Mesopotamian divination

Dating

The land of Sumer within Mesopotamia had a settled population within the 5th millennia BCE.

Sumeria

A seal from Sumeria, (of Mudgala, Lord of Edin, Minister to Uruas) shows the word Azu, which meant water-divinator (lit. water knower), and additionally, physician. Lord Mudgala was the son of Uruas the Khad, who was the first dynasty of Sumeria (via Phoenicia) of the fourth millennium BCE.

Another artifact from Sumerian culture, a death-amulet seal, shows the name Uzu-as' and is a resurrection amulet for the slave and seer of the Temple of the Sun, Uzu-as'. The part of the name, the word Uzu, meant in Sumerian, divinator, magician, or seer.

Neo-Sumeria

There is some suggestion people of this era knew of, and were experiencing dreams as, portents and sources for divination. The Neo-Sumerian period was from circa the years 2100 to 2000 BCE.

Babylonia

Most of the extant material showing evidence of divination practice are from the 7th century BCE and accordingly from Babylonian culture, which dates from 1850 BCE and later.

The so-called Sumerian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh has the mother of Gilgamesh interpreting a dream of Gilgamesh (a portent of the advent of Enkidu).

Development

Divination practice evolved through time from abductive positions to reckonings by virtue of an a priori, and a tendency to make generalizations about causes.

Classification

Two types existed, divine and human. Mesopotamian diviners most often committed acts of divination by way of a liver, or by way of observations of the sky.

Another difference is delineated by Bottéro, of two types of divination, both divine, but one artificial and the other natural, with the artificial being divinations where through a process of "computation and constant observation" a future truth is gleaned, and natural, being a kind of gift from a god where-by direct inspired communication occurs from god to human.

Bottéro and Bahrani assert Mesopotamian divination was not just divination, and not limited in development to a type of superstition, but was developed to the extent to which it was in fact a science.

Divine

Study of portents from gods was vital within Mesopotamia throughout the entire time of the place. The gods Šamaš and Adad were associated most closely to divination, with Šamaš connected to divination to make decision, and Adad for oracles and omens.

Celestial

Celestial divination was made for the purposes of the king and the state. Diviners observed the sun of the sky and the stars of the night sky, which they knew as šıṭır samé , or, šıṭır šamāmī , or, šıṭır burūmē (writing of the firmament ). These three things refer to they're thought of the stars of the sky (presumably in only of an understanding of the night sky) to be heavenly writing. This type of divination, by way of the celestial, was one of three related celestial sciences of Babylon, including also astronomy and horoscopy.

The descriptions šıṭır šamê and šıṭırti šamāmī are found sometimes within Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions in special reference to those temples thought of a beautiful in a way of those temples being (lit.) like the heavenly writing.

Impetration

Impetration is a type of divination which involved a diviner asking a deity to control a medium for the diviner to foretell the future. Mediums might include smoke, lots, or drops of oil in, or on, water.

Human

Divination by way of deductive thought, which is divination where-by people understood the significance of forms and, or, changes to a medium as showing and revealing a truth, is attested to within Old Babylonia, at a date of 1950 BCE

Hepatoscopy

Divination of this type involved using the liver, and possibly additionally the gall-bladder.

Examination of the internal organs to make predictions is known as extispicy.

Extant sources reveal individuals were restricted from using extispicic means by a prohibitive cost for the performance of this divination, royal members and nobles were mostly the only ones able to afford to know the future by this means.

Concrete extant sources for knowledge of hepatoscopy is models of divined livers.

The beginnings of hepatoscopic practice and belief is within a time of during the third millennium BCE

Practice

To make hepatoscopic predictions, animals were slaughtered (Oppenheim). Predictions were made on observation of any kind of abnormality within the organ, which might be atrophy, hypertrophy, displacement, or any type of unusual marking within the organ.

To make predictions, diviners had these two things to use to aid their making of a divinatory statement; lists of predictions and clay models made of livers used in previous predictions.

Belief

The liver was thought of within the culture of Mesopotamia as being the centre of thought and feeling.

Physiognomics

Study of the human body and foretelling of an individuals fate from this study is known as physiognomics. Diviners (or perhaps others associated) gave texts to others to ensure these texts were with the proceeding generation, in a chain of passings of material occurring for a period of nearly two millennia.

Physiognomic divination omens, in the first extant recorded, date from a period 2000 - 1600 BCE

Dream interpretation

The Mesopotamian dream-interpretator was known as ša'il(t)u.

Necromancy

Necromantic practice is shown by historical document to have begun from at least 900 BCE, and was relied upon for insight to a much greater extent within urban culture by the time of the early 7th century BCE.

Writing

Literature containing Babylonian divination very often doesn't show contents within introductories which any reader might use to know the contents of the text.

Enūma Anu Enlil is a text of conclusions of divination.

Šumma alammdimmǔ is a series of omens made by physiognomics dating to the close of the second millennium BCE They are upon twenty-seven tablets.

History of study

The study of divination within Babylonian culture belonds to the discipline of Assyriology and began in earnest sometime during the decade of the 1870s.