THE FORM AND USE OF AN OMEN
The sentences in the Mesopotamian knowledge texts or scientific handbooks almost always occur in the specific format of conditionals (see Rochberg, this volume). The first part of a sentence is called a “protasis” in modern scholarship, and is introduced by the indication of an observation or a hypothesis — “if (something happens).” The second part, the “then” clause, is called the “apodosis,” which shows the part of the future that can be derived from
the omen, the prognosis, or the prediction.
It is the universal form for many Mesopotamian scientific treatises, where concrete circumstances are always described as leading to a specific outcome. Like Mesopotamian law codes and medical treatises, Babylonian omen texts never outline the principles behind the concrete “if... then” sentences and observations. The nature of principles behind the concrete statements should be reconstructed on the basis of written examples contained in the law codes and omen texts, assumed that these texts reveal only some parts of the oral lore they are based on. The oral background of the ancient Mesopotamian celestial omen literature is emphasized by D. Brown as follows:... not only the categorisation of celestial phenomena, but the establishment of a simple code and a series of rules, which enabled them to be interpreted, had taken place before the writing down of the first celestial omens took place. Some of these premises must, to a large extent, be understood to be given — or in other words recognised that they derive from an oral background, or are “traditional” (Brown 2000: 112).
When celestial omens first appear in writing, some already demonstrate the effects of their literate production (Brown 2000: 112). The Babylonian omen compendia represent parts of the ancient Mesopotamian worldview and are by no means separated from other genres of literature.
Thus, the observation of Anzu’s footprints in a house or in a city is an ill omen according to terrestrial omen series Summa alu 1.155 and 19.38', reminding us of Anzu’s sinister role in the Akkadian Epic of Anzu (Freedman 1998: 38, 278). Also, the city making noise is prone to dispersal, while the quiet city “will go on normally” (Summa alu 1.8-13), reminding us of the Babylonian Epic of Atrahasis, where the disturbed gods attempt to destroy mankind on account of the noise they make. Accordingly, studies in intertextuality indicate that there is no sea change in terms of content between the omens and other Mesopotamian texts:As for subject matter and style, the apodoses of the omen literature are closely linked to literary texts of the late periods that describe the blessings of peace and prosperity or the horrors of war, famine, and rebellion as well as elaborate blessings and curses similar to those found in certain Mesopotamian royal inscriptions and public legal documents (Oppenheim 1964: 211).
There are some historical texts that extensively record omens or ominous happenings — the Chronicle of Early Kings and the Religious Chronicle. The material contained in the first gathers the apodoses of historical omens about the kings Naram-Sin and Sargon. The second chronicle collects bizarre events observed during New Year festivals in Babylon, such as wild animals appearing in the city, statues moving, and astronomical phenomena. This recording of bizarre phenomena, which have some similarity to omens, was a major concern for the author of the Religious Chronicle (Grayson 1975: 37). The content of the Chronicle of Early Kings finds its origin in prognostic literature, as it consists of omen apodoses, while the content of the Religious Chronicle is similar to omen protases. However, the Religious Chronicle does not mention any events which could be construed as results of the protases, and these protases seem not to occur in omen collections. On the other hand, the Chronicle of Early Kings used the so-called historical omens as source material (Grayson 1975: 37, 45).
The historical omens often summarize anecdotal stories or legends about kings, and therefore they are of very dubious historical value (see Cooper 1980). A lesson to learn from these historical omens is that certain omens were written down to record legends about eminent historical personages. It finds a parallel in the Hebrew Bible, where certain historical events were presented as highly ominous on a literary level (Scurlock, this volume).It seems that the “if... then” scientific format is only a pragmatic characteristic of omen sentences, which does not prescribe any special type of content. One could easily transcribe different types of traditional oral lore and teachings into this handbook format of conditional sentences for its use by the omen interpreters. For example, the tablets pertaining to human behavior in the series of physiognomic omens Alandimmu were called by its first modern editor F. Kraus as “ein Sittenkanon in Omenform,” a canon of good manners in the form of omens (Kraus 1937). This circumstance indicates that omen compendia occasionally collect and contain some items of oral lore, especially of wisdom literature. The inevitable conclusion is that the material included in the omen texts is of diverse origin, including proverbs, parables, fables, and perhaps also other types of learned folklore. Accordingly, it is of heterogeneous origins, culled from the accumulated oral wisdom, from an “inherited conglomerate” of a community (Bock, this volume).
FABLES
Erica Reiner has pointed out that apodoses of some omens “read as if they were the summary or the moral of a story” (1998: 651). Her observation can be complemented because some protases, especially in human behavioral omens, also look like abbreviated stories.[8] In the Babylonian Diviner’s Manual there are many incipits of the omen series for which we lack textual evidence in cuneiform texts. Some of the protases give an impression of an underlying fairy tale or a popular story, for example “If bundles of reeds walk about in the countryside,” or “If a wildcat opens its mouth and talks like a man,” or “If a great beast that has two legs like a bird.,” etc. (Oppenheim 1974: 203, lines 11-12, 20). Such omens probably summarize certain popular stories with a pedagogical import belonging to the repertoire of Babylonian wise men, and to the teaching example is given the scientific form of an omen.