Die Emmy-Noether-Gruppe “Mythische Literaturwerke als wissenspraktische Artefakte” lädt herzlich zum dritten hybriden ENiM Workshop ein:

 

“Epistemic Practices in Literature, Lists, and Law”

3.–4. Juli 2024

Freie Universität Berlin | Fabeckstr. 23-25 ("Holzlaube") | Raum 1.1062

 

Für online-Teilnahme bitten wir um Anmeldung unter david.eich@fu-berlin.de.

 

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Programm

 

3. Juli 2024

14:00                     Introduction

Gösta Gabriel (Berlin)

 

14:15                    “In Pursuit of a Mesopotamian Panacea: Castoreum in Babylonian Medicine”

Cale Johnson (Berlin)

 

15:30                     “Lists and Language: Knowledge Making in the Cuneiform Scholarly Tradition”

Jay Crisostomo (Michigan)

 

4. Juli 2024

9:30                       “Conditionals in Old Babylonian Literature and Other Epistemic Artefacts”

Lynn-Salammbô Zimmermann (Hamburg/Berlin)

 

10:45                     “Why and for Whom Were the Mesopotamian Legal Texts Formulated?”

Sophie Démare (Paris)

 

11:45                     “Analogical Reasoning in Enumerations”

David Eich (Berlin)

 

12:45                     Closing session

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While the Greeks loved to explicitly discuss the methods and ideas that shaped their arguments, discourses, and texts, the Mesopotamian approach was different. This is evidenced both by the absence of such explicit discussions in the sources and by the immense corpora of lists of various kinds, be they lexical lists, omen lists, or law collections. George Lloyd describes the differences between the two approaches in terms of explication and exemplification. The former communicates the rule by forming it into a sentence (paragraph, text), while the latter shows the meaning and scope of a rule by giving examples. This is the Mesopotamian way.

As a result, many features of Mesopotamian epistemic practices are implicit, hidden in the sources, which makes the study of these features particularly challenging. An aspect that Markus Hilgert emphasized in his discussion of the lexical lists is helpful here: We should understand ancient texts as the most appropriate form to serve the needs for which they were designed. Following this line of thought, textual features and their pragmatics are a promising way to discern Mesopotamian epistemic practices.

With this in mind, the workshop will examine lists of all kinds, studying their form and function. The study of lists goes hand in hand with the study of literature, asking whether there are similar or entirely different approaches to rules. The aim of the workshop is to explore the specifics of the sources as well as to ask for more general aspects that can be identified in various texts and types of sources.