Articles by Troels Pank Arbøll
Iraq, 2025
Medical prescriptions from ancient Mesopotamia occasionally provide instructions for patients to ... more Medical prescriptions from ancient Mesopotamia occasionally provide instructions for patients to seek out the sanctuaries of deities in order to gain good fortune. Though these statements have been discussed since the 1960s, their exact function in the healing process remains unclear. The recent discovery of additional related symptom descriptions provides an opportunity to re-evaluate the function of seeking out places of worship in ancient medical therapy. This article collects and examines relevant prescriptions to contextualise and incorporate them properly into our reconstruction of medicine in the first millennium B.C.E. By analysing the terminology employed, particularly the word aširtu, referring to a place of worship, as well as the phrase dumqu/ damiqtu amāru "to see good fortune", indicating that seeking out places of worship could alter a patient's fortune, the paper proposes that such instructions were intended to circumvent inauspicious days for healing. Alternatively, the visits may have granted the patient auspicious omens for diagnostic-prognostic purposes. Finally, the article discusses the context of the individual manuscripts to assign the practice of their contents to the two primary medical professions, namely the asû and āšipu.
Full paper can be accessed with open access: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/iraq/article/patients-seeking-out-sanctuaries-of-deities-in-medical-prescriptions/07DEE04C67D20108CDB5CF516BA79785
Evolution and Human Behavior 46/6, 2025
This article examines the earliest historical evidence for kissing in societies of the ancient Mi... more This article examines the earliest historical evidence for kissing in societies of the ancient Middle East and surrounding regions, from the mid-3rd to the early 1st millennium BCE. Drawing on linguistic, textual, visual, and archaeological sources, the study explores the cultural roles of romantic-sexual and familial-friendly kissing in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and Syria). The paper demonstrates that early written references to kissing range from mythological narratives of divine intimacy to legal texts regulating social behavior. The work employs translations of cuneiform sources, and all materials are available in previously published works referenced throughout the article. By situating these practices within broader debates on the origins and cultural contexts of especially romantic-sexual kissing, the article considers whether the earliest evidence reflects not only acts of intimacy, but also social practices that, in the 3rd millennium BCE, could have been associated with elite behavior. The analysis contributes to ongoing discussions in anthropology, by reconsidering whether romantic-sexual kissing originated as an elite practice or was more widely embedded in everyday life, while highlighting the methodological challenges of interpreting ancient sources.
PLAGUE IN ANTIQUITY, 2024
Article from PLAGUE IN ANTIQUITY (2024), edited by Andrew Jamieson, Caroline Tully and Louise Hit... more Article from PLAGUE IN ANTIQUITY (2024), edited by Andrew Jamieson, Caroline Tully and Louise Hitchcock (Peeters), pp. 13-33. Available here with prepaid open access after agreement with the publisher.
Scientific Reports 13, Article number: 13092, 2023
The recent development of techniques to sequence ancient DNA has provided valuable insights into ... more The recent development of techniques to sequence ancient DNA has provided valuable insights into the civilisations that came before us. However, the full potential of these methods has yet to be realised. We extracted ancient DNA from a recently exposed fracture surface of a clay brick deriving from the palace of king Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE) in Nimrud, Iraq. We detected 34 unique taxonomic groups of plants. With this research we have made the pioneering discovery that ancient DNA, effectively protected from contamination inside a mass of clay, can successfully be extracted from a 2900-year-old clay brick. We encourage future research into this subject, as the scientific prospects for this approach are substantial, potentially leading to a deeper understanding of ancient and lost civilisations. Near the river Tigris, outside the ancient city of Kalhu, known today as Nimrud, a brickmaker once prepared a clay brick for the construction of a new palace dedicated to his king Ashurnasirpal II (approximately 883-859 BCE). Little did he know, that almost 2900 years later, this insignificant clay brick would serve as a unique time capsule revealing details of the flora from this specific area and time, through the modern-day investigation of the ancient DNA hidden and preserved for thousands of years. The sampling material. This investigation presents the discovery of ancient DNA (aDNA) in samples from an approximately 2900-year-old clay brick kept at the National Museum of Denmark. Showcasing a novel application of aDNA analysis and its results, we provide a discussion of the identified flora in relation to the rich abundance of textual evidence available from ancient Mesopotamia (roughly modern-day Iraq and Syria) to situate our findings in broader current discussions regarding the domestication of plants in this area. The brick in question (museum number 13854) was donated to the National Museum of Denmark in 1958 by the Rask Ørsted Foundation. It was discovered during the British excavations of Nimrud, beginning in 1949. Assyriologist Jørgen Laessøe ensured financial support from the state-funded Rask Ørsted Foundation making it possible for him and other Danes to participate in the excavations. In 1958, the National Museum received a group of objects from Nimrud, including the brick in question, in acknowledgement of the support. At the time when it entered the collection at the National Museum of Denmark, it had already broken into two pieces horizontally. Due to their state, mudbricks are seemingly solid, yet delicate in nature. During an otherwise controlled handling in 2020, the lower half of the brick unfortunately split vertically into two pieces. This event presented an opportunity for a scientific study of uncontaminated clay that could be dated with relative certainty. It was from this new uncontaminated break that the samples for this study were extracted (Fig. 1). Made primarily of mud collected locally near the Tigris river, mixed with some botanical material such as chaff or straw, or animal dung, the brick was shaped in a mould before it was inscribed with so-called cuneiform signs, recording a dialect of the now extinct Semitic language Akkadian, after which it was placed in the sun to dry 1,2. Mudbricks with cuneiform inscriptions were traditionally used for the construction of monumental
Venomous Scorpions and Venerable Women: The Relationship Between Scorpions, the Goddess Išḫara, and Queens in the Neo-Assyrian Period
Women and Religion in the Ancient Near East and Asia, edited by N. Brisch and F. Karahashi, SANER 30, 2023
Feel free to write to me for an off-print of the article!
The ancient history of kissing. Sources from Mesopotamia contextualize the emergence of kissing and its role in disease transmission.
Science 380/6646, pp. 688-690, 2023
Three Silver Debt Notes from Kalḫu in the Collection of Jørgen Læssøe, with a Discussion of the Neo-Assyrian Joint Responsibility Clause (ša karimūni)
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, 2022
This paper, co-written by Troels Arbøll and Karen Radner, presents four hitherto unpublished Neo-... more This paper, co-written by Troels Arbøll and Karen Radner, presents four hitherto unpublished Neo-Assyrian documents from the private collection of the late Jørgen Læssøe. They record three separate legal transactions, namely the obligation to cover debts of silver. Can be downloaded with open access via the link!
Published in Eskiçağda Salgın ve Hastalıklar, edited by Ö. S. Gavaz and G. M. Şahin, pp. 23-50, 2021
Proofs uploaded with permission.
Uploaded with permission from the publisher
Uploaded with permission from the publisher (I have added the original files of my line drawings ... more Uploaded with permission from the publisher (I have added the original files of my line drawings and the museum pictures in the PDF, seeing as they did not scan well. Therefore the pages 14-15 and 24-25 may look slightly different from the published version, although the text, illustrations/pictures and the page numbers are identical)
Humanity’s earliest history is full of alcohol. In ancient Iraq, better known as Mesopotamia, bee... more Humanity’s earliest history is full of alcohol. In ancient Iraq, better known as Mesopotamia, beer was used for social bonding and was one of the most important sources of nutrition. Among other things, this article examines how the Mesopotamian gods created humans while they were drunk and how ancient healers used beer as medicine.
Book Reviews by Troels Pank Arbøll
[Review] Barbara Böck, Shahina A. Ghazanfar, and Mark Nesbitt: An Ancient Mesopotamian Herbal. Kew: Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, 2023. 224 S. 23,4 × 15,6 cm. ISBN 978-1-84246-798-5. Preis: £30,00
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 115/2, 2025
Review of Barbara Böck, Shahina A. Ghazanfar, and Mark Nesbitt: An Ancient Mesopotamian Herbal (2... more Review of Barbara Böck, Shahina A. Ghazanfar, and Mark Nesbitt: An Ancient Mesopotamian Herbal (2023)
Brief communications by Troels Pank Arbøll
Two Old Akkadian administrative tablets... (co-written with R. Rattenborg)
Cuneiform Digital Library Notes, 2018
PhD Dissertation by Troels Pank Arbøll
This dissertation is a microhistorical study of a single individual named Kiṣir-Aššur who practic... more This dissertation is a microhistorical study of a single individual named Kiṣir-Aššur who practiced healing in the ancient city of Assur (modern northern Iraq) in the 7th century BCE. The study provides the first detailed analysis of one healer’s education and practice in ancient Mesopotamia based on at least 66 texts assigned to specific stages of his career. During his earliest phase, Kiṣir-Aššur received training in diagnostics, anatomy, and physiology. The sources indicate he also treated animals, in particular horses, and children during his training, perhaps to improve his understanding of anatomy. The evidence suggests that Kiṣir-Aššur only began to supervise rituals and perform house calls sometime during his later phases. In his final phase, Kiṣir-Aššur focused on treating patients and performing official duties. The microhistorical focus on an individual healer has brought to light remarkable differences to medical texts in the contemporary royal libraries of Nineveh, and it is possible that Kiṣir-Aššur’s texts represent localized traditions specific to the city of Assur. The private library of Kiṣir- Aššur and his family illustrates practiced rather than the abstract, standardized knowledge that can be found in the text collections of Nineveh. As a result, this dissertation provides a more diverse understanding of the purposes that individual texts may have served.
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Articles by Troels Pank Arbøll
Full paper can be accessed with open access: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/iraq/article/patients-seeking-out-sanctuaries-of-deities-in-medical-prescriptions/07DEE04C67D20108CDB5CF516BA79785
Book Reviews by Troels Pank Arbøll
Brief communications by Troels Pank Arbøll
PhD Dissertation by Troels Pank Arbøll