We need a method that better attunes the modern, critical imagination to the possibilities in ancient bi-lingual poetics. It all begins with cognate word plays.

I am not going to belabor an extensive, detailed defense of a philological method rooted in (what we call) wordplay, but I will ask some questions, gather some conversation partners, and discuss some topics that would need to be engaged towards the rigorous version of that end.

I am especially interested in Hebrew and Akkadian bilingualism, which in later periods is framed by the spread of Aramaic language and script in all Mesopotamian/West Asian societies. How much Akkadian language and cuneiform writing could Hebrew scribes understand, decipher, and deploy? Was full literacy really needed for scribes to apply bilingual language techniques? How central was wordplay between languages and scripts — from play with the sounds of language to the visual features of inscribed writing? Would certain professions (like exorcist/medical scribes) be literate in specialized terminology and more creative with other kinds of words and poetics? Can we understand the cultural values that governed bilingual practices and account for its varieties?

My hunch is that Hebrew scribes who were interested in medical knowledge did not need to be fully literate in cuneiform to enact their bilingual imaginations and language practices.

A critical foundation for even asking these questions is the distinction between bilingualism and biliterate scribalism. Bilingualism was common, especially among persons who traveled, battled, traded, or inscribed texts regularly. But bi-literacy was most likely much rarer. I think of the famous line in a Greek letter found in the Bar Kokhba archive in which the scribe apologized for writing in Greek because he did not know how to write in Hebrew letters (See Cotton, 2005 and Price & Naeh, “On the Margins of Culture”).

If Hebrew scribes were biliterate, that is, if Hebrew speaking scribes could also inscribe cuneiform textual artifacts, we must look at the evidence we currently have of contact between cuneiform scribes and the textual cultures of the Levant like Wilfred H. van Soldt’s “The Akkadian of Ugarit: Lexicographical Aspects” or Yoram Cohen’s “Cuneiform Writing in Bronze Age Canaan.”

Karel van der Toorn reminds us that 50 texts and fragments have surfaced in the Levant that contain syllabic cuneiform, not including the Amarna letters or the texts from Ugarit (van der Toorn, 97).

A sizzling example of what I’m talking about is an Aramaic incantation inscribed in cuneiform (Markham Geller, “The Aramaic Incantation in Cuneiform Script.” I believe there is a second similar text in the Louvre). As an incantation, this scribal product suggests the value of bilingualism within medical knowledge/practice and returns me to my primary interest — the assemblage of bodies, medical knowledge, and scribalism. The fact that this biliterate text may have been “artificially devised by some learned dabbler in magic lore” (Driver) would underscore my point below — that bilingual poetics will often confound those at far remove.

Historians love exciting evidence, and there are two relevant stories that I recently recall. In 2010, the excavations beneath the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem unearthed a Late Babylonian cuneiform tablet fragment of a letter inscribed on local clay, suggesting that scribes in ancient Jerusalem produced it. That’s the theory, anyhow.

More recently, quite big news circulated because of Cornelia Wunsch and Laurie E. Pearce’s work. This evidence of bilingualism (and maybe scribal biliteracy) began to receive attention in 1999, then really went big in 2015/2022. I am speaking about the important trove of 200 cuneiform clay tablets and other media written by/about Hebrew speaking exiles living in Babylonia in the sixth century BCE. This date is very significant, as it would attest forcedly migrated Israelites after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem — better known as the Babylonian exiles.

The cuneiform documents refer to a city, Al-Yahudiyya (quoted in the press as the "City of the Jews") and provide evidence of bilingualism and perhaps also — biliteral scribalism, although there are quite important arguments to consider about the role of local Babylonian scribes as intermediary text-makers. Many of the tablets were contracts and economic records of transactions, so it is important to understand who needed these documents and what value they held to the Judeans referenced in them. (See Laurie E. Pearce and Cornelia Wunsch, CUSAS 28 and Wunsch, Judaeans by the Waters of Babylon. New historical evidence in cuneiform sources from rural Babylonia, 2022).

Bilingual Imagination
Another angle towards understanding ancient bilingual poetics would focus attention on ancient lexical lists. These are the Google translate or the language glossaries of the ancient world. Almost exclusively attested in Akkadian-Sumerian, lexical lists indicate to us the type of terminology that biliterate scribes sought to master: gods, plants, birds, stars, place names, personal names, legal terminology, economic terminology, and professions, to name some of the most common. I highlight Klaus Wagonsonner’s Syllabus on Mespopotamian Lexical Lists as a great starting point. A few tidbits from the lexical lists related to medical scribes and bodies, a 42-tablet list is known as “to cry/groan” (nâqu), several of the “man” or profession lists include sections on medical or psychological conditions (e.g., OB Lu), and UGU.MU is a lexical series dedicated to the human body and diseases.

Beyond lexical lists, I would like to briefly wade into the arena of Hebrew lexicography which is itself indebted to cognate (bilingual) semantics. This is a growing area of study, seeking to understand ancient Hebrew words whose meanings were lost by the time the biblical vocalization tradition was standardized (e.g., the Masoretic text). According to Clines, editor of The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (1991–2011) there are good reasons to consider 2500 new Hebrew words beyond those defined in the standard lexical aids (e.g., Brown, Driver, Briggs, prepared and published in 1891-1906). To what extent are these “new” words, or any ancient Hebrew words for that matter, a product of bilingualism to begin with. Put another way, when lexicographers diligently consider cognate terms to help them define words, are they just reverse-designing the ancient cognate/bilingual imagination? How can we be sure these languages and scripts were closed language groups and not porous technologies in constant navigation of borderlands (Anzaldúa)?

I want to end by making a broader point: language can be used in ways we cannot cross-culturally comprehend. With this point comes intellectual humility. Indeed, I take it as an axiom that ancient language techniques, technologies, and practices will always be more diverse and unimaginable than our frameworks dispose us to perceive. One way to engage this axiom — without committing the ultimate “free-for-all” fallacy that type-A/neurotypical, modern Enlightenment biblical scholars and comparative philologists worry about — is to ground our concept of “poetic bilingual imagination” in specific cultural domains and known textual forms.

As this all applies to biblical bodies, I ask the following:

• Who worked with bodies in the ancient world?

• Who developed knowledge about bodies?

• Who wrote about bodies?

• Who practiced, thought, or wrote bilingually about bodies and medical knowledge?

The short answer? Exorcist scribes.