'Epilepsy Demon' Discovered on 2,700-Year-Old Clay Tablet in Iraq
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:
'Epilepsy demon' discovered on 2,700-year-old clay tablet in Iraq:
A 2,700-year-old cuneiform tablet from ancient Iraq describing medical treatments has suddenly revealed a secret - a hitherto overlooked drawing of the demon that the ancient Assyrians thought caused epilepsy. It is the earliest illustration of a demon that can be associated with epilepsy.
When Assyriologist Troels Pank Arbill was studying a 2,700-year-old cuneiform tablet with ancient medical treatments at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin four years ago, he accidentally discovered a partially damaged drawing on the reverse of the tablet. A drawing that, on closer inspection, turned out to be a demon with horns, tails and a snake's tongue which, according to the text, was the cause of the dreaded illness Bennu-epilepsy.
"We have known for a long time that the Assyrians and Babylonians regarded diseases as phenomena that were caused by gods, demons or witchcraft. And healers were responsible for expelling these supernatural forces and the medical symptoms they caused with drugs, rituals or incantations. But this is the first time that we have managed to connect one of the very rare illustrations of demons in the medical texts with the specific disease epilepsy, which the Assyrians and Babylonians called Bennu, explains postdoc Troels Pank Arbill. He adds:
"Drawings of supernatural powers are very rare on cuneiform tablets with magical and medical treatments. When there is a drawing, it usually depicts one of the figures that the healers used in their rituals, not the demon itself. But here we have a presentation of an epilepsy demon as the healer who wrote the text must have imagined it."
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