4 THREE STRIKES AND YOU’RE OUT! A VIEW ON COGNITIVE THEORY AND THE FIRST-MILLENNIUM EXTISPICY RITUAL

ULLA SUSANNE KOCH, INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR

In the past decades scholars from fields such as anthropology, science of religion, and psychology have sought to understand — or “explain” as it is often put — religious and magi­cal phenomena in the framework of “cognitive science”; inspired by the advances in areas of research within neuroscience and cognitive psychology.^[17] At the same time, as this symposium illustrates, the study of the well-nigh ubiquitous phenomenon of divination has also blossomed in recent years.

or “the orderliness which it may ascribe to the uni­verse” a number of researchers have allowed divi­nation at least a tentative space within the objective sphere of Western science.” A. K. Guinan (2002: 18-19) stresses the importance of discussing divina­tion per se, not “subsumed into these larger cultural categories” (i.e., magic, science, religion). Science and divination are similar in that they both are casu­istic and paradigmatic in form “but [divination] can­not do what it claims.” This is of course an objection raised against magic of all sorts.

ULLA SUSANNE KOCH

lives is to get things done, to make things right, and to keep them that way.” I believe that to a certain extent this function at least holds true for divination. Among other things, divination has been interpreted as primarily a heuristic pursuit, as a form of sense-making involving a categorization of the universe.⁴ Divination analyzed from the point of view of hermeneutics, divination viewed as a semantic system, is certainly rewarding and relevant. The reading of signs according to a fixed semantic code is central to many divinatory systems, not least the Mesopotamian, and in Mesopotamian divination it cuts across such distinctions as signa im- petrativa and oblativa, provoked/induced and unprovoked omens. Both induced signs as well as signs sent outside the frame of a ritual setting were read according to a fixed code.⁵

Categorization and manipulation of symbols have long been of central concern for cogni­tive psychologists,⁶ and unraveling the semantic code utilized in a given divinatory system can yield insight into the social, ethical, and other normative bias of the culture from which it springs.⁷ The diviner holds the “hermeneutic keys” to the divinatory code.

Extispicy was one of the most pervasive and successful of the many Mesopotamian divi- natory practices.

First we must test if asking again, perhaps rephrasing the question, really was the only option open to the diviner and his client. If we accept that extispicy was not countered by apotropaic or appeasement rituals, the next question is, why? That this should be so is in my opinion by no means self-evident. Alone from a purely theological point of view one could argue that in extispicy you ask the gods for their decision, but in other forms of divination the will of the gods is no less directly expressed — in astrology the gods themselves signal their intentions with their celestial manifestations. Why is it possible to counter the expressed will of the gods in one case and not in the other? It is necessary to take a look at the kind of information obtained by extispicy, was it somehow different from that gained by other kinds of divination? Did the divinatory technique itself play a role? And finally, what was the rela­tionship to the structure of the apotropaic rituals themselves?

Is there any evidence that extispicy was countered by apotropaic rituals? One of the char­acteristics of divination is that it serves as a guide to action, often ritual action.

apotropaic rituals were associated also with extispicy. For instance, Erica Reiner^[20] suggested that one might expect all the major omen compendia to have had parallel apotropaic rituals, and she assumes that they existed for both astrological omina and for the omina collected in the extispicy series Barutu. Namburbis are of course well attested for “everyday divination” of the kind found in the series Summa izbu or Summa alu. Whereas the letters and reports from Assyrian and Babylonian scholars demonstrate that aversive action in the form of various ritu­als, including namburbis, was not uncommon in connection with astrological omina,^[21] there is no similar evidence that apotropaic or appeasement rituals were ever performed in connec­tion with extispicy. Aversive action in response to unfavorable extispicy is never explicitly mentioned in the scholarly correspondence of the Neo-Assyrian kings, nor to my knowledge are they attested to in texts from the second millennium.

Namburbis that explicitly mention extispicy do exist but are in fact quite rare. As far as I can tell there were actually two different types of namburbis directly connected with some aspect of extispicy:

1.

2. Apotropaic rituals performed to avert the evil portended by a failed extispicy

The prophylactic type of namburbi was quite rare, it included rituals for brisk trade and for bringing distant people near. The diviner could perform a namburbi before a divination ses­sion in order to prepare himself properly for performing extispicy, for instance, washing his leather bag^[22] which contained the cultic implements of his trade such as cedar wood.^[23] He could also perform rituals which safeguarded him from failure when serving an important client like the king. In the early morning before an extispicy, he could perform a namburbi to ensure that Shamash and Adad would stand by him in his “verdict,” that he may experience renown in extispicy (tanatti baruti amaru) and make himself famous (suma raba leqU).^[24] The apotropaic type of namburbi with reference to extispicy is structured like any other nam- burbi used to avert evil omens. The namburbis seem to refer to phenomena that prevented the proper performance of the sacrifice and obstructed a reliable reading of the extispicy. This would include extreme anomalies of the entrails. The semantic code of extispicy involved the study of tiny variations on a theme; in general, serious malformations were of no rel­evance, or rather, they could change the whole session into something completely different and in itself ill-portending. I suggest that the purpose of these namburbis therefore was not to counteract an unfavorable extispicy as such but to protect against the evil portended by

to perform an incense offering or simply to raise a rod made of cedar. Compare the discussion by Starr (1983: 48). Cedar wood is already mentioned in connection with what appears to be a reference to extispicy in a Sumerian source, Poebel 1914: no. 76 col. vi 2-10: me-bi su mu-na-ab-d[u·,] mds-gid-gid a d.utu-se mu-un-zi-[x] gudd su-sikil-gim mds-gid-gid-e gis.eren d.utu-se mu-un-zi-zi-i u> ti-la ku-li-ni-im en- na us-a galfi-la gal-ni'--im “He made its rituals perfect for him, the diviner rises before father Utu, like a guda-priest with clean hands the diviner raises cedar wood to Utu again and again.” ¹⁸ Zimmern 1901: nos. 75-78.

technical problems connected with the performance of the divinatory ritual. For instance, a namburbi could be performed if the slaughter itself was somehow defective — if no blood ran from the veins when the neck of the sacrificial animal was cut, if important organs were missing, or if they were seriously deformed.¹⁹ This view is in agreement with Maul (1994: 432), who suggested that the namburbis were performed due to the “Schweigen des Samas,” that is, when the extispicy ritual failed to produce an answer. He does, however, assume that namburbis could also be used to counteract the evil omens of an unfavorable extispicy, and he suggests that a namburbi amulet²⁰ and a universal namburbi²¹ with reference to extispicy illustrates this. I believe that neither the amulet nor the universal namburbi are actually di­rected against an unfavorable extispicy result, but like the rest are directed against a failed or flawed performance of extispicy. The amulet mentions ill omens stemming from “the evil of flawed, terrifying signs, evil and unfavorable (signs) from performing the ritual (lipit qati), or from the lamb having a disease (hiniq immeri) or from making the sacrifice (niqa naqu) or from anything else in performance of extispicy (nepesti baruti).” All this could well refer to evil portended by signs observed in connection with the performance of extispicy, not the extispicy result itself. In the namburbis the evil omens stem from flesh which is described as siru hatuti pardutu²² “flawed or terrifying” flesh, or as haliqti siri^{23 *} missing flesh. Neither hatu nor pardu are normal terms for unfavorable signs found in the protases of extispicy omina or in the extispicy reports. Circumstances surrounding the performance of divination were themselves observed and interpreted as ominous signs, as we know was the case with the behavior of the sacrificial animal itself.²⁴ This resembles the way we take omens from the act of catching the bride’s bouquet — something which is totally unrelated to the efficacy of the Christian marital ritual. The ill omen averted is thus not the result of an extispicy, and is not interpreted as such, but rather as an individual unfavorable sign which could be countered by an apotropaic ritual. The two known namburbi catalogs, one from late Uruk, the other from Assurbanipal’s library, include references to exactly these two types of namburbi in connec­tion with extispicy and can therefore not be taken as evidence that namburbis associated with the extispicy series itself existed.²⁵

Interestingly, the ancient Greek version of divination by the entrails of a sacrificial animal used in warfare also had no link with apotropaia. M. Flower suggests that extispicy was the last of the major divinatory practices to reach Greece from the Near East. The Greeks themselves

considered the art of divination to be either a homegrown idea or imported from Egypt, by the classical period extispicy was certainly a fully integrated part of Greek culture, whatever its origins.^[26] From Xenophon’s Anabasis we have a description of how the generals of the famous army of 10,000 Greek mercenaries practiced divination from “bloody sacrifice” on the route into and out of Babylonia in 401 B.C. Since the mercenaries were under Spartan leadership the practices described probably are closest to Lacedaemonian customs rather than Athenian but we know that the practice of divination by inspection of the entrails, primarily the liver, was widespread in classical antiquity. (Pseudo-) Xenophon elsewhere describes how the Spartan king would perform sacrifices before every decisive step of a military campaign:^[27]

• At home before taking off.

• At the boundary of the city-state (polis) before crossing.

• At the river.

• In the camp.

• At the front lines before joining battle.

• After the victory (of course).

Most of these are decision points to which any Assyrian king would nod his head in recogni­tion. The rituals and sacrifices differed from Mesopotamian practice in many respects; for one thing they seem to always have been addressed to the god most closely involved or relevant to the situation at hand. En route, Xenophon and the other generals performed sacrifices almost every day and sometimes many times a day. At one point they were so low on livestock suit­able for sacrifice and eating that they bought a draught animal simply to perform divination in order to know whether it would be a good idea to go out foraging (pillaging the locals, that is). At no time, even when facing the enemy or hunger, could anything avert an unfavorable sign. The Greek soldiers wait and starve, and their generals perform one sacrifice after the other, sometimes rephrasing the question, until they get a favorable sign in an offering.^[28] As in Mesopotamia, the limit seems to have been three performances of divination a day in the context of warfare as described by Xenophon. Apparently, however, it was possible in other contexts to avert unfavorable omens by acts of expiation and sacrifice before performing a renewed extispicy (Flower 2008: 80-84).

Extispicy was not the only kind of Mesopotamian divination with no known associated apotropaia. There exist no namburbis that mention signs obtained by two other forms of in­duced omina: lecanomancy (oil divination) and libanomancy (smoke divination), and also none for the physiognomic omen series Alamdimmu and other omina concerned with the be­havior or appearance of a person.²⁹ Well aware that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, Reiner suggested that the distinction between which omina required aversive action and which did not could be due to the character of the divination itself, whether it was “prognostic” or “diagnostic.” The assumption is that since a diagnostic omen would be more concerned with a cause in the past, it was perceived as not possible to change the result any­way, hence no reason for apotropaic rituals. A common topic of lecanomancy is the gender of one’s offspring, and no amount of ritual action could apparently change that. This may be so for the physiognomic omina: there is not much you can do about your features — there certainly is not much point in cutting off your nose, even if it has an ill-favored shape.^[29] In general, the explanation is not valid and I suspect another explanation must be found at least for lecanomancy and libanomancy. Finding the cause or nature of the evil is often the first step to curing it, and aversive rituals are commonly connected with diagnostic divination. The link between ritual aversive action and divination has nothing to do with the temporal orientation of the divination, whether it is retrospective of prospective,^[30] but the idea that the nature of the divinatory practice plays a role merits further investigation.

When we look at the range of questions asked in the first-millennium Mesopotamian extispicy queries, tamitus, and reports, we see that even though a wide variety of topics are represented, the knowledge sought after is always of relevance to the health and happiness of the individual, be it as a private person or as persona publica — as in the case of, for in­stance, the Assyrian kings — or it relates to the larger social environment. The purpose of the Old Babylonian diviner’s ritual is simply to decide the case of “the well-being of NN son of NN” (Starr 1983: 31). Even if we regard divination such as extispicy that can be classfied as relying on signa impetrativa from a functionalist point of view, as a magical confirmation of a proposed action (performative utterance),^[31] it still supplies knowledge which falls within these categories. The standard topics for extispicy according to, for example, Multabiltu are the well-being of the king, the land, the camp, the patient, for warfare, for taking a city, healing the sick, rain, and “undertaking an enterprise or whatever else.” The tamitus^[32] give a more detailed picture. The questions were always very meticulously formulated to minimize ambiguity. Basically, there were two types of questions. The first type are questions concern­ing a special situation or undertaking; the second type regards a specified period of time, detailing any imaginable calamity and asking whether it would occur within that period. These examples stem from the tamitus:

FITNESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL

• Safe night-watch.

• Personal safety for one year “at the command of god, goddess, king, noble, and prince.”

• Lunar eclipse (Sin).

• Ambition to be a temple administrator (temple personnel).

• Outcome of river-ordeal — to some degree dependent on the “mind of his ac­cuser” and the river.

• Hunting.

• Horse appropriate for god.

• Risk of flooding.

• Marriage (acceptance by father-in-law).

Lisdorf 2007: 59. Lisdorf suggest that divination is used as recourse when the “life model” (i.e., ideal circumstances in life according to norms of a given culture) clashes with reality; cf. also Turner 1961: 16. For summaries of purposes of Babylonian extispicy, see Koch-Westenholz 2002: 140ff., with previous literature.

• Male offspring.

• Survival of pregnant woman.

• Taking a second wife.

• Recovery from illness.

• Faithfulness of servant.

• Truthfulness of wife.

• Sending a messenger.

• Reliability of physician.

Fitness of Organization

• Military campaign (enemy, advisors, divine assistance).

• Safety of city from enemy action.

• Safety from enemies for people leaving the protecting wall of the city.

• Safety of watch from enemy attack.

• Safety of fort from the enemy.

• Damming a river.

• Mutiny.

As mentioned, on a very general level, what is of interest are matters to do with the physical and social well-being of the individual and his/her immediate social and physical environment.^[34] Very often the first category is of course implicitly contained in the second. When keeping watch, personal safety is also involved; when the king goes on a campaign he may well fall in battle himself; defeat of the army can have terrible consequences for the community and its members individually. So far this kind of information is fully in accordance with what we would expect from any “successful divinatory practice” and is not essentially different from what other Mesopotamian divinatory practices supplied (Sprensen, in press). Knowledge of this kind is what Boyer has termed “strategic social information” (e.g., Boyer 2001: 173). The ability to process strategic social information can be argued to be a prereq­uisite for successful human interaction and ultimately survival, and therefore could be an example of an adaptive cognitive faculty as argued by Boyer. To succeed as a social animal it is necessary to read others, to read the “signs, signals, and minds” of others, and “to pair implicit knowledge with explicit information” (Tremlin 2006: 33ff.).

The intention and will of others are of vital importance but can be hard to define and identify. What is significant depends entirely on context and experience. Strategic informa­tion has two important features: it is often obtained through indirect sources (so indeed why not divination?), and generally it is of lasting value (Tremlin 2006: 115ff.). Cognitive science operates with two fundamental “mental mechanisms,” the Agency Detection Device (ADD) and the Theory of Mind Mechanism (ToMM). ADD is eager to spot intentional agents in the world and ToMM normally works in unison with ADD supplying agents with minds, but at the same time, may supply minds even where no agent is identified. ToMM is seen, for instance, in perceptions of deceased persons as having wishes and emotions even though manifestly dead.³⁵ In view of this we would expect many of the tamitu questions to imply the action and/or intention of human-like agents. Indeed, in many cases agents are mentioned, either individual humans (wife, servant, temple personnel, father-in-law), groups (typically the enemy), or superhuman agents as gods (Sin or the River). The advantage of framing an intangible threat in terms of intentional agents is that it moves possible countermeasures from the physical to the social domain and thereby facilitates representations of possible control. This matches the well-known picture from Babylonian apotropaic and other rituals including surpu and maqlu, where misfortune, ill health, etc., are described as the result of malevolent or angered human or superhuman agents. Sprensen suggests that a divinatory system that transforms threats to individual into previously undisclosed interactions between intentional agents is especially strong-lived (Sprensen, in press, p. 324). Even though intentional agents are represented in extispicy queries, this cannot be said to be very evident from the queries, it is a little more apparent in the tamitus (see list above). Intentional agents often figure in extispicy omen apo­doses: witches, demons, oaths, kings, or angry gods. However, the transformation of threats to the social domain is perhaps clearest in the extispicy ritual itself and I suggest that exactly this transformation is what makes the kind of information extispicy supplied different.

The extispicy ritual itself was presented as a dialogue. The diviner asked (sa°alu) and the god answered (apalu), preferably with a “firm yes.” In the queries the question is formulated thus: “Does your great divinity know it? Is it decreed and confirmed in a favorable case (of extispicy) by the command of your great divinity, Shamash, great lord? Will he who can see, see it? Will he who can hear, hear it?” The Akkadian phrase is not necessarily to be understood as a question, but either way the implication is that the god has access to the answer and can make it known to the questioner.^{35 36 *} The closing formula of queries sums up: “Be present in this ram; place an affirmative answer (anna kena), favorable, propitious omens of the flesh of the query (tamltu) by the command of your great divinity so that I may see them.” But this was not a straightforward way of communicating. The diviner had to perform an elaborate ritual in order to obtain the desired knowledge. The first-millennium rituals collected in Zimmern 1901: nos. 1-20, show that divination could be performed in the frame of a complex ritual lasting from sunset to sunrise, in which one or more sheep were sacrificed to Shamash, Adad, and other gods and other offerings were brought as well. Apart from the ram that was used for divination, other lambs were also slaughtered and sacrifices were made. The distinction between divination and magic rituals, that gifts go from man to god in the latter not the for- mer,³⁷ does not hold for extispicy: “The diviner shall not approach the place of judgment, he should not lift the cedar, without present and gifts, they (the gods) will not reveal to him the secret answer to his question” (tamlt piristi) (Zimmern 1901: 118 [no. 24]).

Interestingly, the extispicy ritual has one important thing in common with namburbi-ritu- als, namely, that the ritual is metaphorically described as a judgment (Maul 1999: 126ff.). The answer the diviner established was commonly referred to as a divine judgment or a “decision” (purussu). Shamash was the “lord of verdict” (bel dini), the “Judge of Heaven and Earth.”³⁸ In Zimmern 1901: no. 11 rev. line 1, the diviner is instructed to “perform a sacrifice, establish

a verdict” (dina eppus), and in one of the rituals of the diviner he is told to “sit on the seat of the judge” in front of Shamash and Adad (Zimmern 1901: 104 [nos. 1-20 line 122]). The ritual scene is called either “the place of decision by extispicy (barutu)” (Zimmern 1901: 96 [nos. 1-20 line 6]), or “the place of judgement” (Zimmern 1901: 96 [nos. 1-20 line 16]). In the Old Babylonian ritual of the diviner,³⁹ the diviner prays to Shamash to “place a true verdict” in the sacrificial lamb, to judge the case in the divine assembly, and have the verdict recorded by the divine scribe Nisaba on the tablet of the gods. The terminology is the same as was used in connection with secular judgment: arkata parasu “investigate the circumstances,” dina danu “give a verdict,” or purussa parasu “make a decision,” and so on. Similar terminology is also found in other divinatory disciplines,⁴⁰ indeed, the metaphor is a central part of the concep­tual underpinnings of Mesopotamian divination. The casuistic structure itself, characteristic both of omina and the law codes, has often been commented upon. But within the divinatory disciplines the metaphor of the court of law is most consequently and consistently used in extispicy, and the extispicy ritual actually mise en scène.

According to the theory of conceptual blending,⁴¹ the cognitive process that attributes efficacy, authority, and credibility to a session of extispicy would be a cognitive integration of diverse conceptual spaces or domains. There are always at least four spaces at play which interact in a cognitive blend: two (or more) input spaces, a generic space which contains the elements common to the two input spaces, and the emerging blended space. In the case of the ritual of extispicy and the namburbis, a blend between at least five domains would be present: a “mythic/sacred space,” a “juridical space,” and a “present social space” would merge with the “generic space” to form the “ritual space.” During different phases of the ritual, different cognitive blendings would be viable and activated. In my opinion, the mapping of conceptual blendings can never be anything but a snapshot of one of many possible interpretations of the cognitive processes at play.

In order to enter the “ritual space” and through that be connected with the “sacred space” both the diviner and the client had to perform certain cleansing procedures. After the perform­ance of the ritual the diviner probably also had to go through some steps to sever the connec­tion to the sacred space, as is seen in other rituals, for example, the namburbis. We have no description of this procedure, however the ritual described in Zimmern 1901: nos. 1-20 lines 126-227 details how the altars and incense burners for various gods had to be dismantled in reverse order from how they had been set up, so at least it seems that the diviner had to retrace his steps in order to leave the “ritual space.” In the “ritual space” there are mappings between mythic and present space. The cultural hero Enmeduranki (the seventh antediluvian king) and the present-day diviner are linked by a metonymic link: blood, since ideally the diviner is a descendant of Enmeduranki.⁴² This establishes a generic link between them; they

partake of the same essence. The tools of the diviner — the stylus, the tablet, the bag, and the cedar wood — serve to reinforce this mapping, functioning as an iconic link between them. But though the person of the diviner is important for ritual efficacy (if anything is wrong with him, the ritual is a no-go) the primary source of ritual agency lies in the ritual action. The act of extispicy and the interpretation of the entrails were mapped by iconic identity connectors, since the art of extispicy itself, and certainly the code or technique applied in the interpretation of the entrails, were identical to the code given to mankind in mythic times by Enmeduranki. The implements again function as reinforcing iconic links. That the correct procedure was followed, the prayers pronounced clearly, and the diviner himself being in the right physical and mental state were of higher significance for giving the desired result — a reliable answer — than was the person of the diviner himself.

Just like a namburbi, the extispicy ritual activated a conceptual blending between the juridical domain and the sacred domain. A court case implies two intentional agents; and typically two parties will be represented at court: the accuser and the accused, or the victim and the culprit. Sometimes one party will not be present or may be represented by witnesses or symbolically by hem and hair or nail-imprint, just as in an extispicy ritual.^[43] In a namburbi the ill-portending object would physically be present during the ritual. Even though the “at­tacker” is not physically present in an extispicy ritual, the blending with the juridical domain could suggest the existence of an opponent. The actions and intentions of the parties are laid open to judgment, and the divine judge is asked to rule in favor of the client. The transforma­tion of the ominous sign from the physical to the social domain takes place in the ritual space through the cognitive blending with the judicial space.

I posit that the namburbis were primarily used in connection with the kind of divina­tion where the presentation of intentional agents is the weakest. There the blending with the domain of the courtroom has a similar effect as in the case of the extispicy ritual, it serves to remove troubles from the uncontrollable physical world to the more manageable social world. In namburbis the signifier — the harbinger of the evil omen, whether this is a strange bird or seriously malformed entrails of the sacrificial lamb that renders it unsuitable for ex­tispicy — is transformed into an intentional agent. The ritual is presented as a court of law with the signifier and the person to whom it occurred cast in the roles of the two contestants. As opposed to a performance of extispicy, in the context of a namburbi ritual, both suitors could be physically present. The metaphor of the court of law at the same time promotes the presentation of the omen as a communicative sign sent by an angry god whom the ritual serves to appease; in extispicy I suggest this is already inherent in the ritual with its many sacrifices and offerings.

Furthermore, according to McCauley and Lawson’s action theory system, any action, in­cluding ritual action, has a simple syntax consisting of three or four basic elements. According to their theory, a small number of basic cognitive functions account for the similarities found in rituals all over the world and allow people to make intuitive judgments about the proper

kept on doing it in the first millennium. In ancient Greece divination was also a topic that could be dis­cussed and practiced by laymen, even though there were traditions concerning the special qualities and genealogies of diviners. Experts would be called upon depending on the circumstances; see Flower 2008: chapter 2, esp. pp. 53ff.

forms, relationships, and efficacy of religious rituals.⁴⁴ This hinges on the understanding that religious rituals, though special actions, remain “actions” — people extend their skills for judging everyday actions to religious actions. What makes ritual action different from ordinary action they argue, is that it involves the “Principle of Superhuman Agency.”⁴⁵ A “culturally postulated superhuman (CPS) agent.”⁴⁶ of some kind plays a role as the source of efficacy. A CPS agent can and will always have a special connection with either of the elements involved.

In the case of extispicy these would be:

According to one of the propositions of McCauley and Lawson’s action theory system, there is a direct connection between how people judge the reversibility and repeatability of rituals and which of the three elements the CPS agent is perceived as most closely connected with.⁴⁷ The theory runs that if the CPS agent is involved most closely with the agent, the ritual is reversible but not repeatable: what god has done, god can undo, but god does not repeat himself. This would be true for initiation rites — a priest or diviner can only be initiated once, but it should be possible to throw him out of the community of people “in the know”⁴⁸ if he seriously vio­lates the trust and secrets confided to him. An initiation should be reversible. “Special action / instrument” rituals and “special patient” rituals are, on the other hand, generally judged to be repeatable but not reversible. McCauley and Lawrence (2002: 26) suggest that sacrifices and rituals of penance fall within the group “special patient” rituals, since the CPS agent affects the patient most directly. Rituals of divination and blessing, on the other hand, generally fall in the category “special instrument” rituals. I would suggest that extispicy rituals actually span both the “special instrument” and the “special patient” categories. The closest connection with the “superhuman agent” in the extispicy ritual lies in the ritual act and the objects involved in the ritual; it thus falls under the “special instrument” or “special action” category. The diviner uses his special implements (cedar wood and leather bag), he applies the code of extispicy (a divine revelation and a “secret of heaven and earth”), and he performs multiple sacrifices and slaughters a very special lamb in which the gods are expected to be present and use for writing

messages. At the same time it must fall in the same category as other kinds of sacrifice would, not only because of the very substantial sacrifices that could form part of a divinatory session, but also because the patient is put on trial before the divine judge. As mentioned, both “special patient” and “special action / instrument” rituals are, according to the theory, repeatable but not reversible.^[49] Whether we interpret the extispicy ritual as a “special action/instrument” or a “special patient” ritual the same applies, you can not undo having performed extispicy, but you can repeat it. It is perhaps due to this dual function of extispicy that it could be used to inquire about unprovoked omens, for instance, the appearance of a lunar eclipse?^[50]

The argument should not be pushed too far. I doubt that signs such as astrological omina should be seen as non-repeatable “special agent rituals.” But then again, perhaps they might. A case could be made that any kind of oblativa is less dependent on a “special instrument” or “special action” than an induced omen. An epiphany is totally dependant on there being an agent to hear it or observe it, thus strengthening the link between CPS agent and human agent. No point in burning a bush or going into eclipse if there is nobody around to see it. However this may be, I do believe it is reasonable to accept that extispicy in itself provided a setting that transformed intangible threats to “strategic information” and acted upon it. The extispicy ritual spanned both parts of the event frame into which any divinatory practice normally falls: that of information-gathering on the one hand and that of sacrifices/aversive rituals on the other; performing further apotropaia just would not make sense.

ABBREVIATIONS

CT Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum (London 1896—)

K Tablets in the collections of the British Museum

KAR Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiosen Inhalts

W field numbers of tablets excavated at Warka/Uruk

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