ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

In Search of Ostanes through Medical and Chemical Techniques

• In Event: The Shared World of Ancient Medicine: A Conceptual Framework for Technical Circulation and Exchange in Eurasia and North Africa

English Abstract

It is notoriously difficult to prove shared technical knowledge – such as medical and (al)chemical practices – between ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman cultures. Technical literature often preserves multiple methods for achieving the same result, yet transmission rarely occurs verbatim. Even when passages are similar enough to raise questions of relationship, the resemblance may be due to practical necessities, universal knowledge, or common sense, making intercultural connections hard to identify or assess. At times, however, a combination of factors raises the probability of a genuine link, or the presence of coeval stories may confirm the impression left by those similarities, while offering clues to how these exchanges may have taken place. This holds true for both the comparison of medical practices and of chemical procedures. During the Roman imperial period, various stories attempted to explain the origins of unusual medical remedies and specific metallurgical techniques. Central to many of these accounts were the arts of the magi, especially those attributed to the Persian Ostanes. Further details were later added by Syriac and Byzantine authors, but Ostanes himself remained a mysterious figure, and the methods he transmitted find no confirmation in cuneiform technical literature. This talk will present two case studies – one concerned with drug therapy and one with chemical techniques – both attested in 7th-century BCE cuneiform sources, as well as in 1st-3rd-century CE Graeco-Roman texts. The two cases will then be compared and connected with the knowledge said to have been transmitted by the Persian Ostanes, showing how the lore surrounding this magus (and his colleagues) reflects genuine instances of transmission, while revealing a continuous line between Assyro-Babylonian methods and those described in Graeco-Roman medical and alchemical texts.

Author

• Maddalena Rumor, Case Western University