DIFFUSION OF BABYLONIAN OMENS IN EAST AND WEST
The diviners of Mesopotamian extispicy and lecanomancy were ideologically descendants of the antediluvian king Enmeduranki, who learned the art directly from the gods Samas and Adad at an audience in heaven (Lambert 1998).
Biblical scholars generally agree that the religious-historical background of the figure of Enoch, the seventh antediluvian patriarch in Genesis 5:23f. and subsequently the apocalyptic authority in Enochic literature, lies in this seventh Mesopotamian antediluvian king (Collins 1998: 26, 45-46). Enmeduranki’s connection with Enoch establishes a continuity of tradition from Mesopotamian divination to Jewish apocalyptic literature, where Enoch occurs as the seer and knower of divine secrets. Even in much later strata of Enochic mysticism, as in the third book of Enoch, traces can be found of the Mesopotamian divinatory traditions (Arbel 2008).Apart from the figure of Enoch in Jewish literature, the omen branch of cuneiform sciences extensively influenced many other parts of ancient world. There is evidence in Aramaic, Greek, Hittite, Latin, Sanskrit, Sogdian, and in other languages that knowledge of Mesopotamian omen compendia was widespread both in space and time.
The Aramaic World
The Akkadian omen compendia must have been translated into Aramaic quite early, while the former was still a living language, and the Aramaic form gave to these texts much wider circulation. Evidence has been found for Mesopotamian physiognomic and astrological omens in Aramaic from Qumran (Greenfield and Sokoloff 1995), and for celestial omens in the texts of the Cairo Genizah (Greenfield and Sokoloff 1989). Jewish Aramaic parallels have been found to such omen series as Summa izbu, Summa alu, dream omens, physiognomic omens, and astronomical omens. Rabbinic literature records many omens listed under the rubric Darkei ha-Emori “Amorite Practices,” where the “Amorite” probably stands for speakers of a more ancient Aramaic.
Many Talmudic omens have clearly Mesopotamian origins, such as one regarding a snake: if a snake fell on the bed, it says: “he is poor, but he will end up being rich. If (the woman) is pregnant, she will give birth to a boy. If she is a maiden, she will marry a great man” (Tosefta Shabbat 6, 16). The twenty-second tablet of the series Summa alu concerns itself with omens derived from snakes in the house, among which are omens in a broken passage which refer to a snake which falls upon a man’s bed (Geller 2000: 3-4).The later form of Aramaic, Syriac, preserved many forms of divinatory texts of Mesopotamian style, and the rich omen literature in Arabic mostly derives from Syrian antecedents. The most complete Syriac source is the Book of Prognostications of al-Hasan ben Bahlul, dating from the twelfth century A.D. (Fahd 1991).[10] There are Arabic manuscripts of malhama literature, some of the Ottoman period, which attest to the practice of reading astral and meteorological omens of an ancient Babylonian type. Other types of omens are also represented in Arab divination — from phenomena of animals, of human beings, of birds, the physiognomic and astrological omens. Certain magical practices were in use against unfortunate omens, like Mesopotamian Namburbis (see Fahd 1966: 418-519). It is difficult to say anything for certain on the relationship between the Arab and earlier Mesopotamian omen collections, because the field remains understudied.
Inside the Aramaic world omens were transmitted from one culture to another both by means of written texts and orally. In the secret lore of the Mandaean priests, the tradition of omen interpretation persisted orally until modern times, and only some parts of it were written. Originally Mesopotamian elements may be traced in the Mandaean Book of the Zodiac (Asfar / Sfar Malwasia) of Sasanian origins, which is a compilation from various sources of astrological and divinatory content. The major Babylonian sources for the origins of the book are the celestial omen series Enuma Anu Enlil and its hemerological companion Iqqur ipus.
The last five chapters of the first part of the Mandaean book collect various omens which may be described as meteorological, astral, and at the end, a few “terrestrial” omens similar to those of the Babylonian series Summa alu (see Rochberg 1999). Not all omens were written in the Mandaean culture, as the priest in Ahwaz, speaking of secret knowledge transmitted from priest to priest, once vaunted to Lady Drower as follows:If a raven croaks in a certain burj (= astrological house) I understand what it says, also the meaning when the fire crackles or the door creaks. When the sky is cloudy and there are shapes in the sky resembling a mare or a sheep, I can read their significance and message. When the moon is darkened by an eclipse, I understand the portent: when a dust-cloud arises, black, red, or white, I read these signs, and all this according to the hours and the aspects (Drower 1937: 5).
INDIA AND IRAN
According to D. Pingree, Mesopotamian omen literature was transmitted to India during the two centuries that followed the Achaemenid occupation of Gandhara in northwestern India and the Indus Valley in the sixth century B.C. (see Pingree 1992: 376). As Pingree has pointed out, the author of the sermon Brahmajalasutta, allegedly delivered by Buddha and included in the collection Dighanikaya (I 1.1-3.74) was very familiar with the contents of both Babylonian terrestrial and celestial omen compendia (Pingree 1997: 33). The sermon condemns some wandering diviners, Sramanas and Brahmanas, who earn their living from the useless knowledge of omens. Almost every type of omen mentioned by the Buddha is found
of the famous Syriac Book of Medicines (see Budge 1913).
both in cuneiform literature and in the later Sanskrit texts. The enumeration of the terrestrial omen carriers follows exactly the order of the tablets of the Akkadian compendium Summa alu — houses, ghosts, snakes, poisons, scorpions, mice, vultures, crows, and quadrupeds (see Pingree 1992).
The transmission of Mesopotamian omen texts — both protases and apodoses — to India in the fifth and early fourth centuries B.C. is even clearer, for the contemporary Sanskrit and Prakrit literature is replete with references to and examples of such omens. In this period much of the Mesopotamian omen literature, perhaps from Aramaic versions, was translated into an Indian language, and these translations, though undoubtedly considerably altered to fit with Indian intellectual traditions and with the Indian society which the diviners had to serve, form the basis of the rich Indian literature on terrestrial and celestial omens. The Indian tradition also used pacification rituals comparable to Mesopotamian Namburbi, by which the anger of the god who sent the omen is appeased (Pingree 1997: 31-33).The other examples of the diffusion of Babylonian omens in the East involve some lunar and snake omens that are found in Iranian texts (see Panaino 2005). A Christian Sogdian group of omens concerning calendrical prognostics based on the appearance of natural phenomena such as thunder, earthquakes, rainbows, and eclipses, has its origin in the Babylonian almanac Iqqur tpus (see Sims-Williams 1995).
The Classical World
The traditional knowledge of Mesopotamian divination was transplanted to the classical world by wandering diviners; one such was likely the Chaldaean who visited Plato during his last night alive (Kingsley 1995: 199).[11] The Etruscan discipline of taking omens from liver inspection or hepatoscopy (haruspicina in Latin) shows remarkably close correspondence to the same form of divination developed in Mesopotamia. This can best be explained as the transmission of a “school” from Babylon to Etruria. The system of the slaughter of sheep, models of sheep livers of clay or metal, and the custom of providing them with inscriptions for the sake of explanation are peculiar things found precisely along the corridor from the Euphrates via Syria and Cyprus to Etruria.
(Burkert 1992: 46-48).The Etruscan written texts pertaining to hepatoscopy are lost and can be reconstructed only piecemeal from Latin and Greek texts. The internal tradition of the Etruscan discipline goes back to the seventh century, to precisely that period whose glory is reflected in many Near Eastern imports. It seems that hepatoscopy had no place in the older strata of Homeric epic, but it makes its appearance in the final version we have, dating to around 700 B.C. Calchas, Agamemnon’s seer, is the best of the “bird-diviners,” and by virtue of this art he has “led” the army (Iliad 1.69).[12] But a “sacrifice-diviner” (thyoskoos) is mentioned in the Iliad (24.221) and has a role in the Odyssey (21.145; 22.318-23). The observation of the liver remained by far the most predominant divination practice in Greece; from Plato (Phaedrus 244c) we learn that hepatoscopy enjoyed greater prestige than bird augury (Burkert 1992: 46-49).
The Mesopotamian divination by “lecanomancy” constituted a special art in Greece, whether in the pouring of oil onto water or the sprinkling of flour onto liquid. The liquids
3, no. 1167, lists some bird omens in Mesopotamian style, see Lonsdale 1979: 152-53.
were poured out into a dish, called lekane in Greek, a word which is cognate with Akkadian lahannu and Aramaic laqnu. “To pour vinegar and flour into same glass” and to watch their movements is mentioned by Aeschylus in Agamemnon 322. Such practices did not become as prominent as liver inspection in Greece (Burkert 1992: 53, 184).
The wandering diviners, sometimes called “Chaldaeans” in the Mediterranean sources, were often responsible for the dissemination of the Mesopotamian wisdom in the late antique world. An interesting question is possible Mesopotamian influence on the Stoic theory of signs given the circumstance observed already by F. Cumont that all first masters of the Stoic school were Orientals (Cumont 1912: 69-71, 81-82). The Stoic philosopher Chrysippus of Soli analyzed the conditional “If someone is born when Canicula (Sirius) is rising, he will not die in the ocean” (Cicero, De fato 12). This appears to be related to a record in a Babylonian principal manual of instruction “The place of Cancer: death in the ocean” (Textes cuneiformes du Louvre 6 14, obv. 23). This correlation shows that the Babylonian science of birth omens was known in the Greek world by the late third century B.C. Babylonian birth omens were probably known in Greece even long before the Stoic philosophers debated about their validity (Pingree 1997: 23). On birth omens in Cicero’s De divinatione, see Jacobs, this volume.