WHY PROPHECY AND OMEN DIVINATION BELONG TO THE SAME SYMBOLIC UNIVERSE

All differences notwithstanding, it would be wrong to separate prophecy from omen divination in a way that suggests a fundamental disparity in their conceptual, intellectual, and ideological basis.

From a cognitive point of view, represented in this volume by Ulla Koch,^[196] prophecy, like any other form of divination, can be seen as a system of making sense of the world, dealing with social or cognitive uncertainty, obtaining otherwise inaccessible information and “to get things done, to make things right and to keep them that way.” Koch’s criteria for a successful divination, that is, the appropriate signs, the strategic social information, and the credibility of the process including the neutrality of the diviner and an acknowledged superhuman agent, are well applicable to the prophetic process of communication; the prophetic process, as such, is usually not based on signs, but signs are nevertheless mentioned in prophecies.^[197]

Especially in the royal context, divination was the medium through which the king was kept informed of his location within the divinely sanctioned order of the divine favors and obligations and the origin and legitimacy of his rule; this is what Beate Pongratz-Leisten aptly calls Herrschaftswissen^[198] It is through divination that the king is revealed “the secrets of the gods,” that is, the decisions of the divine council usually proclaimed by the goddess Istar, such as in the oracle from Esnunna:

O king Ibalpiel, thus says Kititum: The secrets of the gods (nisretum sa ili) are placed before me.

²⁸ Scurlock, this volume.

²⁹ Cf. Nissinen, forthcoming.

³⁰ Noegel, this volume.

³¹ Winitzer, this volume; cf. Lange 2003.

³² Rochberg, this volume.

This text, among many others, demonstrates that the prophets and other diviners function as intermediaries and channels of communication for the divine knowledge necessary for the king and country to live in safety and receive divine advice in times of crisis and uncertainty. Cynthia Jean provides us in this volume with several illuminating cases of the royal use of divination, and the examples could be multiplied.³⁷ The entire divinatory apparatus was at the king’s disposal, and from his point of view it did not matter whether the divine word came from the mouth of the prophet or an ummanu, provided, of course, that these persons were proved to be of accredited background.³⁸

The communicative aspect of divination is highlighted by several articles of this vol­ume. The human intermediary, the diviner or the prophet, was indeed seen as a member in the imagined chain of divine-human communication, who was there to transmit the divine knowledge. Whatever intellectual capacity was required of the diviner, it was not the diviner’s knowledge and wisdom that was handed over to the people but the “secrets of gods” entrusted to him. The mouth of the diviner or prophet was speaking, not words of his or her own but of divine origin.

The role of the diviners as mediators is indicated by the Akkadian phrase sa pi “from the mouth”: the oral tradition of scholars is referred to as sa pi ummani,³ the colophons of Assyrian prophecies indicate the speaker with the phrase “sa pi man/woman NN from the city X.”⁴⁰ In a similar vein, the Pythia was the spokesperson (prophetis) of Apollo⁴¹ who, in turn, was theprophetes of his father, Zeus;⁴² and in the Hebrew Bible, a standard phrase is that the word (dabar) of YHWH “came” to the prophet.

Such a “neutral” transmission of messages of superhuman origin was unthinkable without being influenced or inspired, even possessed, by the divine. Prophets, as we saw, were recog­nized by their characteristic behavior indicating the altered state of consciousness required of anyone speaking divine words; but even in extispicy, the aspect of divine presence is signifi­cant, as demonstrated in this volume by Avi Winitzer. In the words of Alan Lenzi: “the diviner experienced the presence of the divine assembly itself, which had gathered around the victim to write their judgments in the organs of the animal.”⁴⁴ While the diviners hardly performed extispicy in an altered state of consciousness comparable to that of the prophets, the credibility of the process required them to be neutral agents inspired by the superhuman agent.⁴⁵

In final analysis, even Plato, whose distinction between inspired and technical divination has been so influential in dividing diviners into technical and inspired ones, recognizes the divine inspiration of the “technical” diviners. In his dialogue with Ion, Socrates juxtaposes

the diviners with the poets inspired by the Muses while arguing for the divine origin of poetry (Ion 534c-d):

For not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine; had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away reason from poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses the pronouncers of oracles and holy prophets (khresmodois kai tois mantesi tois theiois), in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves, who utter these priceless words while bereft of reason (nous me parestin), but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is addressing us.

ABBREVIATIONS

ARM 26 Durand 1988

FLP Registration number of tablets in the collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia

SAA 9 Parpola 1997

SAA 10 Parpola 1993

SAA 16 Luukko and Van Buylaere 2002

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²⁰ See Starr 1990: p. 16.

11 sum-ma ina a-dan-ni MU 1-KAM [ ]

12 BE ina SAG EDIN 150 U BUR SUB-di-lmal [ ]

13 a-na ^giSTUKUL SUB-ti ERIN [KUR ]

14 BE ina MURUB₄ EDIN 150 [U BUR SUB-di-ma ]

15 a-na ^giSTUKUL [ ]

16 BE ina SUHUS EDI[N 150 U BUR SUB-di-ma ]

11' If a hole lies in the top of the right surface of the finger: 120 times 1 is 120, 4 months. The enemy will besiege and seize the town,

12' in battle: defeat of the army, it will rain, a patient will recover.

13' If a hole lies in the middle of the right surface of the finger: 120 times 2 is [240], 8 months. The enemy will besiege and seize the town,

14' in battle: defeat of the army, it will rain, a patient will recover.

15' If a hole lies in the basis of the right surface of the finger: 120 times 3 is [360, one ye]ar. The enemy will besiege and seize the town,

16' in battle: defeat of the army, it will rain, a patient will recover.

17' If you perform (the extispicy) for two years, then the basis for (the calculation of) your period is 240, 8. The period for one year

18' together with the correction you determine.

²⁶ Compare Schwemer 2007: 149. Note also objection raised by Durand (1997: 278; 2008: 220-21) con­cerning the understanding of birum in the title belet biri/biri (“lady of... ”) as “divination.” According to Durand, this is to be understood as “well(s), pit(s),” with the deity in question — elsewhere a reference to Ishara — one in command of water sources (“la divinite des points d’eau”). That this deity and title became associated with divination (Steinkeller 2005: 15 n. 6) may be entirely secondary, whether owing to her association with Adad (connected in his own right with underground water; see Schwemer 2001: 170 and n. 1202) or otherwise, in the reinterpretation of birum in light of parallel developments in Adad’s character.

Not included in this assessment, though perhaps deserving of brief mention, are the many passages from non-divinatory literary genres that refer to divi­nation, and in particular extispicy. One thinks, for in­stance, of the well-known passages in Gudea Cylinder A (Edzard 1997: 69-88) describing his divinatory in­quiries, extispicy included (xii 16-17; xiii 16-17; xx 5), concerning the rebuilding of the Eninnu temple. These are silent as regards the conceptual framework of the divinatory act. Granted, from the standpoint of the narrative, this may well have been deemed beside

⁵⁰ On this point, see also Clements 1984: 28-51, 69­70, while not necessarily agreeing entirely with his arguments for the dating of specific passages. Most