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August 20, 2008

More Horsing Around

Late last week Dr. Martin Heide of Philipps-Universität, Marburg, emailed me. He cordially noted my series on the Ugaritic hippiatric tablets and introduced me to his forthcoming two volume work on ibn ahi Hizam's Kitab al-Bayatara ("The Book on Hippiatrics") (see my remarks below and "References," even further below, for details). Dr. Heide also called my attention to Anne, McCabe's A Byzantine Encyclopaedia of Horse Medicine: The Sources, Compilation, and Transmission of the Hippiatrica.

I took a couple of hours yesterday to look through McCabe's book. It deserves a lot more time than I was able to give it. McCabe, 3, notes in passing that the "specialized genre" with which she is working "makes its first appearance in cuneiform tablets of the fourteenth century BC found at Ras Shamra-Ugarit in Syria." She doesn't really follow this up at all. She does pay a lot of attention to Mago of Carthage. Some may remember that I discussed Mago as a seeming intermediary between whatever the Ugarit material was excerpted from and the later Latin and Greek veterinary texts. McCabe devotes a lot of space throughout the book to discussing the history of the material from Mago to her Byzantine material and Mago as one of the main sources for that material.

While she doesn't mention any parallels between her Greek texts and the Ugaritic tablets, she does discuss the following from Apsyrtus, 137. I provide her translation.

This too is from the Georgica of Mago the Carthaginian. He says to tile the underside of the hooves of the forelegs of a horse with dysury, to pound the hoof-filings with a cotye of wine, and administer as a drench through the nose, and it will urinate.

This is virtually identical to the passage from the Latin of Ruellius' Hippiatrica that I quoted in one of my scintillating posts on this subject.

Of this passage McCabe, 137, says,

He [Apsyrtus] does not, however, appear to have used any of those three books [Simon, Xeonophan and Mago] directly. Apsyrtus' work does not present any substantial paralles with Xenophon or with what we have of Simon. And it seems unlikely that he read Mago's work in the original Punic. It is more likely that Apsyrtus used one of the compilations that drew on Mago. Certainly, the treatment of dysury, which belongs in the category of sympathetic magic, might be attributed to Democritus-Bolus, one of the Greek sources added to Mago by Cassius Dionysius.

If McCabe had considered the Ugaritic parallel, KTU 1.85:9-11, she might have been even more sympathetic to a compilation "that drew on Mago." KTU 1.85 provides a Semitic pathway from the material from which the Ugaritic text was excerpted to Mago followed by a Latin or Greek pathway from a translation of Mago to Aspyrtus. As I said back in October of last year, I think the extant Ugaritic text is an excerpt from a larger collection instructions adapted for scribal training.

In case you don't remember, or don't want to take the link, here is my translation of KTU 1.85:9-11.

[If you see squares, rectangles or something else that doesn't look right, please install the Charis SIL font.]

And when a horse does not defecate or urinate, one crushes together the extract (sap) of a measure of Cassia and a measure of ʿRGZ nut, and pours it into its nose.

I'm not sure one can distinguish between ischuria and dysury in the Ugaritic text. The Apsyrtus' Greek reads δυσουριωντος.

Note that the Ugaritic instruction is for dysury/ischuria (and constipation) and, while the medications are different, the administration of the medication is identical to what we read in both Apsyrtus and Ruellius, for that matter. The "science" advanced changed. The disease, the administration, and the structure of the instruction continued.

I don't see that McCabe's work directly addressed the abnormally interesting questions raised by Loren Fisher but it does go a very long ways in making the Byzantine hippiatrica accessible to the non-specialist as well as the specialist.

I do wonder if Martin Heide's work will provide further evidence regarding Loren's, 209, suggestion that Ugaritic bṭr in KTU 4.382:1-2 should be understood as "veterinarian." Just look at the formal title of ibn ahi Hizam's treatise, Kitāb al-Bayṭara. I know, this is not evidence but it sure is suggestive. How about Merien's suggestion that veterinarius has a Semitic root, the same Semitic root? Loren, 219-220, expanded on this suggestion. I also wonder if an instruction that closely parallels KTU 1.85:9-11 is in the Arabic material. On these questions and a lot more, we will need to wait a few months. Note, I don't expect Heide to address these questions directly. They are more than a little beyond the scope of his work as I understand it. That scope is large enough as it is.

I do look forward to the publication of Martin Heide's two volumes on ibn ahi Hizam's Kitab al-Bayatara. I asked Martin if ibn ahi Hizam mentioned Mago. He told me "no," but indicated that Mago "may have been a link to the Semitic / Ugaritic stuff." But he, Martin, thinks this only a "slight option." He did tell me "The Ugaritic texts themselves show a structure / kind of scientific language that (in principle) has been used even 2000 years later."

Enough horsing around for one day.

References:

Posted by Duane Smith at August 20, 2008 2:44 PM | Read more on Ugarit |

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