Abstract
Although there are many scholarly cuneiform tablets mentioning animals, unlike other ancient cultures, Mesopotamia did not produce any treatises on zoology. As a result, the identification of animal species is often tricky, while access to zoological and ethological knowledge and to symbolic concepts relating to the animal world requires gleaning information from a diverse and varied body of documentation. Paleobabylonian archival documentation, by virtue of its richness, but also because of its accessibility thanks to the www.archibab.fr site, constitutes a privileged corpus for reconstructing the environment of the inhabitants of the Ancient Near East, their learned and popular conceptions with regard to fauna, as well as the more practical aspects induced by the use of animal products in daily life. The aim of this paper is to illustrate, through a few selected examples, how the Paleobabylonian corpus is likely to shed light on the reading of cuneiform therapeutic texts and enrich their understanding.
