Disability / difference terms with a history...
With faint or feigned apologies for offering some kind of 'research' evidence
on this list, as the Annual Terminology Debate pursues its deathless course...
Items listed below are merely a pick of the first 10 that look directly relevant
to social responses and naming of impairment, disability, mental/cognitive
difference etc, from a quick glance through author names from 'B' to 'D' in the
historical section of the revised Middle East bibliog on disability and
deafness.
Scanning down this little bunch, it's not so far from a cross-section through
current views of imp. / dis. / diff. across the eastern / southern world that I've
been immersed in for the past 30 years. These ten snips span about 3500
years of reported / perceived response and naming. Against that backdrop,
the past 35 years of 'modern, western' discussion is a passing grimace on
the human face of time. :{
The stuff from Sumer (Black et al, open online) indicates that some people
were thinking and debating about disability and difference 4000 years ago,
and making a similar (or a little broader) set of categories; also discussing
how people with dis./diff. could find roles in social and religious set-ups of the
time. Other items (beyond the B to D alphabetic sample) show the range
from rude, to blunt, to straight, to kindly, to politically correct, to ironic, terms
used in some earlier societies.
It's a very old discussion. Somehow, there are features of the human
personal and social construction, that continue to support this wide range of
social and linguistic responses through the known history of most of
humankind. Superficial responses can perhaps be nudged, briefly, a little bit
this way or that way. Grand declarations and exhortations can be issued from
the Great Temple, etc. Yet in every generation, most of humankind faced the
usual threats, and often the hot realities, of war, famine, disease and
pollution, linked with climate change and migration. Some kind of 'human
solidarity' has been visible in many times and places. Yet being nice
to 'minority' categories of people, especially those who look, sound or smell
a bit different, has been mostly a peace-time hobby or luxury. Fierce
competition for scarce resources (water, food, fuel, shelter materials) drives
it underground again. The only thing we can predict with reasonable
confidence about the present century, is that the resource struggles between
8 or 10 billion people will be the biggest and bloodiest ever.
soberly, miles
***
BAZNA, Maysaa S & HATAB, Tarek A (2005) Disability in the Qur'an: the
Islamic alternative to defining, viewing and relating to disability. J. Religion,
Disability & Health 9 (1) 5-27.
Compares traditional interpretations of relevant texts, with some modern
perspective on disability. Examines the meanings of some disability-related
words as given in the early 14th century Lisan ul-Arab (Beirut: Dar Ehia al-
Tourath al-Arabi) by Ibn Manzur [c. 1230-1311], a massive lexicon compiled
on the basis of earlier dictionaries.
BECKMAN, Gary (2007) A Hittite ritual for depression (CTH 432). In: D
Groddek & M Zorman (eds) Tabularia Hethaeorum, 69-81. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz.
Beckman gives transliteration, pp. 69-74, and translation with technical notes
(74-78). With some abbreviation, the problem is: "If a god or goddess is
[angry(?)] with a person, so that his mind is ever spinning(?) ... everything is
difficult for him ... cannot sleep ... always in a foul mood ... bad dreams ...
always irritated ..." (74). Discussing the contents (78-81), Beckman goes
beyond an earlier interpretation ("Rituel contre l'insomnie", E Laroche),
finding insomnia merely one among several symptoms of clinical depression
(comparing a modern American definition), and noting the combination of
therapeutic regime and religious invocation to address the affliction. (The
invocation involves confession of sin, offence, outrage, with penitence and
plea for forgiveness; curiously, it is in Akkadian). The text seems to belong to
the Hittite capital in the 13th century BC, while drawing on Mesopotamian
tradition.
BIDDULPH, William [c. 1600] Part of a letter of Master William Biddulph
from Aleppo. In: S Purchas (ed) (1905) Hakluytus Posthumus, 248-304.
Glasgow: MacLehose.
The traveller William Biddulph remarked c.1600 that the Turks had various
ways of naming one another, sometimes by personal appearance (p.
268). "But if Nature have marked them either with goggle eyes, bunch
backs, lame legs, or any other infirmitie or deformitie, as they are knowne by
it, so they are content to bee called by it." (p. 269) He also commented on the
tolerance shown to "fooles, dumbe men, and mad men" (pp. 263-264).
BLACK JA; CUNNINGHAM G; EBELING J; et al (1998-2006) The Electronic
Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Oxford University, Faculty of Oriental
Studies. http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/
This 'electronic corpus' provides access to an accumulation of edited texts,
transliterations and translations of Sumerian cuneiform materials, from
possibly 3000 to 4000 years ago with provision for keyword searching. The
English term 'blind' appears in 6 paragraphs; crazy (1 paragraph), cripple
(10), deformed (3), deaf (4), disfigured (1), dolt (1), freak (1), fool (20), idiot
(2), paralyse (7), weak (38). [See also note in General Introduction,
under 'Search, Access & Supply'.]
In context, some impairment or disability terms were being used as
insults, e.g. "His face is disfigured, his judgement is muddled, ... a smitten
man who makes himself important. He is negligent, a cripple, the son of a
hound. A madman, crazy..." (and further undesirable attributes, in Diatribe C,
t.5.4.12), suggesting that impairments and disabilities were as unwelcome in
Sumer as in any other known civilisation. The position of the "leprous man"
(in "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the nether world", c.1.8.1.4), is striking. In a list
of 'Did you see (this or that ill-fated or badly damaged person)?' questions
occur: "Did you see the leprous man? -- I saw him. -- How does he fare? --
His food is set apart, his water is set apart, he eats the food offered (?) to
him, he drinks the water offered (?) to him. He lives outside the city."
However, the story of Enki and Ninmah, in English translation t.1.1.2,
provides a possible counterbalance on the positive side, containing the idea
that disabled people should find, or be provided with, appropriate means to
earn their bread and take up useful roles in society. (See more detailed
account in BOTTÉRO & KRAMER 1989, below).
BÖCK, Barbara (2000) Die Babylonisch-Assyrische Morphoskopie.
Beihefte 27, zum Archiv für Orientforschung. Vienna. vii + 348 + 32.
Böck's doctoral dissertation (1996) gives a detailed review of the
Babylonian-Assyrian "morphoscopic" and physiognomic literature,
processing and translating a substantial amount of relevant text, and
examining the body and 'shape' terms that were used.
BOTTÉRO, Jean & KRAMER, Samuel N (1989) Lorsque les Dieux Faisaient
l'Homme. Mythologie Mésopotamienne. Paris: Gallimard. 755 pp.
With an extensive introduction to the background of Mesopotamian
cuneiform literature, religion and mythology (pp. 1-104), selected texts are
presented in translation (to French) from Sumerian and Akkadian, illustrating
cosmological beginnings. Stories of Enki (known in Akkadian as Éa) occupy
pp. 151-202, including the brief tale of Enki and Ninmah (188-194) with
commentary (194-198). The available materials, from the second millennium
BC, have suffered damage over the centuries, and the meaning of some
words and phrases remain obscure, yet the Enki and Ninmah story as a
whole is more or less comprehensible, and provides an interesting extension
to the general run of cosmological accounts.
Enki and Ninmah. After the cosmos was set up, the lesser
gods began grumbling about how much work they had to do. Prodded by
Namma (the primeval mother goddess), the designer-engineer-fixer Enki
made some midwife goddesses, so that mankind could be produced and put
to work. Celebrating this manoeuvre, Enki and senior midwife Ninmah had
some beer together. Ninmah reflected that their new line, mankind, could turn
out good or bad, and boasted that it would depend on what fate she
assigned to each. Enki, inventing the role of Vocational Rehabilitation
Advisor, took up the challenge. Ninmah took clay and produced a man who
could hold nothing in his enfeebled hands; but Enki assigned him to the
King's service. Ninmah made one who was blind; Enki put him into the song
and music line at court. Ninmah made a man with paralysed feet; Enki's
solution here was not so clear - presumably a sedentary occupation, fortune
telling? silver-working? [Another version has this third man created as an
idiot; he would have been found a niche in the civil service.] The fourth man
had a problem of keeping his sperm or his urine from flowing at the wrong
time. Enki worked a cure by driving out a demon. The fifth was a woman who
could not have children. This suited her for a place in the royal harem. The
sixth person was made without sexual parts. Enki put this one among the
eunuchs at court. [Compare some alternative translations, e.g. BLACK et al
1998-2006; JACOBSEN 1987; KLEIN 1997.] Having arranged some kind
of self-sustaining role in life for these six examples of humans with
abnormalities, Enki shaped up a profoundly disabled man [or baby?] and
challenged Ninmah to find him a role in which he could earn his bread. Under
some taunting from Enki, Ninmah could find no solution; yet the available text
has deteriorated, so the endgame is unclear.
Possible clarifications are discussed by Bottéro &
Kramer, e.g. the adroitness of Enki's vocational guidance to each disabled
candidate. Perhaps the man who could hold nothing in his hand had the merit
of being able neither to steal nor to 'palm' a bribe -- ironic comment on
functionaries in all generations? With whatever nuances of interpretation, the
story could be read as one of the world's earliest discussions of the need for
social roles in which people with disabilities may play their part using other
abilities. [It may be significant that another Enki cosmological story, involving
the deity Ninhursag, has a herb-tasting session followed by a story listing
body parts (head, hair, nose, mouth, throat, arms, sides, flanks), and their
ailments, for each category of which a separate solution is created. (Bottéro
& Kramer pp. 150-164, specifically pp. 157-159, commentary pp. 162-164).
There seems to be a recognition of some difference between categories
of 'disease' and of 'chronic disabling condition'.]
[CHICAGO ASSYRIAN DICTIONARY (CAD)] The Assyrian Dictionary of the
Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, edited by IJ Gelb, T Jacobsen,
B Landsberger, AL Oppenheim; MT Roth, RD Biggs, JA Brinkman, M Civil,
W Farber, E Reiner, et al (1956- [?2009]) Chicago: Oriental Institute,
University of Chicago.
Begun c. 1921, the first two volumes of CAD were published in 1956. In
2008, the full set is almost complete. Individual .pdf files are online and are
free to download: http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/pubs/catalog/cad/
Numerous disability-related words, and words for bodily or
mental abnormalities or some kind of affliction, are found throughout the
dictionary, either as entries, or in illustrative texts for unrelated words, and
with many variants. Some (more or less) equivalent Sumerograms are shown
(in capitals, according to convention), where they were adopted in Akkadian.
Examples (with diacriticals omitted): hummuru (crippled) KUD.KUD(.DU);
hummusu (baldheaded); kubbulu (lame, paralysed, crippled); kubbusu
(downtrodden); lillu (fool, moron); lillutu (foolishness, weakness); pessu,
(crippled, deformed) BA.AN.ZA; sukkuku (deaf, obtuse), with four
(apparently) different kinds of meaning, U.HUB; and many more. (See
HOLMA 1914, for many 'defect' words on the 'quttulu' pattern, more of which
were elucidated in the period after 1914, and appear in the CAD).
CLÈRE, Jacques Jean (1995) Les Chauves d'Hathor. Orientalia
Lovaniensia Analecta, 63. Leuven: Peeters. xvii + 257 pp.
Baldness is seldom seen in ancient Egyptian graphic representations, both
because it would tend to be hidden by wigs worn by people of some social
standing, and because in formal representation "on a affaire à des
figurations idéalisées des personnages où il ne convenait pas de montrer
leurs imperfections physiques, pas plus leur calvitie qu'une mutilation ou une
malformation corporelle." (p. 5) Nevertheless, some exceptions exist. The
phenomenon of baldness and its linguistic and iconographic representation
are here studied in scholarly depth. In particular, a number of examples are
examined, in which persons are represented in a religious context, asserting
that they are "the bald of [this or that] deity" or the "the bald of [a named
temple]", having favoured status with that deity, and claiming to purvey the
deity's favours to supplicants (e.g. pp. 164-170). [The work was assembled
and published posthumously, with minimal editorial intervention; so while it is
highly detailed and tackles interpretative complexities, it is not in the final
form the author might have wished.]
DEINES, H von & WESTENDORF W (1961) Wörterbuch Der Medizinische
Texte. Grundriss der Medizin der Alten Ägypter, volumes 7 (i) & 7 (ii). Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag. vii + 1109 pp.
The German-Egyptian index (pp. 1033-1102), and brief further indices for
some English, French, Coptic, Hebrew, Arabic, Akkadian and Greek words
(1103-1105), give access to a variety of Ancient Egyptian terms relevant to
disability, with hieroglyphs, roman transliteration, textual sources and
examples, some notes and cross-referencing (from texts available up to the
1950s, and with the state of philology at the time). See e.g. abschneiden,
Augenkrankheit, behindern, Blindheit, brechen, Dumpfheit, Epilepsie, halten,
lahmen, Lahmheit, Lepra, Ohrensausen, stumm sein, taub sein, Trachom,
and many more having reference to disabling diseases or impairments of
various parts of the body or mind. [It is mostly headwords that are indexed,
so further German 'disability' words appear in the textual notes. Some of the
words, while in common use in Germany in the 1960s, have since dropped
out of polite discourse, as is the case with most European languages.]
****
A couple of footnotes to the above 'B to D' selection should be:
HOLMA HG (1914) Die assyrische-babylonischen Personennamen der
Form quttulu mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Wörter für Körperfehler:
eine lexikalische Untersuchung. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae,
Series B, 31 (2). Helsinki. 97 pp.
Following his lexical work on body parts, Harry Holma produced a
monograph on a particular linguistic feature of Assyrian-Babylonian personal
names, with focus on the use of words for bodily defects. After some
introductory material (pp. 1-21), the main body of the work is the lexicon, with
description of approximately 155 terms, plus variants and cognate terms in
neighbouring languages, describing their use, with sources and references.
The index (pp. 93-97) gives the page location of the Assyrian, with mostly a
single German equivalent where appropriate; and separately a selection of
non-Assyrian terms referred to (Arabic, Aramaic, Egyptian, Hebrew, Syriac
etc), with German equivalent.
See also brief notes by Nöldeke 1902, and Torczyner 1910, on a
comparable feature in Hebrew; Margoliouth 1917, similarly on Arabic
names; Ranke 1952, on Egyptian; and a contrasting view on Sumerian, by
Langdon 1917. Gray 1917, on Hebrew names, mentions defect nicknames,
but shows other names on the pattern "kattul". Linguistic studies by Speiser
(1951, 1955), pursued individual terms more closely, for example, teasing
out words for a "state of restlessness verging on distress" to get a good fit
for "One who twitches, Spastic". MacRae (1943/1963) studying Akkadian
names from Nuzi, noted the problems of identifying meaning in many quttulu
pattern names). To learn that, two to four thousand years ago, the ancient
Middle Eastern civilisations not only had such naming and nicknaming
practices, but also used some euphemistic, reversed, or ironic terms for
disability (Marcus 1980), opens windows beyond the mere evidence that
they had individual labels and quasi-religious explanations for many
disabling conditions.
Full citations appear at:
http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/bibliography/mideast/historicalantiquity.html
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