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Asklepios as chief physician (1)

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05 Scientific knowledge and scholarly lore
05 Scientific knowledge and scholarly lore
05 Scientific knowledge and scholarly lore



 		Keywords
Asclepius
Period
Hellenistic Empires
Roman Empire 		Channel
No channel specified

Summary
The name of the Greek god of medicine and healing may derive from the Akkadian word for “chief physician”.

Text
Asklepios (Ασκληπιος) is the name of the Greek god of medicine and healing (called by the Romans Aesculapius). According to Burkert 1992, the name derives from Akkadian asugall(at)u “chief physician” which is in turn a borrowing from Sumerian a.zu.gal with the same meaning. Asugallatu was an epithet of Gula, the Mesopotamian goddess of healing and medicine. The word went through a form Asgelatas, an aspect of Apollo worshipped on the island of Anaphe near Thera with a festival called Asgelaia.

Asklepios, the son of Apollo, was not considered the god of healing until the 5th century, and the Greeks placed his origin in Thessaly.

Bibliography

Burkert 1992, 75-79Burkert, Walter. The Orientalizing Revolution. Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Period. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 1992.

Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Asklepios (Greek Mythology Link)

Robert Whiting


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000055.php

Illustrations (click an image to view the full-size version in a new window)

Fig. 1: The reverse of this silver denarius shows Æsculapius (god of medicine) standing holding a staff with a serpent entwined around it, a globe at his feet. This type was struck in 214 CE on the occasion of a visit by Caracalla to Pergamum to seek a cure from the shrine of Æsculapius. The obverse shows a mature bust of Caracalla.

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