On 23 June 2026, the European Research Council (ERC) announced the awardees of its prestigious Advanced Grants, with Professor Mark Geller (UCL Hebrew and Jewish Studies) awarded €2.4 million to lead an ambitious international research project, BabPharmacy.
BabPharmacy, has launched with the aim of answering one of the most persistent questions about ancient Babylonian medicine: did any of it actually work and how can it reflect on today’s modern medicine?
For decades, that question has gone unanswered. Several thousand medical recipes survive on cuneiform tablets, drawing on a rich pharmacopoeia of hundreds of plant and mineral ingredients, yet researchers have had little reliable way to determine which of these substances were genuinely effective, or even which were most commonly used.
BabPharmacy will tackle the problem by adapting statistical methods originally developed for classifying medicinal plants in ancient Chinese medicine. By analyzing the relative frequency of plant and mineral names across the surviving Babylonian medical corpus, the project’s researchers aim to identify which ingredients were preferred treatments for particular symptoms and diseases. While frequency data alone cannot reveal everything about a drug’s effectiveness, it will offer important clues about how medical ingredients were selected and used over time, giving researchers new ways to control and interrogate the evidence.
Backed by a €2.4m ERC Advanced Grant, the project will bring together an international team of scholars from across Europe. Alongside the statistical analysis, the team will work to decipher hundreds of cuneiform medical fragments that have sat largely unstudied in the British Museum since their arrival in the 19th century. BabPharmacy will also draw regularly on outside expertise in ancient Greek and Egyptian medicine, archaeobotany, and pharmacology, ensuring that its findings are tested against multiple disciplinary perspectives. The ultimate goal is a deeper understanding of ancient medicine across the wider Mediterranean and Near Eastern world.
“Finally, we can apply global knowledge to interpreting the vast numbers of medical tablets recovered and their drug regimes.” said Prof. Mark Geller, PI for BabPharmacy. “We are thrilled to have been selected for grant funding for this important project.”
About BabPharmacy
BabPharmacy is an international research project dedicated to the systematic study of drugs used in ancient Babylonian medicine. Drawing on statistical, philological, and scientific methods, the project seeks to determine how medical ingredients were selected and applied in antiquity, and to situate Babylonian medical practice within the broader history of medicine in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.