Medicine from Ancient Cyprus and Botanical Terminology in Egyptian Texts

This session opens the DAAD Ta'ziz workshop on material culture in the Eastern Mediterranean at the Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus. After welcoming addresses by Ourania Kouka, Dirk Roland Haupt, Tarek Abu Hussein and Albrecht Fuess, Demetrios Michaelides lectures on medicine and healing in ancient Cyprus, followed by a panel on botanical terminology in ancient Egyptian and historical texts.

Michaelides surveys evidence for Cypriot medical practice from the Cypro-Archaic to the Roman period. About twenty named doctors are attested, notably on the fifth-century BC bronze tablet of Idalion in the Cypriot syllabary, recording a contract with the physician Onasilos and his brothers to treat citizens wounded during the Persian siege. Literary sources preserve Apollonios of Kition, whose illustrated commentary on Hippocrates' On Joints was dedicated to King Ptolemy of Cyprus, and Diagoras. Votive finds include Archaic childbirth figurines and Hellenistic and Roman limestone anatomical ex-votos.

Turning to medicaments, Michaelides reviews accounts by Aristotle, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, who visited the mines of Soli in 166 AD to collect copper-based minerals such as misy and chalkanthos. Finds from Paphos include a sherd naming hippokistis juice, miniature lead vessels stamped Tibarios that Michaelides argues held collyrium, and the Tomb of the Surgeon, which yielded bronze boxes containing copper-salt pills and twenty-five surgical tools including a bronze pyoulkos. An instrument case from the Paphos agora and anatomical clay hot-water bottles from the House of Dionysos and House of Orpheus conclude his talk, before questions on osteology and temple boys.

Claire Malleson, Mennat-Allah El Dorry and Tanja Pommerening then examine the pitfalls of translating plant names in Egyptian and Coptic sources, covering cereals, fava beans, maize and the recreation of pharaonic medical recipes.