HITTITE MEDICINE

Author(s): HANS G. GÜTERBOCK

Source: Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 36, No. 2 (MARCH-APRIL, 1962), pp. 109-
113
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44449783
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 HITTITE MEDICINE *

HANS G. GÜTERBOCK

When I was asked to report on Hittite medicine my first reaction w

to say : There is no Hittite medicine ! Upon second thought I did ac
the invitation, because it seemed worth while to substantiate this statem
even though it is negative.
First a few words about the Hittites themselves.1 For a short time,
from about 1370 to about 1200 B. C, the Hittites were one of the great
powers of the Ancient Near East, rivalling Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria.
Their base was the plateau of central Anatolia, present-day Turkey, where
they had already established a kingdom in the 17th century B. C. Their
capital was the city of Hattusa, today called Bogazköy, some ISO miles
east of Ankara. Around 1370, that is, during the age of king Akhnaten
of Egypt, after having consolidated their rule over Anatolia, the Hittites
conquered the northern parts of Syria and Mesopotamia and incorporated
them in their empire. This empire lasted until shortly after 1200 B. C.,
when it was destroyed in the course of the great migrations of that time.
What makes the study of Hittite civilization interesting is, first, the fact
that the Hittites spoke a language belonging to the Indo-European family,
and, second, that they wrote this language with the cuneiform system of
writing, which they had learned - through intermediaries - from Baby-
lonia. The Hittite texts thus provide an opportunity to study the culture
of an Indo-European-speaking people of high antiquity. But at the same
time, the very fact that the art of writing was borrowed from the high
civilization of Babylonia left its imprint on the written documents, which
are our main source for such a study. Literacy was restricted to the
highly-trained class of professional scribes or scholars. Their training
included the learning of the Akkadian (or Babylonian) language, not
only because it was the means of international diplomatic correspondence
at the time, but also because the system of writing itself, which is a
combination of syllables and word-signs, could only be learned in the
framework of the language or languages for which it had been developed.
The curriculum of the school therefore included not only Akkadian texts
* Read as part of a " Symposium on Medical Lore and Practice in the Ancient Near
East" at the thirty-fourth annual meeting of the American Association for the History
of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, May 19, 1961.
1 For general information, see O. R. Gurney, The Hittites, London, Baltimore: Penguin
Books (Pelican Books, A 259), 2nd ed. 1954.
109

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 110 HANS G. GÜTERBOCK

but even some in the old, by then dead, Sumer

cuneiform script had originally been inven
word-signs in the script influenced the termin
Hittite, since it invited equations of Hittite
Sumero-Akkadian word-signs, even if the se
identical.

We may take one such Babylonian term as

sketch of Hittite medicine: the word asû, from
knows the water," commonly translated " p
find the asû mentioned in the Hittite Laws : a
another person must, in addition to other ame
fee.2
Physicians are also mentioned in the diplomatic correspondence.
Around 1270 B. C. the king of Babylon had sent an asû to the Hittite
court, but unfortunately the man died there, so the Hittite king's letter is
full of excuses for this sad accident.

From about the same period we have a letter of the Egyptian king,
Ramses II, in which he asks the Hittite king to send an Egyptian doctor,
Pariamakhû by name, on to another king, presumably a Hittite vassal,
and to permit two other doctors who had been at that vassal's court to
return to Egypt.
It is significant that Hittite royalty called doctors from Babylonia and
Egypt, the two great centers of civilization. The title of the Egyptian
doctor, a combination of the two words " scribe " and asû , is interesting.
This combination is not known from Babylonia but reflects an Egyptian
usage; the combination of the two titles "scribe" and "physician" is
attested in Egyptian texts,3 so the man who wrote the letter for Ramses
may have translated the Egyptian double title into Akkadian. The term
" scribe " means " scholar trained in reading and writing " both in Egypt
and Babylonia ; and indeed a great deal of the training of a physician musí
have been book learning. We find a similar situation also among the
Hittites.

As stated above, there was a scribal school in the Hittite capital.

Among the tablets written in that school there are medical texts. A few

2 See the translation by A. Goetze in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old
Testament, ed. by J. B. Pritchard, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2nd ed. 1955, p.
189, section 10.
8 H. Grapow, Kranker, Krankheiten und Arzt ( Grundriss der Medizin der Alten
Ägypter, III) Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1956, p. 94. I am indebted to Professor
Oppenheim for this reference and for the interpretation of the double title in the letter.

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 HITTITE MEDICINE 111

are in Sumerian, many in Akkadian; th

of Akkadian texts. According to form, th
the following two types :
1. So-called diagnostic omens, that is, c
in the form of predictions : " If a man . .
then he will die " or " recover," whicheve
2. So-called prescription texts. These
longer items, each of which also begins wit
and ends with the statement " then he wi
the procedures to be applied.
In other words, the standard categories
books " were studied by the Hittites ; t
language, sometimes provided with so-call
Hittite of individual words, and also tra
sumably they were also memorized.
Turning now to practice - as far as it is
that the cure of illness was primarily a m
ing through a magic gate, symbolic act
analogy, short stories that were also to wo
practices, among the Hittites as well as
with short prayers and offerings to the g
Most Hittite ritual texts of this type we
Among such authors I found only one
matter of his text is the counteraction of
country. What Mr. Zarpiya, the " phys
magic pure and simple, without any eleme
And who would blame him for this ? Agai
no other means !

Another text prescribes the following

so-called " Old woman," a kind of medicin
of a ram are " fitted " (in whichever wa
to the " twelve parts " of the patient ;
supposed to remove the illness from the c
of the patient. The list comprises more th

4 See the chapter on Magic in Gurney, op. cit

Güterbock, "Hittite Religion" in Forgotten Re
Philosophical Library, 1950, pp. 97 f. with biblio
note 46.
5 Translated by B. Schwartz, /. Am. Oriental S o

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112 HANS G. GÜTERBOCK

parts " must be a fixed figure of speech. If sli

tions of the list are disregarded, the list runs
Head, throat, ear, arm, (then an unknown ter
nails, rib (or side, cf. French côte/côté), (tw
words), foot, toes, toe nails; there follow in
ligaments or veins (it is uncertain which of
term), and the blood. With these last three
the " fitting " was done !
The above list by no means covers all the n
in Hittite, nor is this the only way of listin
particular "author" or "school" considere
the procedure is evidently pure magic.
A third example looks better at first sight
by a woman (whose profession is not stated
parts are eaten " - an expression probably
belly. On the first day she will make offering
the " sun-god of illness." On the second d
garden plants : some twenty plant names are lis
as yet be identified. These plants are crush
consisting of yeast dissolved in beer, with a
The child's mouth is washed out, then he has t
described ; but the same mixture is also poured
body, and into his anus. After this the chil
hear!). Some more plants are mixed with she
ment, but thereafter the procedure turns to s
that, even if we knew some of the plants, and
have some practical medicinal effect - laxative
or whatever - the indiscriminate external an
cates that the notions underlying this prescrip
to say the least.
It is known that a combination of simple h
whereby these remedies form an integral pa
cedure, is the common characteristic of most
lonian medicine was not too far advanced b
Hittites were a little more backward, as wou
just given. If so, the Hittite kings had good
experts to their own beds ! It also is unders
6 See H. E. Sigerist, A History of Medicine , New Y
1951.

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 HITTITE MEDICINE 113

record of oracle questions, the queen

asû should treat the king and also about
he might prescribe. The medical textb
show that scholars there tried to learn what was available. But it is safe
to say that the Hittites did not themselves contribute to the development of
medicine in the ancient world.

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