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routine vs intellectual
There are two principal strands to knowledge storage. One is sign and word lists, which – as already indicated – I would categorise as reference works, the other a more intellectual branch which I would like to call If-thinking. Underlying both systems is a tacit principle of textual balance.
Lexical lists thus actually look like what they are, the juxtaposed entries neatly opposite one another.
The desire for balance or equation underpins several categories of Akkadian compilations which begin with the word ‘If’. This is no classification invented by me, for there is actually a Babylonian technical word that means ‘a composition beginning with the word “if”,’ – šummu. It derives from šumma, the normal word for ‘if’ itself, and we can see that the collected paragraphs of a law collection or diagnostic medical omens were known to librarians as the šummus.
Laws in codes such as that of Hammurabi represent the most stripped-down manifestation of the idea:
*** essentially, he draws an axis with look–up on one end and logical operation on another.
*** in the two major "if" cases — divination and medicine — prediction is derived from facts. The key difference is that in divination facts are created, e.g. by killing a healthy sheep and examining its organs, and in medicine facts are determined by evaluating the patient's body for symptoms.
Lexical lists thus actually look like what they are, the juxtaposed entries neatly opposite one another.
The desire for balance or equation underpins several categories of Akkadian compilations which begin with the word ‘If’. This is no classification invented by me, for there is actually a Babylonian technical word that means ‘a composition beginning with the word “if”,’ – šummu. It derives from šumma, the normal word for ‘if’ itself, and we can see that the collected paragraphs of a law collection or diagnostic medical omens were known to librarians as the šummus.
Laws in codes such as that of Hammurabi represent the most stripped-down manifestation of the idea:
If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.
*** essentially, he draws an axis with look–up on one end and logical operation on another.
*** in the two major "if" cases — divination and medicine — prediction is derived from facts. The key difference is that in divination facts are created, e.g. by killing a healthy sheep and examining its organs, and in medicine facts are determined by evaluating the patient's body for symptoms.