In the wake of the compendia : infrastructural contexts and the licensing of empiricism in ancient and medieval Mesopotamia / edited by J. Cale Johnson.

Boston : De Gruyter, [2015].

x, 326 pages : black and white illustrations ; 25 cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Introduction: "Infrastructural compendia" and the licensing of empiricism in Mesopotamian technical literature / J. Cale Johnson -- Part A. The infrastructural compendium -- Encyclopaedias and commentaries / M.J. Geller -- Compendia and procedures in the Mesopotamian astral sciences / Mathieu Ossendrijver -- Listenwissenschaft and the encyclopedic hermeneutics of knowledge in Talmud and Midrash / Lennart Lehmhaus -- Part B. Licensing empiricism : replication and authority in Mesopotamian technical literature -- "Tested" remedies in Mesopotamian medical texts : a label for efficacy based on empirical observation? / Ulrike Steinert -- Theory and practice in the Syriac Book of Medicines : the empirical basis for the persistence of Near Eastern medical lore / Siam Bhayro -- The "science of properties" and its transmission / Lucia Raggetti -- Between demonology and hagiology : the Slavonic rendering of the Semitic Magical Historiola of the Child-Stealing Witch / Florentina Badalanova Geller -- Part C. The two paradigms : towards a new textual criticism for Mesopotamian technical compendia -- The Babylonians and the rational : reasoning in cuneiform scribal scholarship / Francesca Rochberg -- Phenomena in writing : creating and interpreting variants of the diagnostic series Sa-Gig / John Z. Wee -- Depersonalized case histories in the Babylonian therapeutic compendia / J. Cale Johnson -- Source index -- Subject index -- Author index.