Objective
BabPharmacy combines up-to-date knowledge of drugs from cuneiform sources with computational linguistics, to determine the relative frequencies of drug usage in relation to symptoms and diseases being treated.
The essential research question being addressed is how to establish a theoretical framework for ancient Babylonian pharmacology. One approach to finding answers will be data mining of c. 800 British Museum unpublished medical tablets, contemporary with Hippocrates or dating immediately before and after Alexander the Great. The complex data on drugs and disease-symptoms extracted from published and unpublished cuneiform sources will produce statistical models. Information on relative frequencies of drug usage will be incorporated into a Babylonian Pharmacopeia, providing essential information about medicinal plants and minerals, in connection with the symptoms and diseases they treat. The statistics on relative frequencies will be compared with archaeobotanical data and historical pharmacology from Iraq. This will allow for distinctions between common and rare drugs, as well isolating general drug characteristics related to therapies.
The ultimate aim of BabPharmacy is to uncover the implicit but unexplained theoretical framework underlying Babylonian drug regimes, as a way of broadening our general understanding of how drugs treated symptoms and disease. This first longitudinal study of ancient Babylonian pharmacology requires new approaches to the use of plants and minerals as drugs, employing the combined cross-disciplinary tools of philology, computational linguistics, archeaobotany, and history of pharmacy. The contents of numerous unpublished cuneiform medical texts from the British Museum will provide novel and exciting insights, and all relevant data on drugs and the diseases will be collected into a valuable reference tool. In the end, we will know a great deal more about Mesopotamian pharmacology and medicine than we do now.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities languages and literature linguistics
- natural sciences computer and information sciences data science data mining
- natural sciences mathematics applied mathematics statistics and probability
- medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy
- humanities languages and literature literature studies history of literature
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-ADG
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WC1E 6BT London
United Kingdom
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