Birth malformations in Babylon and Assyria

In this paper, we intend to study the oldest systematic descriptions of birth malformations in the history of medicine, as they appear in cuneiform texts written four millennia ago in the land between the two rivers, Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, the land of Assyro-Babylonian culture. The core of our work will be an omen text, which was published in 1970 and, since then, has remained confined to the field of Assyriological studies; thus, the history of medicine and disease have not taken advantage of its knowledge. This text is known in Assyriology by its Akkadian name: "shumma izbu" (Izbu), "if an anomaly" [Leichty, 1970: The Omen series shumma izbu, Texts from Cuneiform Sources IV].