Colloquium
The Institute for the History of Knowledge in the Ancient World and the ERC-project "ZODIAC - Ancient Astral Science in Transformation", in association with the Max-Planck Research Group "Astral Sciences in Trans-Regional Asia" (ASTRA, MPIWG, Berlin)
Wednesday, 18:00-20:00 c.t.
Venue: Inst. f. the History of Knowledge, Freie Universität Berlin, Arnimallee 10, room 010, 14195 Berlin
convenors: J. Cale Johnson, Anuj Misra, Mathieu Ossendrijver
Download the program here
| Winter term 2024/25 | |
| 30. Okober 2024 |
Jeffrey Kotyk (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte) "The zodiac signs in East Asian mandalas" |
| 27. November 2024 |
Levente László (Guest Scientist, ZODIAC Project) "The Personification of the Planets in Ancient Astrology" |
| 04. Dezember 2024 |
Robert Middeke-Conlin (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology) "Another day at the office: Tracking epistemic change in the minutiae of daily work-life in ancient Mesopotamia" |
| 15. Januar 2025 |
Pouyan Rezvani (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften) "Ptolemy's star catalogue in the medieval Islamic sources" |
| 29. Januar 2025 |
Reimund Leicht (Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Judaistik) Title tba |
| Summer term 2024 | |
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15. April 2024 |
Francesca Rochberg (University of California, Berkeley "The Ontological Turn and Why We Should Be Interested" |
| 8. Mai 2024 |
Ulrike Steinert (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) "Therapeutic Agents and Medical Knowledge in First Millennium BCE Mesopotamia: New Insights from Women's Health Care Texts (and Beyond)" |
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29. Mai 2024 |
Andreas Winkler (Freie Universität Berlin) "A New Animal - the Development of the Egyptian Zodiac" |
| 12. Juni 2024 |
Stamatina Mastorakou (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte) |
| Winter term 2023/24 | |
| 13. November 2023 |
Michael Zellmann-Rohrer (Freie Universität Berlin) "On the fourteenth day of the Moon, Hope and Peace were born: The earliest Greek lunarium" |
| 20. November 2023 |
Friedhelm Hoffmann (Ludwing-Maximilians-Universität München) "Zur Überlieferung ägyptischer medizinischer Rezepte im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. - Beobachtungen am römischen Papyrus Wien D6257" |
| 04. Dezember 2023 |
Jeanette C. Fincke (Leiden) "The Moon in the 'Cattle Pen': The Halo of the Moon as Seen by Assyrian and Babylonian Astronomers" |
| 08. Januar 2024 |
Frederik Bakker (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) starts at 17:00!!! "The Truth of Epicurus' Multiple Explanantions for Celestial Phenomena” |
| 15. Januar 2024 |
Mathieu Ossendrijver (Freie Universität Berlin) "The Astronomers in Seleucid Uruk Revisited" |
| 29. Januar 2024 |
Marvin Schreiber (Freie Universität Berlin) "The Babylonian Number Syllabaries in Context: New Evidence and Tentative Interpretation" |
| 05. Februar 2024 |
Annette Imhausen (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) "The Conceptualization of Mathmatics in Pharaonic Egypt" |
| Summer term 2023 | |
| 19. Juni 2023 |
Serafina Cuomo (Durham University) "A distributed cognition framework in the study of ancient Greek and Roman numeracy" |
| 12. Juni 2023 |
Anna Monte (Università degli Studi di Udine) "Ophthalmology in Graeco-Roman Egypt: a papyrological journey through eye diseases and their ancient treatments" |
| 5. Juni 2023 |
Adrian Pirtea (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte) "Celestial Omen Texts in Late Antique and Early Medieval Eurasia. Towards a Connected History of the Astral Sciences" |
| 8. Mai 2023 |
Sebastian Richter (Freie Universität Berlin) "Al-Rāzī in Upper Egypt? A 9th-/10th-Century Coptic Archive of Medical and Alchemical Manuscripts and its Intellectual Background" |
| 24. April 2023 |
Paul Unschuld (Charité Berlin) "The manifold messages of the most ancient Chinese medical texts: Who informed the anonymous authors?" |
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Winter term 2022/23 |
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13. Februar 2023 |
Nils Heeßel (Philipps-Universität Marburg) "Wie viel wog ein KISAL? Oder: Weshalb gab es neben dem Scheqel noch eine andere Gewichtseinheit in assyrisch-babylonischen Rezepten?" |
| 16. Januar 2023 |
Jacob Dahl (University of Oxford) "Back to the Future: Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite" |
| 12. Dezember 2022 |
Stefanie Rudolf (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte) A Great Star Falls" - Comets and Meteors in Syriac Literature and Language |
In ancient astrology, planets were not only associated with or identified as deities but also described using a variety of anthropomorphic metaphors based on their appearances and behaviors. This colloquium will explore these metaphors, providing specific examples from Greek astrological writings.