MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORICAL OMENS AS PROPHECY?
As may be seen from these examples, late Mesopotamian historical omens have a sort of quality of prayers for deliverance to them, where recitation(s) of negatively charged past events followed by positively charged resolution(s) of crisis, all of it projected into the future, become(s) a sort of complaint to the gods about the current political situation and a signaled desire for them to produce a king who will act as savior.
Both the Uruk Prophecy and the Dynastic Prophecy were probably composed for the edification of the specific king who was meant to play this messianic role (in the former case Sin-sar-iskun and the latter Arsaces I or Mithradates I).[143]This is remembering always that the gods lay in wait to reward a king who succeeded or to punish one who failed to play the desired role, and that if one monarch proved unmoved, there were always other kings to whom one could apply. The Uruk Prophecy was still being copied in Hellenistic Uruk, long after the failure of the original prophecy to come to fruition. As for the Dynastic Prophecy, unless the Parthians were very nice to Babylon, it would be understood as predicting their demise at the hands of yet another conqueror.
It having been noted that the Mesopotamian “prophecies” refer to events that have, in fact, already occurred, it is tempting to regard them as some sort of prediction after the fact, at best false prophecy and at worst political propaganda. But is this fair? I would like to suggest a new approach to the problem of Mesopotamian “prophetic” texts by inverting the paradigm and asking not whether Mesopotamian divination can represent a form of prophecy, but whether biblical prophecy can represent a form of divination or, as Ionian Greek philosophers put it, prophecy involves not only the present and the future but also the past.
revolt, Marduk would reward him with total victory over Elam and, most importantly, extraordinary peace and prosperity in the land: “The grass of winter (will last) till summer. The grass of summer will last to winter. The harvest of the land will thrive. The marketplace will prosper... Brother will love his brother. A son will fear his father as his god... A man will regularly pay his taxes.” See Longman 1997: 480-81, line 149.