The article proposes a new definition of philology as a systematic engagement with crises of reading, focused on the difficulties that prevent readers from gaining access to or drawing meaning from a given text, all the way from scrubbed signs to obscure ontologies. Responding to two recent interventions in the field—Philology by James Turner and World Philology by Sheldon Pollock, Benjamin A. Elman, and Ku-ming Kevin Chang—the article explores the practices, history, and current state of philology. It argues that a resurgence of philological self-reflection over the past twelve years is bringing the field into view as a global, transhistorical, and anti-disciplinary practice, spanning many centuries and continents, and encompassing a wealth of methodological tools and approaches. These new developments promise to revitalize a field that currently finds itself in disciplinary disarray, by infusing it with a global and self-critical awareness. But the vision presented by Turner and the editors of World Philology, of philology as an inherently cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural practice, necessitates a clearer delimitation of what philology is, which the present article sets out to provide.
l-man ḏ-ruha l-giṭatlh). A new edition of the Phylactery for Rue is being prepared by Bogdan Burtea, Stefanie Rudolf, and the present reviewer.Such comparisons between this corpus and later magical texts can be enlightening and productive, although the authors have unfortunately not sufficiently facilitated this process. The book's meagre indices are a missed opportunity for study of the vocabulary (and grammar) of these older magical texts, since one would have preferred to consult a glossary like that found in N. Heeßel's Babylonischassyrische Diagnostik (2000). Nevertheless, this book offers a treasure-trove of important texts for future study of Akkadian magic, including the 47 texts drawn from Andrew George's 2016 publication, Mesopotamian Incantations and Related Texts in the Schoyen Collection (CUSAS 32).
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