WAS THERE AN ORAL PHYSIOGNOMICAL TRADITION?
I have stated that physiognomy formed part of the Mesopotamian inherited conglomerate and assumed that it had its roots in and arose partly from popular wisdom and general notions of physiognomical characteristics, though distinct for ancient Mesopotamians.
Our arguments referred to a certain transparency and immediacy of the divinatory speech — as it may be observed in some omens — as well as to the modes of interpreting physical signs based on associations or wordplays that must have been common to all people.37 * In order to prove the assumption that physiognomy grew in part out of folklore, I should wonder now how significant oral tradition was and what was its relationship with the physiognomy described in the handbook of physiognomic omens.There are two text corpora representative of oral traditions, which seem to have absorbed some ideas incorporated later in Alandimmu. Remnants of oral tradition in both physiognomy and human behavior have been handed down in the form of proverbs, and other physiognomical expressions have penetrated one of the lexical texts, namely the Old Babylonian List of Human Classes — the so-called lu azlag : aslakum. It is worth noting that all in all there are only very few parallels that can be drawn and, as shown below, correspondences between proverbial sagesse and the physiognomic omen handbook are confined to the section on behavioral omens only. As for the Old Babylonian lexical texts, they echo either the physical descriptions or the state and fate of the person, but they do not provide a link between the signifier and the thing signified. It should also be emphasized that there is a temporal gap between the proverbs and the lexical text on the one hand, and the Alandimmu handbook on the other. Finally, there is also a difference in language.
As discussed further below, there are no exact parallels, but rather what we might call “variations on a theme.” Examples are taken from the Sumerian proverb collection quoting the B.
Alster’s 1997 Proverbs of Ancient Sumer and those proverbs W. G. Lambert included in his 1960 Babylonian Wisdom Literature.Example 1:
Proverbs: (a) Alster 1997: 20; (b) K. 4347+16161, Lambert 1960: 240
(a) line 78 “He hurled his insult, and (soon) there was a curse (on him).”
(b) ii lines 15-17 “Slander no one, and then grief [will not] reach your heart.”
F. R. Kraus’ “Sittenkanon” (Kraus 1936a): Summa kataduggu lines 27, 32, 141, 142, 191, 19238
“If he slanders and causes troubles: his god will oblige him to corvee work.”
“[If he] slanders someone: he will die due to denouncement.”
“If he constantly hurls insults: it will turn against him, [...].”
“If he calumniates someone: ditto.”
“If he is a calumniator: he will be denounced.”
“If he hurls insults: he will be denounced.”
Example 2:
Proverbs: Alster 1997: 87
3.33 “(He who says) ‘Let me live today’ is bound like a bull to a leash.”
F. R. Kraus’ “Sittenkanon” (Kraus 1936a): Summa kataduggu line 439
“If he says ‘I shall live! ’ : he will not live.”
Example 3:
Proverbs: (a) Alster 1997: 216; (b) Lambert 1960: 263
(a) 14.1 “Let kindness be repaid to him who repays a kindness.”
(b) Obv. lines 12-13 “May kindness be repaid to him who does a kindness.”
F. R. Kraus’ “Sittenkanon” (Kraus 1936a): Summa kataduggu line 5840
“If he repays kindness: he will be completely pleased.”
Example 4:
Proverbs: K. 4347+16161, Lambert 1960: 240
ii lines 11-14 “Commit no crime, and fear [of your god] will not consume you.”
F. R. Kraus’ “Sittenkanon” (Kraus 1936a): Summa kataduggu lines 87, 14541
“If he hates wrongdoing: his god will go together with him.”
“If he is a criminal: he will be discontent.”
The other text corpus, which presents some physiognomical references, is the Old Babylonian List of Human Classes.42 Since I have already treated resemblances between this lexical text and expressions in the omen handbook,43 I refer to a few examples in order to illustrate the degree of comparability.
A person whom god has rejected is called lu dingir.zag. tag.ga : sa ilum iskipu[su] (OB Lu rec. A 380). The same phrase occurs as omen apodosis in the Old Babylonian treatise on flecks called in Akkadian umsatum: “If there is an umsatum fleck on the right side of his breast: he is rejected by his god.”44 A bashful person is referred to in the lexical entry lu tes.tuku.tuku : bajjisum (OB Lu B ii 25). Compare the two omens “If a man has long eyelashes: he is bashful; if they are thick: he is bashful and fears god.”45 The last example is a person with a particular hair growth called in Akkadian (h)apparu(m). The lexical entry reads lu sik.guz.za : happarru (OB Lu C5 22) and the omen “if a man’s head is shaggy: happiness.”46BARBARA BOCK
To finish this part, we include a proverb about a wife who is quite extravagant, which is in turn one of the arguments that speaks in favor or against her being chosen as bride.
Proverbs: Alster 1997: 31; BM 38539 4-7; Lambert 1960: 266 lines 4-7 (firstmillennium version)
line 151 “In marrying a thriftless wife, in begetting a thriftless son, an unhappy heart was assigned to me.”
line 154 “A thriftless wife living in a house is worse than all diseases.”
Physiognomic omens on women: Summa sinnistu qaqqada rabat lines 4, 6, 70, 7447
“If there is a red umsatu fleck on her right ear: she is marriageable but thriftless.”
“If there is a yellow umsatu fleck on her right ear: she is marriageable but thriftless.”
“... are beclouded: she will ruin the house where she will be living.”48
“...: she will ruin the house she enters.”49
There are strikingly few comparable statements between the physiognomic handbook and the text corpora of proverbs and the Old Babylonian List of Human Classes. Since any resemblance or link between the oral folk tradition preserved in proverbs and the knowledge assembled in Alandimmu is more arbitrary than natural, we can merely deduce that oral tradition on physiognomy has not been captured in text genres of folklore, such as the collections of proverbs, and has thus been lost. There is, however, one commentary to physiognomic omens preserved which according to its colophon goes back to oral interpretive tradition.50 Whether also other parts of physiognomic lore were handed down orally, we will never know.