Divination

Sources

The “Science” of Divination.. Signs of all kinds, solicited or unsolicited, might be sent by the gods. In the case of a solicited omen, a professional diviner (Akkadian: barti) examined a condition that he had deliberately provoked. By doing so, he could ask the gods to answer specific questions or inquire about the advisability of undertaking some action. If the answer was negative, the plan was postponed, and the diviner made another attempt at divination at what he hoped was a more propitious time.

Solicited Omens. Extispicy was an especially important means of soliciting omens. The entrails (the liver, lungs, or colon spiral) of a slaughtered young sacrificial animal (usually a sheep, sometimes a goat) were inspected and interpreted by the diviner. The signs and their associated portents were consistently written down, and eventually they were collected into omen series. Livers modeled in clay were marked with various characteristics and inscribed with their related predictions. Extispicy was used from the mid-third millennium b.c.e. on, and over time it developed into an advanced discipline with its own vocabulary of technical words for the entrails and a catalogue of their many different markings. Other means of soliciting omens included lecanomancy (the observation of the patterns formed by oil blobs dropped onto water), libanomancy (the observation of the behavior of smoke from incense), belo-mancy (the observation of arrows shot into the air), cledonomancy (the analysis of chance responses or remarks overheard in a crowd), and, rarely, necromancy (calling up the spirits of the dead).

Unsolicited Omens. Other forms of divination involved observation of naturally occurring events, such as signs seen in the sky. They were the domain of other kinds of diviners: the exorcist (Akkadian: ashipit), and, in later times, a scholar (Akkadian: tupsharru). Observing unprovoked omens gradually became more widespread, and celestial divination eventually surpassed extispicy in popularity, surviving even after the end of Mesopotamian civilization. Also important among unsolicited signs were teratological omens (monstrous births among animals), terrestrial omens (a huge range of strange everyday occurrences), hemerological and menological omens (favorable and unfavorable days for undertaking certain plans), prognostic omens (predictions of the course and outcome of diseases), and physiognomic omens (predictions derived from the appearance and behavior of individual people). Augury (the observation of birds) and oneiromancy (the interpretation of dreams) were also practiced. All branches of divination had their own specialized practitioners.

Longevity of the Tradition. Divination was used in all periods of Mesopotamian history. It was practiced in the service of kings to guide them in important decisions about military campaigns, temple building, court appointments, and many other matters. It was also used by people of lesser

rank to investigate the future or to find an answer to a particular question.

The Nature of Omens. A sign from a god, such as an eclipse, was believed to forecast the same good or bad fortune in all future days. Once a sign was observed and had been followed by a specific event, this sign, whenever it was seen again, was thought to indicate a similar future event. The sign did not have any influence on or in any way cause the coming event. It was just a warning; if x occurred, it was expected that y would follow. Scribes wrote down such signs and their indications, compiling tablet upon tablet of omens, which only they, as specialized diviners, had been trained to interpret. When x happened again, scholars consulted these compendia of omens to see what outcome, y, might be on the way.

Divination and Prevention. The portended events detected by divination were not inevitable. If the signs were properly read and interpreted, magical or other appropriate steps might be taken to avert the potential consequences. One measure was the performance of apotropaic rites by an exorcist. Intended to ward off evil, these rites took many different forms, each designed to take care of specific and different evil portents. If the origin of the evil was unknown, the exorcist could resort to the generic “rite against all evil.” For eclipses, one of the most perilous and fearful of events, there were several preventive measures. One was a ritual that called for the continuous and rapid beating of a bronze kettledrum.

The Substitute King Ritual. For eclipses that specifically forecast the death of the king, there was a special remedy, the “substitute king ritual,” in which a man was selected to take the place of the king, thereby assuming the fate predicted for the true king. He was usually some flawed individual, perhaps a condemned criminal, who, while he had no power, wore the real king’s clothes, sat on the throne, and listened as the bad omen predicting his impending death was recited. Meanwhile, the real king, addressed as “farmer” to disassociate him from his royal station, remained in seclusion and underwent a purification process. At the end of the period for which the omen was considered valid, usually one hundred days, the substitute king was put to death.

Omen Series. Omens were recorded and eventually organized into collections, or series. Over time, they were copied and recopied, edited and revised, shortened or amplified. Each of the many branches of divination had its own omen manual for diviners to consult. All omens, no matter what their themes, were phrased in identical form. All were expressed as a conditional sentence consisting of two clauses: the protasis “if x happens,” and the apodosis “then y will happen.” In omen collections, every conceivable protasis, whether possible or not, was considered. For example, there are omens about lunar eclipses that cannot possibly occur on the eighteenth to twenty-first days of the Babylonian lunar month. One reason for the inclusion of such impossible situations can likely be the systematic way in which omens were organized into collections. Whenever gaps occurred in the scheme, they were filled by omens deliberately created to make the arrangement complete. Omen series became increasingly more detailed, and series contain runs of certain themes, such as an event happening on selected days of the month, or on each and every day of the month, or a phenomenon occurring in all four common colors. There was an ever-present contrast between right and left. In extispicy it might be the right and left side of the liver, or in celestial divination perhaps the left and right side of eclipse shadows. Other opposites might be above and below, in front of and behind, bright and faint, sunrise and sunset, on time and late or early. When there was more than one event in the protasis, there were clear guidelines: a good sign combined with a good sign predicted a good outcome; good combined with bad meant a bad result; bad combined with bad had a good portent.

Spread of the Babylonian Tradition. The history of divination in Mesopotamia is a long one. Although the observation and interpretation of divine signs warning of future events must have begun earlier, omens were written down and copied from at least the last third of the third millennium into the first century c.e. Divination was an accepted means of predicting future events, and it was the work of learned professionals. The corpus of omens was respected as a scholarly source to be referred to and quoted throughout the ages. It is not surprising that divination texts make up the largest single category of recovered Akkadian literature. Mesopotamian divination, and especially celestial omens, spread to neighboring kingdoms in the mid-second millennium b.c.e. Omens were copied in Mari, Emar, Alalah, Qatna, and Ugarit in Syria; Hazor in the upper Galilee; Hattusa in Anatolia; Nuzi on the northwest periphery of Mesopotamia; and Susa in southwest

Iran. Inside Mesopotamia, the astronomical omen series Enuma Anu Enlil was still being copied in the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods, and experts in charge of astronomical observations acquired a special name: “Scribe of Enuma Anu Enlil,” a title that survived into the second century b.c.e. These long-lived Mesopotamian celestial omens were undoubtedly the source for similar omens found in Egyptian, Indian, and Greek sources. From Egypt, there is a demotic papyrus preserving two Achaemenid texts that include counterparts to Babylonian examples. Babylonian astronomical knowledge, as well as celestial and terrestrial omens, was transmitted to India from the mid-first millennium B.C.E. on; Greek omens in Babylonian style were composed by someone now known as Pseudo-Petosiris. From these sources, Mesopotamian omens spread to the Far East, to Islam, and to medieval Europe. Where the Mesopotamian omen tradition was not adopted or adapted, it was treated with contempt; divination was forbidden in ancient Israel and scorned in the Hebrew Bible.

From Celestial Divination to Mathematical Astronomy.. As a scholarly pursuit, celestial divination in Mesopotamia provided a solid background for the composition of other observational astronomical texts and especially for the mathematical astronomy that developed later. Astronomers and astral diviners became masters of scholarly investigation. As they regularly observed and recorded astronomical and meteorological phenomena and matched their observations to related predictions from collections of omens, they began to be interested in the timing and circumstances of astronomical events in themselves. From the omen series Enuma Anu Enlil alone, it is apparent that by end of the second millennium B.C.E. and the beginning of the first, scholars were aware of the periodicity of planetary and other celestial phenomena; they were curious about the possibilities of the predictability of their cycles; and they were engaged in finding mathematical methods to do just that. Their efforts to measure intervals between certain celestial phenomena for prediction purposes is just one example of this new interest. The scholars, by observing eclipses and their various aspects, gathered knowledge that would stand them in good stead when later they began to construct eclipse theory. And in measuring some periodic deviations from mean-time intervals of phenomena, they developed tools such as the linear zigzag function, which was useful later in their mathematical astronomy.

Personal Celestial Divination. Until the end of the fifth century B.C.E., astronomy and astral omens were the concern of the king and the country in general but not the province of his subjects. It was not until the Achaemenid period (538-331 b.c.e.) that the use of celestial omens expanded to include predictions, based on astronomical phenomena at the time of birth, about the future lives of common people. These personal celestial omens describing the position and phenomena of one or more planets or fixed stars at birth are now termed “nativity omens.” Personal proto-horoscopes also emerged. Unlike nativity omens, they do not normally give predictions about the future life of a child; yet, they might include nativity omens. While the terms “nativity omens” and “proto-horoscopes” bring to mind the pseudo-science of modern astrology, the recording of celestial omens at the time of birth, which were considered signs from the gods, is quite different from what modern people think of as astrology or even what the ancient Greeks thought it was.

Proto-Horoscopes. Thirty-two Babylonian-style proto-horoscopes are known, ranging in date from 410 b.c.e. to 69 b.c.e., near the virtual end of cuneiform writing. Technically, because Babylonian proto-horoscopes do not contain predictions based on planetary positions and zodiacal signs, these texts are not identical to Hellenistic and Roman horoscopes. Classical horoscopes use a far richer collection of significant data, and their validity is derived from Aristotelian physics and Hellenistic cosmology rather than from signs from the gods. Rather than forecasting the future, Babylonian proto-horoscopes merely state certain astronomical facts at the time of birth or, in a few cases, time of conception. Following the date, and perhaps the time of day, of the child’s birth or conception are the positions of the planets, all at one point in time. These data cannot be observational and must have been computed. They follow a fixed order: the moon, sun, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Saturn, and Mars. Sometimes the planetary positions are described by degree within a zodiacal sign, but more often than not the zodiacal sign is given alone. There also might be statements about the length of the month (twenty-nine or thirty days); measurements of time intervals such as sunrise to moonset or moonrise to sunrise; eclipses, including those not visible in Babylon; equinoxes and solstices; and the conjunction of the moon with reference stars. The following is a proto-horoscope for someone born on 7 September 140 b.c.e.:

Year 172 (Seleucid Era) Arsaces was king.
[Ululu (month VI)] 30 (were the days of the previous
month), night of the 13^th … evening watch,
In his hour (of birth), the moon was in Pisces,
the sun in Virgo, Jupiter in Sagittarius, Venus in Libra
Mars in Gemini, Mercury and Saturn
which had set were not visible. They were with the sun.
That month, moonset after sunrise on the 14th, last lunar
visibility on the 28th,
That year, (autumnal) equinox was on the 2nd of Tashritu
(month VII). (Rochberg, 1998)

Sources

Hermann Hunger and David Edwin Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 1999).

Ulla Jeyes, “The Act of Extispicy in Ancient Mesopotamia: An Outline,” Assyriological Miscellanies, 1 (1980): 13-32.

Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1995).

A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization, revised edition, completed by Erica Reiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).

Simo Parpola, ed., Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, part 2, Alter Orient und Altes Testement 5/2 (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, 1983).

Erica Reiner, Astral Magic in Babylonia, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, volume 85, part 4 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1995).

Francesca Rochberg, Babylonian Horoscopes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1995).

Francesca Rochberg-Halton, “Benefic and Malefic Planets in Babylonian Astrology,” in A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs, edited by Erle Leichty, Maria deJ. Ellis, and Pamela Gerardi, Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund, no. 9 (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 323-328.

Ivan Starr, The Rituals of the Diviner (Malibu, Cal.: Undena, 1983).