What's (in) Your Bowl? Affordances of Incantation Bowls and their Use in Household Medicine

Abstract

Abstract: This paper investigates the much-discussed Babylonian incantation bowls inspired by approaches from thing theory, such as the concept of affordance, and from cognitive studies, such as the distributed cognition hypothesis. For once, the material aspects of the bowl amulets and how people may have perceived them are the center of the analysis, not the texts or the images that are inscribed in them. Thus, I discuss the different and versatile affordances ("options for action") that the bowls offered people living in late antique Mesopotamia and what their physical presence may have meant in terms of the production of an emotional response (affect). The preparation process of an incantation bowl, including the choice of bowl, ink preparation, and the procuration of suitable texts, may be seen as a sign of affect and emotion on behalf of several household members. These practices are ultimately very comparable to physical caregiving, and production of a bowl amulet is thereby shown to be firmly grounded in late antique Babylonian household medicine.