Prescription to Prediction: The Ancient Sciences in Cross-Cultural Perspective
6-7 October 2022, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
(Charles Commons, Salon A – 3301 N Charles St.)
October 6th
Medicine and Pharmacy
| 08:30-09:10 | Check-in | |
| 09:10-09:30 | Richard Jasnow – Welcome and Opening Speech |
Session 1: Keynote
Chair: Richard Jasnow
| 09:30-10:30 | Ann Ellis Hanson – Prescription to Prediction: A Plethora of Greek Doctors | |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee break |
Session 2: Pharaonic & Babylonian Medicine
Chair: Joachim Quack
| 11:00-11:30 | Sofie Schiødt – Solar and Lunar Dependent Recipes in Ancient Egypt | |
| 11:30-12:00 | Ulrike Steinert – Cross-Cultural Transmission of Medical Knowledge in the Ancient Near East and the Mediterranean: Glimpses from Mesopotamian Women’s Health Care Texts | |
| 12:00-12:30 | Troels Pank Arbøll – Assyro-Babylonian String Theory: Can We Use Treatments for Curing Diseases Affecting the Stringy Structures of the Body (šerʾānu)to Evaluate Ancient Medical Conceptions? | |
| 12:30-1:30 | Lunch |
Session 3: Demotic Medical Texts in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Chair: Kim Ryholt
| 1:30-2:00 | Friedhelm Hoffmann – P. Vienna D 6257 and Some Insights into the History of Scholarly Textual Transmission in Antiquity | |
| 2:00-2:30 | Amber Jacob – Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Transmission of Medical Knowledge: Case Studies from Graeco-Roman Egypt |
Session 4: Innovation and Reception in Greco-Roman Medicine of the Imperial Period
Chair: Joshua Smith
| 2:30-3:00 | Claire Bubb – Galen and Greco-Roman Theories of Digestion | |
| 3:00-3:30 | Kassandra Miller – Immediately, Immediately, Quickly, Quickly! The Need for Speed in the Medical Marketplaces of the Roman Period | |
| 3:30-4:00 | Coffee break |
Session 5: Coptic and Arabic Medicine and Alchemy
Chair: Lawrence Principe
| 4:00-4:30 | Tonio Sebastian Richter – A Coptic Archive of Medical and Alchemical Papyri, Supposedly from Nagʕal-Mašāyḫ (Lepidotonpolis) | |
| 4:30-5:00 | Anne Grons – Coptic Pharmacological Prescriptions: Ways of Organizing and Structuring Knowledge in Collections of Prescriptions | |
| 5:00-5:30 | Elaine van Dalen – The Arabic Hippocrates: Classical Islamic Reconstructions of the Aphorisms |
End of conference day one
Reception
October 7th
Astronomy, Astrology, Divination
Session 1: Keynote
Chair: Alexander Jones
| 09:00-10:00 | Francesca Rochberg – Hellenistic Astrology and Astronomy in the History of Ideas | |
| 10:00-10:30 | Coffee break |
Session 2: Dream Divination Across Cultures
Chair: Paul Delnero
| 10:30-11:00 | Calloway Scott – Back to the Future: Hereditary Seercraft in Ancient Greece | |
| 11:00-11:30 | Matthew Rutz – “It is the Bound Tablet-Basket of the Gods”: Legibility in Mesopotamian Dream Divination | |
| 11:30-12:00 | Luigi Prada – The Evolution of Ancient Egyptian Oneiromancy from Ramses II to Trajan: Differences and Reasons of Change between Pharaonic and Graeco-Roman Dream Books |
Session 3: Babylonian Astral Sciences
Chair: Matthew Rutz
| 12:00-12:30 | John Steele – A New Cuneiform Eclipse Text | |
| 12:30-1:00 | Willis Monroe – Tabular Data and Knowledge Formation | |
| 1:00-2:00 | Lunch |
Session 4: Demotic Astrological Texts
Chair: Marina Escolano-Poveda
| 2:00-2:30 | Joachim Quack – Some Unpublished Demotic Astrological Fragments | |
| 2:30-3:00 | Ida Christensen – “It is the Exaltation of Jupiter”: Scientific Classifications and Theoretical Content in Demotic Astrological Manuals from the Tebtunis Temple Library | |
| 3:00-3:30 | Kim Ryholt – Demotic Astrological Literature: A Survey | |
| 3:30-4:00 | Lingxin Zhang – “Gender Trouble” in Ancient Egyptian Divinatory Texts | |
| 4:00-4:30 | Coffee break |
Session 5: Greek Astral Sciences
Chair: John Steele
| 4:30-5:00 | Alexander Jones – Greco-Egyptian Almanacs and the Astronomy Underlying Them | |
| 5:00-5:30 | Francesca Schironi – Using Babylonian Astronomy to Improve Greek Astronomy: Hipparchus’ Exegesis of the Phaenomena of Aratus and Eudoxus | |
| Closing Remarks: | Alexander Jones |
End of conference day two
Conference dinner
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