Kiṣir-Aššur’s Magico-Medical Education as šamallû ṣeḫru

Abstract

Kiṣir-Aššur was likely in his teens when he began his earliest career stage as a “young apprentice” (šamallû ṣeḫru). By then, Kiṣir-Aššur is assumed to have completed his primary education and begun a process of specialization (cf. Gesche 2001: 210 and its review in George 2003–04 and Veldhuis 2003). He must therefore already have undergone the education necessary for him to acquire basic reading and writing skills for various subgenres of āšipūtu. Supposedly, students of any craft were not adults (Gesche 2001: 219; Cohen and Kedar 2011: 240; Kedar 2014: 540). We can only estimate the years spent during education through comparative material, and suggestions for the age at which students began their education range from five (Waetzoldt 1974: 9) to 14–15 years of age (Gehlken 2005: 102, 106 and note 25; Cohen and Kedar 2011: 240–41 with further references).1 The length of a complete education may have been as much as ten years (Wiggermann 2008: 211; Waetzoldt 1989: 38), but in the Book of Daniel the education of an astrologer is three years.2 In the MA period, two brothers likely had the ṭupšarru ṣeḫru title for at least three years (Jakob 2003: 257). Apprentices probably trained through (competitive) teamwork under the tutelage of a senior colleague or family member.3 Although the šamallû ṣeḫru phase is Kiṣir-Aššur’s earliest attested phase, he was already copying complicated medical knowledge. This could indicate that the Bāba-šuma-ibni family did not follow the later Babylonian educational phases established by Gesche, but instead utilized a curriculum targeted at training practical skills. The following table is a list of the texts written by