magicscript

2021

The intended output of this paper is both the edition and the analysis of medical and magical texts whose hand-copies were published by Figulla seventy years ago in Ur Excavation Texts vol. IV. 1 This volume of the series UET includes mainly Neo-, and Late Babylonian administrative tablets excavated by L. Woolley during two seasons (1930-1931 and 1933-1934). 2 They originate from five archives excavated in private houses in the excavation area NH of Ur. 3 This paper focuses on nine tablets published in UET IV, which have medical and magical content. 4 The texts UET IV nos. 146-148 were identified as 'lists of drugs' and nos. 149-152 were designated as 'chemical goods' by Figulla, and his identification was supported later by Jursa. 5 In fact, the tablets UET IV 146-148 are medical tablets listing various drugs and liquids (oil and honey) and the tablets UET IV 149-152 belong to the group of the so called 'inventory tablets' which comprise stones used for a string of amulet stones (takṣīru). 6 However, I. Finkel already determined UET IV nos. 148-153 as a small group of medical tablets 7 and the tablet UET IV 153 was mentioned being comparable to the medical tablet BAM 53 by Köcher. 8 Furthermore, the tablets UET IV nos. 149-150 were identified recently as lists of amulets by Schuster-Brandis (see below). The nine tablets have been kept in three different museums: the British Museum (UET IV nos. 146-148), the University of Pennsylvania Museum (UET IV nos. 149 and 178) and the Iraqi National Museum at Baghdad (UET IV nos. 150-153). The distribution of the tablets between the western museums and the Iraqi National Museum can be explained as common practice at that time according to the Antiquities Laws of Iraq implemented in 1924. The tablets can be linked to different archives: three tablets (UET IV 146-148) belong to the archive of Sîn-uballiṭ that holds 61 clay tablets found in a clay pot excavated in Room 15 of House 7. 9 Three further tablets (UET IV nos. 150-152) originate from the Sîn-ilī archive, they were excavated in a room belonging to House 5. 10 Regarding UET IV 178, according to a

This bibliography lists and describes forty-one volumes of old and rare books in Arabic script held in the Library of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan located in Bishkek. This small but unique collection has been neglected, untouched, and uncatalogued due to lack of linguistic expertise. The publication dates of the books in the collection generally range from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Each bibliographic entry consists of the original Arabic title of the work, full imprint information, and a brief annotation. Most items described in this bibliography are not found in modern catalogs, including the WorldCat database. This bibliography is a first step in providing access to one of the many hidden and rare collections in Central Asia.

The monograph is organized in the following sections and posits the thesis that Meluhha language speakers followed the spiritual values of Veda cultural traditions, used Harappa Script inscriptions to create data archives of metalwork, accounting for Bronze Age trade transactions. 1. Pre-Sanskrit civilization of Meluhha speakers. Harappa Script is hieroglyphic in nature and decipherment can be attempted the way Egyptian hieroglyphs were decrypted 2. Preparation for the decipherment attempt 3. Methodology developed 4. Steps of the Decipherment with illustrations 5. Decipherment. Instances of the decipherment covering all aspects of the matter deciphered. 6. Harappa Script Decipherment in the context of wealth creation, evidenced by Archaeometallurgy 7. Conclusion & Executive Summary 8. Some select Critical comments on the decipherment by other leading experts. Section 1. Pre-Sanskrit civilization of Meluhha speakers. Harappa Script is hieroglyphic in nature and decipherment can be attempted the way Egyptian hieroglyphs were decrypted On the salient features of Harappa (Indus) Script, some remarkable observations -- related to decipherment researches -- were made by John Hubert Marshall, who was Director-General of Archaeological Survey of India from 1902 to 1908 and associated with excavations of two major sites: Mohejo-daro and Harappa. That he made these observations based on the then available corpus of 541 seal impressions should be underscored. “The proper names and names of professions on these seals do not supply sufficient material for successful decipherment. It is not possible to separate word and sign groups; the declensions and verb inflections cannot be detected here, and the pronouns are entirely absent. Until longer inscriptions of a literary and historical character are discovered, not much advance in the interpretation can be expected. A good many important facts can be determined, however, to clear the ground for satisfactory research. In the first place this script is in noway even remotely connected with either the Sumerian or Proto-Elamitic signs…The Indus inscriptions resemble the Egyptian hieroglyphs far more than they do the Sumerian linear and cuneiform system. And secondly, the presence of detached accents in the Indus Script is a feature which distinguishes it from any of these systems. Although vowels must be inherent in all the signs, nevertheless some of the signs and accents must be pure vowel signs. For this reason alone it is necessary to resign further investigation to Sanskrit scholars. If future discoveries make it possible to transliterate the signs, and the language proves to be agglutinative, it will then be a problem for Sumerolotists…I am convinced that all attempts to derive the Brahmi alphabet from Semitic alphabets were complete failures…This study of the script of a pre-Sanskrit civilization of the Indus Valley is made from the material supplied by 541 impressions of small press seals.” (Marshall, J.H., 1931, Mohenjo-daro and the Indus Civilization, Repr. Asian Educational Services, 1931, Vol. I, Delhi, pp. 423-424) These observations provide the framework for the decipherment attempted by this researcher who started the investigations by delineating the courses of a ‘Pre-Sanskrit’ Vedic River called River Sarasvati in North-western Bharata. Since the days of Marshall’s archaeological work of 1920’s, remarkable progress has been made by the explorations identifying over 2000 archaeological sites (or 80% out of a total of over 2600) on the Sarasvati River Basin. These explorations and limited excavations in about twenty sites have now taken the Harappa Script Corpora to a substantial size of over 8000 inscriptions making them fit for cryptographic analyses or cryptanalyses. The Corpora constitute a quantum leap from 541 seal impressions studied by Marshall. Corpora of Harappa Script inscriptions Based on numerous resources and from the collections of inscribed objects held in many museums of the world, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Harappa Writing Corpora include Sarasvati heiroglyphs, representing many facets of glyptic art of Harappa Civilization. The corporas also transcribes many texts of inscriptions, corresponding to the epigraphs inscribed on objects. The compilation is based mostly on published photographs in archaeological reports right from the days of Alexander Cunningham who discovered a seal at Harappa in 1875, of Langdon at Mohenjodaro (1931) and of Madhu Swarup Vats at Harappa (1940). The corpus includes objects collected in Bharata, Pakistan, other countries and the finds of the excavations at Harappa by Kenoyer and Meadow during the seasons 1994-1995 and 1999-2000. Parpola’s initial corpus (CISI 1973) included a total number of 3204 texts. After compiling the pictorial corpus, Parpola notes that there are approximately 3700 legible inscriptions (including 1400 duplicate inscriptions, i.e. with repeated texts). Both the concordances of Parpola and Mahadevan complement each other because of the sort sequence adopted. Parpola’s concordance is sorted according to the sign following the indexed sign. Mahadevan’s concordance is sorted according to the sign preceding the indexed sign. The latter sort ordering helps in delineating signs which occur in final position. Two subsequent volumes of the pictorial corpus include a total of inscriptions as collections from Bharata and Pakistan (e.g., Harappa 2590, Mohenjo-daro 2129, Lothal 281, Chanhudaro 50). Additional inscriptions have been discovered which are not included in the three volumes of Corpus of Inscriptions of Parpola et al.: e.g. Khirsara, Farmana, Gilund, Bhirrana, Kunal, Garo Biro, Rakhigarhi). Mahadevan concordance (1977) with only 2906 artifacts, excludes inscribed objects which do not contain ‘texts; for example, this concordance excludes about 50 seals inscribed with the ‘svastikā’ pictorial motif and a pectoral which contains the pictorial motif of a one-horned bull with a device in front and an over-flowing pot. Parpola concordance has been used to present such objects which also contain valuable orthographic data which may assist in decoding the inscriptions. Many broken objects are also contained in Parpola concordance which are useful, in many cases, to count the number of objects with specific ‘field symbolś, a count which also provides some valuable clues to support the decoding of the messages conveyed by the ‘field symbolś which dominate the object space. Along the Persian Gulf, in sites such as Failaka, Bahrain, Saar, nearly 2000 Harappa script inscriptions (so-called Dilmun or Persian Gulf seals) have been found on seals and sealings. These are in addition to the Gadd seals of Ancient Near East (Gadd, CJ, Seals of Ancient Bharata Style found in Ur in: Possehl, GL, ed. 1979, Ancient Cities of the Indus, Delhi, Vikas Publishing House, p.119). In many sites of Ancient Near East such as Shahdad, Susa (lady spinner artifact with Harappa script hieroglyphs, pot containing metal implements with Harappa script hieroglyphs of fish, quail, flowing water), Tepe Hissar, Haifa (three tin ingots with Harappa script found in a shipwreck), Anau, Altyn Depe (also spelt as Altin Tepe), caravan routes from Ashur and Mari to Kish, Anatolia. Many cylinder seals with cuneiform inscriptions also contain uniquely characteristic Harappa script hieroglyphs such as ‘overflowing pot’, sun’s rays, safflower, pine-cone, fish, scorpion, zebu, buffalo, hair-styles with six curls. With the publication of CISI Vol. 3, Part 1, the total number of inscriptions from Mohenjo-daro totals 2134 and from Harappa totals 2589; thus, these two sites alone account for 4,723; bring the overall total number of inscriptions to over 6,000 from all sites (even after excluding comparable inscriptions on ‘Persian Gulf type’ circular seals from the total count).

2014

The following study traces the production and history of the talismanic scroll as a medium through a Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk historical periods. My dissertation understands the protocol of manufacturing and utilizing talismanic scrolls. The dissertation is a study of the Qur'an, prayers and illustrations of these talismanic works. I begin by investigating a theory of the occult the medieval primary sources of the Neo-platonic tenth century Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ and al-Bunī (d.1225). I establish that talismans are generally categorized as science ('ilm). Next, a dynastic spotlight of talismanic scrolls creates a chronological framework for the dissertation. The Fatimid talismanic scrolls and the Ayyubid pilgrimage scrolls are both block-printed and are placed within the larger conceptual framework of pilgrimage and devotion. The two unpublished Mamluk scrolls from Dar Al-Athar Al-Islamiyyah are long beautiful handwritten scrolls that provide a perspective on how the occult is part of the daily life of the practitioner in the medieval Islamic culture. Through an in depth analysis of the written word and images, I establish that textually and visually there is a template for the creation of these sophisticated scrolls. Lastly, I discuss the efficacy of these scrolls, I use theories of linguistic anthropology and return to the Islamic primary sources to establish that there is a language of the occult and there are people that practiced the occult. The word of God and the Qurʾān empower the scrolls I studied. As for the people who practiced the occult, I turn to the tenth century Ibn al-Nadim and INTRODUCTION: TEXTUAL SOURCES My dissertation aims to understand the protocol of manufacturing and utilizing talismanic objects. My primary focus is works on paper, from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries in the Mediterranean basin, specifically the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk geographic sphere. This was a fluid time period that witnessed relationships with other Islamic polities as well as with Byzantium and the Latin West. I expand on previous scholarship of medieval Islamic science, magic, and devotion. 1 In order to establish a historical, religious, and cultural context for the talismanic objects, a textual analysis of primary sources is necessary. These sources present a theory and philosophy of the medieval Islamic occult, which is essential to the investigation of the material evidence. The dissertation begins with an evaluation of the terminology associated with talismans. Ṭilsam, the Arabic term, carries the meaning of endowing an object with potency. The word ṭilsam has its roots in the Greek language and its origins in the Hellenistic world. 2 Ṭilsamāt (talismans) in the primary sources are generally categorized as ʿilm (science). Yet, medieval Islamic scholars, ranging from the Ikhwān al-Safā' (active 961-986), al-Bunī (d. 1225) in his Shams al-ma'ārif, to Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) in his al-Muqaddima, define and classify ṭilsam in a

Various Museums exhibit samples of molds with Indus Script inscriptions. This note presents decipherment of inscriptions found on this random collection. Elephant seal of Indus Valley, Indian Museum, Kolkata.jpg https://tinyurl.com/wyn7wfw karibha, ibha 'elephant' Rebus: karba, ib 'iron' Text message: dāṭu 'cross' rebus: dhatu 'mineral ore'; badhi 'to ligature, to bandage, to splice, to join by successive rolls of a ligature' (Santali) Rebus: baḍhi, వడ్ర, baḍiga 'artificer, worker in wood and iron'; kuṭi 'curve'; rebus: कुटिल kuṭila, katthīl 'bronze (8 parts copper and 2 parts tin)'; koḍa 'one' Rebus: koḍ 'workshop' PLUS ḍhaṁkaṇa 'lid' rebus dhakka 'excellent, bright, blazing metal article'; kaṇḍa 'arrow' Rebus: khaṇḍa 'equipment' Figure between two tigers. Mold of a seal, Indus valley civilization (2500-1500 BC) Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (ex Prince of Wales Museum. Mumbay, India.https://tinyurl.com/yx76tote Six locks on hair of woman: bhaṭa ‘six’rebus: baṭa ‘furnace' PLUS kola 'woman' rebus: kol 'working in iron'. Thus, iron furnace. Hieroglyph 'hinder', 'thwart', 'obstruct': Ta. taṭu (-pp-, -tt-) to hinder, stop, obstruct, forbid, prohibit, resist, dam, block up, partition off, curb, check, restrain, control, ward off, avert; n. hindering, checking, resisting; taṭuppu hindering, obstructing, resisting, restraint; taṭakku (taṭakki-) to be obstructed, impeded, detained; obstruct, hinder, detain; n. obstacle, hindrance, impediment, obstruction; taṭaṅku (taṭaṅki-) to be obstructed; taṭavu prison; taṭukkal stumbling block, impediment; taṭukku (taṭukki-) to obstruct, impede; n. impediment; taṭai (-v-, -nt-) to hinder, stop; (-pp-, -tt-) id.; n. resisting, obstructing, hindrance, obstacle, impediment, objection, coat of mail, guard, watch, door, gate, bund, embankment; taṭṭu (taṭṭi-) to obstruct, hinder, ward off, oppose, frustrate; n. warding off, averting, impediment, frustration; taṇṭal obstruction, hindrance, resisting, opposing; taṇṭu (taṇṭi-) to be hindered. Ma. taṭa resistance, warding off (as with a shield), what impedes, resists, stays, or stops, a prop; taṭa-kūṭuka to hinder; taṭaṅṅal hindrance, stoppage; taṭaccal impeding, stop, stumbling; taṭayuka to be obstructed, stop between, stop; taṭavu what resists, wards off, a prison; taṭassu obstruction, hindrance; taṭukkuka to stop, hinder; taṭekka to stop; taṭṭuka to ward off, beat off, oppose. Ko. taṛv- (taṛt-) to obstruct, stop; taṛ, taṛv obstruction. To. taṛf- (taṛt-) to delay, prevent, screen; taṛ prevention, screen; taḍgïl hindrance, obstruction, delay. Ka. taḍa impeding, check, impediment, obstacle, delay; taḍata act of restraining, state of being stopped (as water), wearing well (cloth); taḍapa delay, slowness; taḍapu hindrance, impediment; taḍavu to stop; n. delay; taḍasu to stay, wait; stop, hinder, impede, cause to halt or stop; taḍahu stop, cessation; taḍisu to stop, detain, hinder, keep off; taḍe to delay, wait, stop, detain, restrain, check, keep down, endure, bear patiently, last, wear well (cloth, etc.); n. check, impediment, obstacle, restraint. Koḍ. taḍe- (taḍev-, taḍand-) to be obstructed (by person or thing); taḍï- (taḍïp-, taḍït-) to stop, obstruct, endure; taḍu lateness, delay. Tu. taḍavu delay, hindrance, impediment; a slowcoach or dilatory person; taḍè hindrance, obstacle, a charm for serpents; taḍepāvuni to hinder, impede, obstruct; taḍepini, taḍepuni to hold off, hinder, keep back, prevent, stop, oppose; taḍeppu stoppage, resistance, anything put up to stop a passage; taḍeyuni, taḍevuni to halt, stop, tarry, bear, endure; taḍevu a halt, stopping, tarrying, impediment, hindrance; taḍevoṇuni to bear, suffer, be patient; daḍè an obstacle, hindrance; taṭṭaṅků id. Te. taḍayu to delay; taḍa hindrance, obstruction, prevention; taḍavu delay, loss of time; taṭāyincu to hinder, prevent. Go. (Ma.) taṭṭi bund, dam (Voc. 1474). Kur. ṭaṇḍnā to prevent, hinder, impede. Br. taḍ power to resist.(DEDR 3031) Rebus: dhatu 'mineral ore'.. Thus, woman with six locks of hair and engaged in act of thwarting jumping tigers signifies: kol dhatu baṭa ‘iron mineral ore furnace’. Textmessage 1,2,3,4 on leaping tigers narratives: Text message 1 Text message 2 Text message 3 Text message 1 Pa. kaṇḍa 'arrow' rebus: khaṇḍa 'tools, pots and pans' aya 'fish' rebus: ayas 'alloy metal' sal 'splinter' rebus: sal 'workshop sangaḍa, 'lathe-brazier' + kunda 'lathe' PLUS kammata 'portable furnace' rebus: sangar 'trade'+ kunda 'fine gold' PLUS kammaTa 'mint, coiner, coinage' Thus, the text message is workshop with portable furnace producing alloy metal for trade. Text message 2: Shape of rhombus or bun ingot: mũh rebus: mũha 'ingot', the quantity of iron produced at one time from a furnace' sangaḍa, 'lathe-brazier' + kunda 'lathe' PLUS kammata 'portable furnace' rebus: sangar 'trade'+ kunda 'fine gold' PLUS kammaTa 'mint, coiner, coinage' hieroglyph: 'rim of jar'kanda kanka (karnaka) 'equipment scribe account' PLUS खांडा [ khāṇḍā ] A jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon). (Marathi) Rebus: khaṇḍa 'tools, pots and pans'. Thus, 'equipment scribe acccount" (The jag is a semantic determinative of 'equipment') Rhombus or oval bun-ingot shape: mũh rebus: mũha 'ingot', the quantity of iron produced at one time from a furnace' PLUS खांडा [ khāṇḍā ] A jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon). (Marathi) Rebus: khaṇḍa 'tools, pots and pans'. Thus, ingots from furnace. ḍato = claws of crab (Santali); dhātu = mineral (Skt.) hieroglyph: 'rim of jar'kanda kanka (karnaka) 'equipment scribe account' kole.l 'temple' rebs: kole.l 'smithy, forge' Thus, the text message is smithy, forge (producing) equipment, ingots, fine gold for trrade from Mint Text message 3: hieroglyph: 'rim of jar': kanda kanka (karnaka) 'equipment scribe account' kuṭi 'curve; rebus: कुटिल kuṭila, katthīl (8 parts copper, 2 parts tin) dula 'two' rebus: dul 'metal casting' kuṭi = a. slice, a bit, a small piece' (Santali) rebus: kuṭhi 'smelter' PLUS खांडा [ khāṇḍā ] A jag, notch, or indentation (as upon the edge of a tool or weapon). (Marathi) Rebus: khaṇḍa 'tools, pots and pans', Thus, kuṭi khaṇḍa equipment from smelter. ḍato = claws of crab (Santali); dhātu = mineral (Skt.) Thus, the text message is smithy, forge (producing) equipment, ingots, fine gold AND alloy कुटिल kuṭila, katthīl (8 parts copper, 2 parts tin)for trrade from Mint.