Ancient Babylonian Medicine

Ancient Babylonian medicine is documented in cuneiform tablets dating to around 2000 BCE, making it among the very oldest written medical records in human history, predating even the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus by centuries.

Babylonian healing combined two parallel practitioner roles — the asu, an empirical physician-herbalist, and the ashipu, who addressed the presumed spiritual or supernatural causes of illness — often working together on the same patient.

As a formal system, Babylonian medicine survives today primarily as a historical foundation — many of its documented remedies (cedar, myrrh, thyme) fed directly into the later Greek and Islamic medical traditions that followed it.