This 800-year-old bowl was found at Hasankeyf in southeastern Turkey, in a drain pipe under a small fortress.
The idea with these bowls, which were common in the medieval Middle East, was that you swirled water in the bowl and then used it to wash wounds or just splashed it on your body protectively. This one, according to excavator Zekai Erdal's reading of the text, was specifically for healing of or protection from animal bites.
Besides the dog in the center it features a tour of greatest hits in magical stuff: a magic knot, a star of David, three pentagrams, a scorpion, a two-headed dragon, two magic squares and some verses from the Koran. Covering all the bases.
Poked around a bit online to confirm the material, figured it was some sort of cupric material from the appearance, found some sources that note it as bronze.
ReplyDeleteI find this interesting, given the anti-microbial effects of copper alloys. From what I understand, people recognized many centuries ago that water transported in copper was cleaner - and the medieval Islamic world was also not only much better about hand-washing on a regular basis for religious reasons, but also had at least a few prominent doctors and polymaths who recognized that it improved medical treatments, even if they explain why, or even prove the effect conclusively.
And as for "covering the bases" with a great variety of magical icons... well...
...I must assume they would have recognized that a heavily inscribed surface for a bowl used to clean wounds would have generally coincided with better outcomes than the same bowl with a plain face - more surface area contact with the cupric alloy allows more copper ions into the water, making it more hostile to microbial life. Obviously they wouldn't understand the physics behind it, and would misattribute the effect to the imagined power of the words or icons inscribed, but they could certainly recognize that a bowl with lots of writing and symbols carved into it performed better at the task of helping people heal than one without, or with less.
typo - "couldn't explain why"
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