Aḥudemmeh(6th cent.?) [Ch. of E.?]

Author of a work on human physiology. He is almost certainly to be distinguished from the metropolitanAḥudemmeh of Balad; but may be (so Gignoux) the bp. ofNineveh of this name, listed amongst those present at the Synod of 554. Two different works ‘On the composition of man’ are attributed to Aḥudemmeh. The first (ed. Nau) is preserved in a single W.-Syr. ms. of the 9th cent. and is evidently incomplete, while the second (ed. Chabot) is found in an E.-Syr. ms. of 1904, and is attributed to ‘Aḥudemmeh Antipatros’; according to Chabot this is not by Aḥudemmeh but a work by the 2nd-cent. doctor Antipater, not preserved elsewhere. The ms. of 1904 continues with a short anonymous text on man as a microcosm, which could be by Aḥudemmeh (so Gignoux, who also considers the previous text to be by the 6th-cent. Aḥudemmeh; he also draws some parallels with Middle Persian sources, and to similar material inShemʿon d-Ṭaybutheh and inGewargis Warda’s poem on Man as a Microcosm, ed. Gignoux, 1999).

Probably yet a third Aḥudemmeh was the author of a grammatical work, mentioned byYoḥannan bar Zoʿbi.

Primary Sources

• J.-B. Chabot, ‘Notice sur deux manuscrits contenant les œuvres du moine Isaac de Rabban Isho et du métropolitain Ahoudemmeh’,Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale et autres bibliothèques publiés par l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 43 (1965), 53–70. (Syr. with FT)
• G. Furlani, ‘La psicologia di Ahudemmeh’,Atti della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino 61 (1925/6), 807–45. (IT)
• F.  Nau,Histoires d’Ahoudemmeh et de Marouta (PO 3.1; 1905), 97–115. (Syr. with FT)

Secondary Sources

• Ph. Gignoux, ‘Anatomie et physiologie humaine chez un auteur syriaque, Aḥūdemmeh’,CRAIBL 142.1 (1998), 231–42.
• Ph. Gignoux, ‘L’apport scientifique des chrétiens syriaques à l’Iran sassanide’,JA 289 (2001), 217–36.

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