic.

The study of paradigmatic case collections from the disciplines of law, medicine and divination (according to Jim Ritter “rational practice texts”) began at the workshop “Procedural Texts in Egypt and Mesopotamia” (July 2-4, 2010 at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften in Bad Homburg), which took place as part of Research Project 3 “Procedural Texts in the Development, Preservation and Communication of Expert Knowledge”.

Mesopotamian scientific texts from the second half of the second millennium have so far been found in Mesopotamia itself in rather small numbers. A considerable number of texts in Akkadian and Sumerian originate from the neighboring Syrian-Anatolian regions, which can shed light on the development process of scientific writing. Such texts were the focus of two conferences. The conference “Luwian Identities: Culture, Language and Religion Between Anatolia and the Aegean” (9-10 June 2011, Reading University, organizers: Alice Mouton and Ian Rutherford) provided an opportunity to examine the organization of Luwian texts in the archives of the Hittite capital Hattusa. Since many Mesopotamian knowledge texts were also kept there, comparisons can be drawn with regard to the different ways in which Hittite scribes dealt with foreign writings. This allows conclusions to be drawn about the reasons for the preservation and collection of Mesopotamian knowledge. The article “‘Luwian’ Religious Texts in the Archives of Hattusa”, based on the conference presentation, was published in 2013 in: Alice Mouton/Ian Rutherford/Ilya Yakubovich (eds.), Luwian Identities: Culture, Language and Religion Between Anatolia and the Aegean, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 159-176. In the context of the conference “Traditions of Written Knowledge in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia” (December 2-4, 2011; follow-up workshop 18. May 2012; Clustervilla Georg-Voigt-Straße 4, 60325 Frankfurt), certain groups of knowledge texts from various scientific disciplines in Egypt and Mesopotamia were examined over a longer period of time and analyzed with regard to their peculiarities and traditions. Daliah Bawanypeck’s presentation “Normative structures in Mesopotamian rituals: A comparison of hand-lifting rituals in the second and first millennium BC” was linked to the contribution to the Reading conference, as the older Mesopotamian hand-lifting rituals were found in the Syrian-Anatolian region. The conference proceedings were published in 2015: Daliah Bawanypeck/Annette Imhausen (eds.): Traditions of Written Knowledge in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (Alter Orient und Altes Testamen 403) Münster: Ugarit Verlag; the essay by Daliah Bawanypeck, (2015): “Normative structures in Mesopotamian rituals: A comparison of hand-lifting rituals in the second and first millennium BC” also appeared in this volume.

The study addresses various topics that have recently been the focus of research on the Ancient Near East and its neighbouring regions (e.g. knowledge transfer, canon and canonization, scribal education, hermeneutics). From the perspective of the history of science, the inclusion of the Mesopotamian worldview, which does not distinguish between the scientific and metaphysical levels, is significant. As a result, the categories of knowledge do not correspond to the modern Western concept of science, but rather specialist areas such as divination (e.g. viscera viewing, terrestrial and astrological omina), medicine associated with magic and celestial science, including its astrological aspects, also represent scientific disciplines.

The project was continued during the second cluster phase.