Pounding hearts and burning livers: The “sentimental body” in mesopotamian medicine and literature

Abstract

In Mesopotamian languages, body (part) terms regularly represent aspects and faculties of the self and are often used in idiomatic or metaphorical expressions to describe psychological and mental processes. In these expressions, thoughts and feelings, passions, and desires are described either as activities of body parts/organs causing a person’s emotional experience, or as dynamic processes or forces affecting body parts/organs. Although the use of body part terms in this context is a matter of linguistic choice (emotions can also be expressed without referring to body part terms), it is conspicuous that affective and mental processes are predominantly linked with the inside of the body and with a group of internal organ terms. This article explores Akkadian expressions for a group of basic emotions (fear, anger, grief/sorrow, joy) in Mesopotamian textual sources from the second and first millennia BCE, comparing their occurrence in literary texts, letters and medical texts. The aim of the paper is to elucidate continuities, commonalities, as well as differences with regard to the linguistic expression of emotions, asking whether there are marked divergences between colloquial language, poetry and the specialized vocabulary of medical texts in their association of body part/organ terms with emotions. Second, the contribution investigates conceptual metaphors, cognitive scenarios and themes underlying emotion expressions and descriptions of affective phenomena, as well as their development and modulation in first millennium BCE medical texts.