Introduction
Although the pantheon when first recorded around 2600 b. c.e. lists around five hundred deities with Sumerian names, only thirty or so Akkadian deities are known, suggesting that the communities' original attitudes to religion were fundamentally different, although by ED times Sumerian and Akkadian speakers were probably well integrated. Jacobsen (1976) argues that during the fourth millennium and probably earlier, the Sumerians conceived of divinity as a numinous presence within natural phenomena: an intransitive power that made these phenomena what they were but did not act beyond them. During the third millennium, however, he argues that a new conception of the gods developed, giving them a far wider role as the active and conscious agents of the creation and maintenance of the world. By the second millennium the pantheon took the form of around thirty major deities, referred to by name, and a great many others, known collectively as the Anunnaki and Igigi, each said to number three hundred.
During the third millennium, the gods came to be seen as members of a family, their society mirroring that of Sumer and perhaps Akkad, with Enlil at their head. Individual city-states were the domain of particular deities: Uruk of Inanna, Ur of Nanna, Lagash of Ningirsu, Nippur of Enlil, and so on. Here were located their principal temples, although they also had shrines in many other cities: Inanna in Kish, Nippur, and eventually Agade, for example, as
A serpentine cylinder seal of the Akkadian period depicting the legendary King Etana of Kish ascending to heaven on the back of an eagle, while people and animals look up in amazement. (Zev Radovan/Land of the Bible Picture Archive)
Well as elsewhere. By the end of the ED period, if not before, Nippur had acquired spiritual authority over Sumer, enjoying the right to endorse or reject kings who gained temporal authority beyond their own city, and Enlil's temple in Nippur, the Ekur, was supplied with offerings from all Sumer's cities. Nippur was the place of assembly of the gods, as it may have been of Sumer's leaders. Postgate (1994) suggests that the Semitic deity Dagan, and his city Tuttul, enjoyed a similar preeminent position in Akkad and the middle Euphrates region. Major political changes were explained and sanctified by changes in the political order on high, with Marduk, god of Babylon, gaining a preeminent role in the divine hierarchy during the second millennium and Babylon superseding Nippur as the spiritual as well as political center of Babylonia.
As the regions of the Near East became more familiar with each other, considerable syncretization took place. The gods of the Sumerian pantheon became assimilated with their Akkadian equivalents—Sumerian Nanna with Akkadian Sin, the god of the moon, for example—or the Akkadians accepted deities from the much larger Sumerian pantheon, often changing or modifying their names—An becoming Anu, for instance. Deities with similar attributes from different cities came to be regarded as a single deity with several names, such as the thunder god called Ninurta in Nippur and Ningirsu in Lagash. Those from further afield were also syncretized or recognized as equivalent, and their attributes merged: Thus Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love, the morning and evening star, rain, thunder, and war, became synonymous with Akkadian Ishtar and the Levantine goddess Astarte. The incorporation of new deities into the pantheon also mirrored and explained new developments. For instance, when the Amorite nomads began to settle in Babylonia, a new nomadic shepherd deity, Martu (Amurru), was admitted into the pantheon. Uncouth and alien, he was nevertheless accepted as the husband of the daughter of Numushda (possibly a storm god), patron deify of Kazallu in northwest Babylonia.
The syncretization of originally different deities and the changing human political scene led to some anomalies in the arrangement of the pantheon, with particular deities being regarded as the offspring or spouses of different gods at different times or in different places. The Mesopotamians tended to accept and accumulate rather than to change or displace, and they seem to have had no problem accommodating these anomalies. Bottero (2001) has argued that by the first millennium, if not earlier, there was a clear trend toward henotheism, where the qualities and powers of all the different deities were attributed to or channeled through the deity to whom the worshipper addressed himself.
From the late fourth millennium b. c.e. gods began to be represented in art in human form, crowned with a horned headdress, although this was rare before Akkadian times. Gods also had their own symbols or emblems, often depicted in place of the deity, for example on kudurrus. Emblems included the tools of the god's role, such as Ninurta's plough, and natural phenomena identified with the god, such as the sun to represent Utu / Shamash or the lightning bolt wielded by storm gods such as Ishkur / Adad (see photo p. 94). Images of these emblems could be carried into battle as standards representing the god's presence or used when the god was required to witness an oath, preside over an ordeal, or participate in other solemn proceedings. Often animals were associated with individual deities, such as the Imdugud bird, a supernatural creature defeated by Ninurta and thereafter associated with him.
Demons and monsters were often portrayed as animals, real, imaginary, or a composite of different creatures. Protective spirits were similarly portrayed: for instance the man-headed winged bulls that guarded the entrance to NeoAssyrian palaces. cylinder seals often bore images with a religious content: the owner being introduced by his personal god to a senior deity; scenes of demons being defeated; or episodes from legends. While some portray well-known stories such as the tale of Etana, others remain impenetrable, illustrating tales of which there is no surviving literary account. The durable nature of much artwork and the vagaries of survival of literary material also mean that many myths are known in written versions that reflect only a particular time and do not necessarily match the visual iconography of the same myths over the course of history.
Major Deities
An and the Creation of the Gods. The ancient Mesopotamians visualized the primeval cosmos as water. In some versions of their creation myth this was a single salty body, Nammu, from which freshwater, the Abzu, was separated in the beginning, whereas in others both the ocean, Tiamat, and the Abzu originally existed together, their coupling at the point where their waters met producing silt from which the Earth was formed. From these bodies of water deities emerged or were born, the first inchoate and monstrous beings, later ones gradually assuming a more perfect form. From the latest, Anshar "All there is of Heaven" and Kishar "All there is of Earth," was born the first true god, An, god of the sky. An had a number of partners who bore him sons and daughters, notably Enlil and Enki. Although acknowledged as the most powerful of the gods, An was remote in his heavenly domain and did not play a major part in Mesopotamia's religious life by the time of recorded history.
Enlil. Though An was the king of the gods, by the mid-third millennium the active ruler was his son Enlil. An and Enlil formed a triad of principal deities with Ninhursaga, the embodiment of motherhood. Enki sometimes combined with them to make a tetrad, although in later texts he often displaced Ninhursaga, whose creative function he usurped. The rise of Enlil paralleled the mid-third millennium political situation, in which Enlil's city Nippur gained spiritual preeminence.
Enlil married Ninlil, a mother goddess and goddess of grain, who bore him the moon god Nanna and several underworld gods. In one account, Enlil raped her when she was a maiden "too young for kissing" (Leick 2001: 153) and was banished, although Ninlil followed him and they later regularized their relationship. In another version, he came as a stranger to her home in Nippur and courted her in the proper manner, perhaps a reflection of the adoption of a foreign god into the local pantheon, because, although it was previously thought that Enlil was a Sumerian name meaning "Lord Air," recent studies suggest that he was originally an Akkadian deity (Ellil, from the Semitic il, "god"). His association with mountains (for example, in the name of his temple, Ekur, meaning "Mountain House") supports this, because kur, "mountain," also meant "foreign lands." In one myth, he lay with the goddess of the mountain foothills, who bore the gods of winter and summer. Enlil's identity as the god of wind, and more particularly, the winds bringing the lifegiving spring rains, links him more with the north, where spring rainfall was vital, than with the south. Here, indeed, his association with storms and destructive floods made him more feared than welcomed, and he is depicted in mythology as irascible, impatient, and violent as well as all-powerful. On the other hand, Enlil also introduced the hoe, making him the deity most closely associated with agriculture. In one myth, he separated Heaven and Earth to enable the seeds to grow and with his hoe broke the soil's hard surface, not only allowing plants to spring up but also uncovering the heads of men. Ninhursaga then completed the creation of humanity by causing them to come forth.
Ninhursaga. Ninhursaga was the principal mother goddess, known by many names, including Ninmah and Belit-ili (Akkadian: "Lady of the Gods"). Originally she was probably seen as the numinous power of the lands bordering the alluvial plains, the foothills of the Zagros and the western desert; as such she was mother to the animals and especially herd animals. Many of the gods were her children, and she played a key role in the creation of humanity, often in collaboration with Enki. In one version, people were shaped from the clay of Enki's realm, the Abzu, and borne by Nammu; at the celebratory feast afterward, Ninmah (Ninhursaga) and Enki had a drunken competition in which Ninmah created people crippled by disabilities and Enki had to find them a niche in society. He succeeded, for example allotting blind people the role of musicians and barren women that of priestesses. When the contest was reversed, Enki won, stumping Ninmah by creating a totally helpless creature: the first baby, which he advised her to nurse. As Nintur, "Lady Birth-hut," Ninhursaga was the divine midwife; having nurtured the fetus in the womb, she loosed it when it reached maturity and watched over the birth.
Enki. Although Enki (Akkadian Ea) did not enjoy supreme authority, he was one of the most venerated gods, and his original shrine at Eridu was revered long after the city it served had been abandoned. Enki was the most intelligent of the gods and well disposed toward humanity, often finding ways to protect or aid them against the violent wrath of Enlil. As the god controlling the freshwater, Abzu, that lay beneath the Earth, the source of rivers, springs, marshes, and rain, he was the essence of the water upon which Mesopotamia depended for life and was portrayed with the Tigris and Euphrates flowing from his shoulders, full of fish. In the Abzu dwelt a great number of creatures that served him, including giants and great fishes.
The fertility brought to the land is echoed in Enki's association with semen and amniotic fluid, and he played a leading role in creation myths, shaping humanity out of clay, filling the empty world when the cosmos was formed, and impregnating not only Ninhursaga but also her daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter. With his wife Damgalnuna (another name for Ninhursaga) he was the father of Marduk. Although Marduk became supreme deity, in texts concerning magic, Enki's special province, he is always shown consulting his father on the appropriate course of action.
In one legend, the Tablet of Destinies, a symbol of supreme divine authority, was stolen from Enki by Imdugud (Anzu), a vast lion-headed bird that raised sandstorms, whirlwinds, and other violent weather with the beating of its wings. After a devastating battle, Imdugud was slain by Ningirsu (Ninurta), whose symbol it became, and the Tablet of Destinies and its powers were restored to Enki. In the Akkadian verion of this story it was from Enlil that the Tablet of Destinies was stolen but Ea (Enki) who worked out how Anzu could be defeated.
Principal among the divine powers held by Enki were the ME (Akkadian parsu), which embraced everything related to civilized existence. ME were infinitely precious and sacred and the concept was fundamental to how the Mesopotamians viewed their own world. In one story, the goddess Inanna traveled to Eridu where Enki was keeping the ME to himself and was lavishly entertained by him. When Enki became inebriated, Inanna succeeded in stealing the ME and taking them to her own city of Uruk, bringing civilization to it and to the world in general.
Inanna. Variously portrayed as the daughter of An, Enlil, Enki, or Nanna, Inanna was a complex deity with many attributes. When Enki brought order to the world, he entrusted a diversity of tasks to her. A mass of contradictions, she appears to embody the archetypal male perception of unmarried womanhood. Goddess of carnal love, she was the patron of prostitutes, a spoiled girl delighting in her courtship by the handsome youth Dumuzi, and the bride in the sacred marriage that ensured the Land's fertility. At the same time she was the goddess of battle ("the Dance of Inanna"), a storm goddess bringing tempest as well as life-giving rain, and implacable in avenging insults. In addition she was the goddess of the morning and evening star (Venus), waking people and signaling the end of their working day.
Inanna / Ishtar was a widely popular deity, patron of a number of cities in addition to her traditional home in Uruk. According to the great poem, "The Curse of Agade," when the Akkadian capital Agade was founded she was installed amid great rejoicing as its goddess, only to be withdrawn by Enlil at a later date when Naram-Sin offended him; her departure presaged the city's ruin.
Other Major Deities. In some myths Inanna was the daughter of the moon god Nanna (also called Suen: Akkadian Sin), who was also the father of Utu (Shamash). Nanna's principal shrine was at Ur where the precinct included his temple, Ekishnugal, and a magnificent ziggurat built by the Ur III king Ur-Nammu. Nanna was linked not only to the moon and its light but also to the calendar and to fertility, particularly of cattle. A story in which Nanna traveled by boat from Ur to Nippur to visit Enlil may reflect a real annual journey of the god's statue in the boat carrying the first fruits. In later times Sin had a major shrine at Harran and was the favored deity of Nabonidus, a native of that city.
Utu, Nanna's son, was the god of the sun, shedding radiant light upon all the world, banishing darkness and dark deeds, and upholding justice and righteousness. Myths show him giving aid to individual humans and indulging his sister Inanna. In stark contrast, Inanna's relationship with her sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Netherworld, was one largely of hostility; in one myth Inanna unsuccessfully attempted to usurp her sister's throne. After a stormy courtship, Ereshkigal wedded the god Nergal, sharing with him authority in her grim realm.
The Mesopotamian pantheon included several storm gods: Ishkur (Adad) may have been another son of Nanna, and Ninurta was a son of An or Enlil and Ninhursaga (Ninmah). Both were revered as gods of rain and spring floods, and therefore fertility, Adad being particularly linked to pastoralism and the increase of herds, while Ninurta introduced the plough and was associated with cultivation. They also represented the more terrible side of storms, with hail, tempest, and uncontrolled flooding, and were associated with war. In the Sumerian poem "Lugale," Ninurta (or, in another version, Adad) took on the demon Asag and his army of stones, defeating them in a great battle. From the stones he then built a mountain barrier to prevent the Tigris and eastern rivers from flowing uselessly away into the mountains and marshes, instead making them available for irrigation; the mountain
A Babylonian kudurru (land grant stele) from Uruk, dated around 850 B. C.E. On the left are the emblems of the Babylonian deities whose protection of the land grant is invoked. These include the spade of Marduk, the Babylonian national god, a bird on a perch representing the war god Ninurta, and the lion-headed staff of Nergal, god of the underworld. (Zev Radovan/Land of the Bible Picture Archive)
(hursaga) he endowed with vegetation, animals, and minerals and gave it as a gift to his mother, Ninmah, who then took the name "Lady of the Foothills" (Ninhursaga).
The Creation—Enuma Elish
Marduk rose to prominence in the second millennium as his city, Babylon, gained political preeminence. The magnificent poem known as the Babylonian Epic of Creation, Enuma elish ("When On High," its opening words), recounts his divine advancement. Composed probably during the later second millennium it survives only in first-millennium copies.
In the beginning the primordial waters of Tiamat and Abzu produced many monstrous but quiescent deities, but their later progeny, Anu and his descendants, were more active and troubled their repose. Abzu proposed to destroy these later gods, but Ea (Enki) magically put Abzu into a permanent sleep and established his own dwelling above him. Here his son Marduk was born. Marduk's fond grandfather Anu created the winds as his playthings. This intolerable further disturbance drove Tiamat to muster an army of monsters. Ea was unable to deal with this threat, but Marduk offered to act if the gods granted him supreme authority.
Marduk slew Tiamat in single combat and defeated and captured her army. He split Tiamat in two "like a fish for drying" (Dalley 2000: Epic of Creation, tablet IV, line 135), creating from the two halves Heaven and Earth, with the Ocean contained between and Abzu and the netherworld below; he created mountains from her head and breasts, and made the Tigris and Euphrates flow from her eyes. Marduk set constellations in the sky and organized the sun and moon and the calendar of their movements.
Next he freed and pardoned Tiamat's defeated army, setting them to work to create Babylon, where the gods made their home. Their leader, Qingu, however, was executed, and from his blood Ea created humanity to relieve the gods from future toil. Marduk was now king of the gods and Babylon the seat of both earthly and heavenly authority.
When the Assyrian king Sennacherib seized power in Babylonia, this myth was usurped, the god Ashur being substituted for Marduk. Ashur is a somewhat shadowy deity, originally the god just of Assur city with no place in the Babylonian pantheon. As the destinies of north and south became more closely interwoven, Ashur was identified with Enlil and his consort Mullissu with Enlil's wife, Ninlil. Under Sargon II Ashur became syncretized with Anshar, father of An, while Sennacherib strengthened his position by identifying Ashur with Marduk and performing the chief role in the New Year festival himself.
Atrahasis: The Origins of Humanity and the Flood
An earlier mythological poem, "Atrahasis," explains the creation of people, touched on in Enuma elish. The earliest surviving text of this was written down in Akkadian by Ipiq-Aya around 1700 b. c.e., but it probably existed earlier in Sumerian versions.
In the beginning, the gods cast lots for the three parts of the universe, Anu gaining On High (heaven), Enlil the Earth, and Enki the Abzu. In addition to the principal gods there was a host of lesser deities known collectively at this period as the Igigi. To these fell all the labor of maintaining the earth, while the higher gods took their ease. At last, worn out with digging and cleaning canals, creating rivers, and building mountains, the Igigi went on strike, setting fire to their tools and surrounding the house of their ruler Enlil in a menacing mob. The senior gods took counsel, and Enki spoke up for the Igigi: Instead of exhausting them, he suggested that people should be created to bear the burden.
The Mother goddess, variously called Belet-ili, Mami, and Nintu in the poem, agreed to join Enki in creating humanity. One of the gods, possibly the ringleader of the revolt, was slain and his flesh and blood mixed with clay from the Abzu, which Belet-ili formed into fourteen pieces. These were given to fourteen womb goddesses, who after ten months gave birth to seven men and seven women.
The Igigi were now relieved of their toils as mankind labored in their stead, but problems arose. Though people did their work well they lived for an immense time and bred enthusiastically. Eventually there were so many that their noise prevented Enlil from sleeping. Angrily he ordered Plague to be sent upon them.
Atrahasis, king of Shuruppak, consulted Enki, who advised him to make offerings to Namtar, the god of plague, in order to lift the curse. Humanity was saved, but after another interval of six hundred years the problem arose again. This time angry Enlil sent Drought by ordering Adad the storm god to hold back the rain, and again Enki advised Atrahasis to make offerings.
The third time, Enlil in his anger withdrew both rain and the annual inundation, depriving the land of plants and covering it with salt. For six years there was no food, and eventually the starving people resorted to cannibalism. Again Enki came to their rescue, probably sending a flood of fishes (this portion of the story is lost). Enlil was beside himself, accusing Enki of betrayal; he determined to destroy humanity without fail by sending a great flood.
He forbade Enki to help humanity again, but crafty Enki got around this by speaking his advice to the wall of Atrahasis's house. Following this advice, Atrahasis built a boat, filling it with his family and all the beasts of the land and birds of the air. (In a later version, Ut-napishtim (Atrahasis) also took representatives of every craft and skill on board his ship.)
When the weather began to menace, Atrahasis sealed the ark. Storm and flood ensued, all the gods doing their worst for seven days and nights, and humanity turned to clay, according to the later account. Nintu (Belit-ili, the mother goddess) was overwhelmed with grief by the destruction of the people she had created, and her horror spread to the other gods, who were also becoming parched and famished without their offerings. But as the flood subsided, they smelled the fragrant scent of offerings made by Atrahasis in gratitude when his boat came to land. Nintu berated the gods for the destruction they had wrought; most were contrite though Enlil was unappeased. The gods conferred and decided to maintain humanity for the their own benefit. To control human numbers, however, Enki and Nintu ordained that some people should be barren, others celibate, and that some babies should be stillborn or die in infancy. Furthermore, a crucial broken line seems to indicate that a reasonable natural limit was now set for the span of human life.
Interacting with the Gods
The wise and benevolent Enki and the irascible Enlil epitomized the Mesopotamians' perceptions of their gods. Omnipotent and magnificent, the gods were generally just and beneficent but could be unpredictable and terrible. People felt respect, awe, fear, and reverence for their gods, rather than love, and regarded them as inaccessible but at the same time immanent within their image and their shrine. The relationship of Mesopotamians to their gods was usually that of servant to master: It was their place to perform to the best of their ability the tasks for which humanity had been created. In return the gods, their masters, were expected to protect them, be responsible for them, look after their interests, and treat them justly, but might act in ways that caused individuals to suffer, for their own impenetrable reasons or as punishment for conscious or unwitting misdeeds.
Gods were described as having melammu (from the Sumerian ME + lam = incandescent), aura or luminous power, and were associated with the most powerful and awe-inspiring aspects of the natural and man-made world, such as mountains, floods, fire, generative power, lions, and weapons. The heavenly bodies were all seen as supernatural beings, some like the sun (Utu / Shamash), moon (Nanna / Sin), and Venus (Inanna / Ishtar) associated with major deities, others divine but of lesser status and power.
The personal relationship of love and devotion characteristic of the later revealed religions had no place in ancient Mesopotamia. Nevertheless, individuals could enjoy a closer relationship with a personal deity who acted like a parent and ensured their well-being. The personal god conferred good fortune, as the language made clear: "to get a personal god" meant "to be lucky." Children were often given names reflecting their association with the family deity, and individuals who had seals often named themselves as this god's servant. Families frequently had a private shrine where they worshipped their deity and might also have made offerings to the dead (kispum). Excavated examples of probable domestic shrines comprise a solid pedestal set in one corner of a special room, with a niched surround imitating the architecture of temples, often associated with a hearth or chimney. No texts, however, offer information on the practices of domestic religion.
Suffering and Security
In early times, misfortune was seen as the hostile action of lesser supernatural beings, the embodiment of harmful and dangerous forces, greater in power than people but inferior to the gods. These are commonly referred to as "demons," although the Mesopotamians themselves had no such term. Acting without provocation, these malevolent spirits were deemed responsible for illness, untimely death, and other disasters and ill fortune. Unquiet spirits of the dead were also blamed for some calamities, for example, mental illness. The spirits of children who had died unmarried (lilu and lilitu) were particularly dangerous, as they could cause the death of another child to become their partner in the netherworld. Particular common catastrophes were attributable to specific demons: For instance, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death were seen as the work of the demoness Lamashtu. Amulets and spells or incantations were used against such known dangers, and representations or symbols of benign spirits were placed above or beside the openings into houses—doors, windows, and even pipes—to prevent evil spirits from entering. Unforeseen ills were dealt with by exorcism or magic, a sorcerer driving away the demon responsible, using spoken formulae and ritual gestures and procedures, and attempts were made to avoid them by using divination. Although most sorcerers practiced magic to help people, certain evil magicians were believed to perform secret malevolent rites and spells to harm them.
A change of attitude gradually developed from the mid-third millennium onward. Although demons were still the perpetrators of misfortune, they came to be regarded as the agents of the gods, sent to punish people for their sins or their failure to perform the gods' commands. Although it was ultimately up to the gods to remove the demons of suffering, with the gods' approval rituals, magic, and incantations could be used to avert or drive them away. Treatment of illness involved such practices alongside straightforward medical remedies. An exorcist (lu. mash. mash / ashipu) would perform a ritual (Namburbu—"Undoing"), at an auspicious time in an appropriate place, such as a riverbank or the invalid's home, suitably purified. This could involve diagnosis of the cause of the illness or misfortune, the destruction or burning of an object to which the sin was transferred, such as a piece of wool or an onion, and formulaic prayers expressing general contrition for the victim's unwitting transgressions, praise for the god, and a prayer to lift the divine sanctions, with promises of future praise. Known as Er. sha. hun. gar ("lament for appeasing the heart of the angry deity"), many examples of these prayers survive in Mesopotamian literature: In them people often contrasted their sufferings and good conduct with the good fortune enjoyed by others whose behavior was less satisfactory, and sought to discover in what way they had unknowingly offended the gods. One great poem of the later second millennium, "Ludlul" (the "Poem of the Righteous Sufferer"), elevates such laments into a philosophy of resignation and trust in the ultimate goodness of the gods, however mysterious and seemingly harsh their actions.
The ashipu could be a court official or a private practitioner, but he was inevitably a member of the cultic staff of a temple; his remit was quite wide. His was the task of ritually cleansing the temple before ceremonies took place and of enacting purification rituals for the king or state; he ascertained the causes of illness and affliction, decided on and undertook the appropriate treatment and rituals; he performed the prophylactic rituals during the construction of temples and the making and installation of divine images; he recited spells and performed rites that provided magical protection for people, from humble citizens to the national army before battle; and in Neo-Assyrian times, an ashipu could act as adviser to the king. He often possessed a library of relevant books, including pharmacopia, compendia of omens and symptoms (such as Enuma ana bit marsi ashipu illiku), collections of prayers and incantations, and shurpu, volumes of spells and the detail of rituals. As well as warding off or dispelling evil, misfortune, and disease, spells and incantations were used for a wide range of purposes, even including soothing a fractious baby. Many were to deal with marital problems such as infidelity, impotence, and loss of desire, such as the incantations addressed to Ishtar by women whose husbands had "turned away." While an ashipu added medicines to his incantations and rituals, a doctor (asu) would increase the efficacy of his drugs by adding ritual formulae: Their roles in treating the sick overlapped.
Omens and Divination
An ashipu might be assisted in his rituals by other specialists, chanters (gala / kalu) and singers (naru). Another important ritual practitioner, the baru, or diviner, was attached to a temple, or to the palace or another branch of state organization, particularly the army. He might be called in by the ashipu or asu to divine the cause of an illness, but his main function was to take omens for the future.
Everything that took place in the world was planned by the gods, who communicated their intentions in ways that could be interpreted by those with the relevant knowledge. Seers were collecting and recording divine portents by the third millennium b. c.e., along with the events that followed these, and by the second there was an extensive scientific literature on the subject, comprising handbooks that practitioners consulted when foretelling the future. These texts were respected and assiduously copied in many neighboring lands, eventually reaching Europe.
Predicting the future from portents was a common practice across the Near East. People uttering prophecies are recorded, but only in areas of Mesopotamia bordering the western Near East, where this was more common. When unusual and aberrant things occurred, such as the birth of an abnormally formed animal, a seer could be consulted to determine the significance for the individual concerned. Such phenomena were also reported to higher authorities, since the portents could have wider significance. Not all signs were warnings: Their meaning might be favorable, indicating future good fortune. The seer would consult his compendia of portents and work out what these signs might presage. A collection of birth omens, Shumma izbu, widely used not only in Mesopotamia but also elsewhere in the Near East, ran to twenty-four tablets. A more extensive (but poorly preserved) omen collection, Shumma alu, dealt with a range of portentious occurrences. Omen-bearing patterns could be read in the behavior of birds, a practice that enjoyed some popularity in Assyria, and occasionally in the behavior of other creatures, especially at critical moments, for instance when a war was initiated or during a festival. Kings might experience dreams containing divine commands or warnings, and various types of portentous dreams are listed in omen collections. Specialist interpreters of dreams (sha'iltu, sha'ilu) were frequently women. Such unsolicited omens were, however, less common in Mesopotamia than those actively sought by divination.
Divination worked on the premise that the gods would respond to questions by "writing" the answers in the medium used by the diviner. The most usual method of divination involved the examination of the entrails of sacrificial animals (extispicy), and in particular the liver (hepatoscopy). The diviner would pray to the oracle gods Shamash or Adad, framing the question (frequently to require a yes / no answer) and inviting the god to write his answer in the entrails or on the liver of an animal, generally a lamb. He would then sacrifice the animal and closely examine the relevant organs, comparing details of their condition, formation, and appearance with information learned from the omen collections. Several model livers have been found, the earliest surviving examples coming from early-second-millennium Mari: These record the state of a liver and its interpretation. More complicated examples mark the features that a baru would examine and their significance: From these a trainee diviner could learn to recognize the details necessary to interpreting the god's message.
The payment for providing a divination was probably the sacrificial animal itself. This made it an expensive business, probably beyond the means of many ordinary citizens. Alternative, cheaper methods of divination used the patterns obtained by pouring oil on water or those made by smoke rising from a censer. At the opposite end of the spectrum, where matters of national importance were at stake, omens could be obtained by studying the heavens. This was a specialist branch of divination, undertaken by expert astrologers generally in the employ of the king and stationed at appropriate places throughout the land. Their knowledge of the science of astronomy was detailed, accurate, and precise. This discipline was particularly fostered in Babylonia, where it was becoming important during the Old Babylonian period and reached a pinnacle in the mid-first millennium when Chaldaean (Babylonian) astrologers were famous and respected throughout the Near East and beyond. The astrologers observed and mathematically calculated the movement of heavenly bodies, particularly the phases of the moon in relation to the sun, eclipses, and the movement of the planets, especially Venus, among the fixed stars. They also observed storms, rain, and other weather conditions and natural phenomena such as earthquakes, and might also report on other things such as the state of the harvest or local civil unrest. They interpreted the significance of the celestial signs, using omen texts, particularly a collection known as Enuma Anu Enlil. When signs portended disaster, the ill effects might be averted by performing the appropriate apotropaic ritual (listed for each omen in some omen texts) to encourage the god to change his plans. Such rituals were often elaborate, going on for a number of days.
Omens were generally taken to find out if a projected action, often on a suggested day, had the approval of the gods and would have a successful outcome. If the omen was unfavorable, the action could be abandoned or postponed, pending a more favorable omen. Private individuals might consult a diviner on a few personal occasions—for example, about the likely success of a new business venture or marriage to a particular individual. The king, however, in whose hands the well-being of the state resided, had a far closer relationship with the gods and would receive or seek omens on a regular basis; this was particularly so in the first millennium, a period when religion became prone to superstition, the gods were more frequently seen as violent and unpredictable, and magic and other ritual defenses were much used.
The Story of Erra
The violence and brutality to which many ordinary people fell prey in the first millennium and their exposure to the arbitrary decisions of absolute mon-archs, which promoted this feeling of religious insecurity and apprehension, had their roots in the international disintegration that occurred around the end of the second millennium. The people's sufferings at this time are reflected in the "Epic of Erra," composed by Kabti-ilani-Marduk (probably fl. ninth / eighth century b. c.e.), who claimed it had been revealed to him in a dream.
The poem opens with Erra (Sumerian Nergal), god of plague and strife, taking his ease in inactivity. The warrior gods who serve him criticize his neglect of the pleasures of war, saying that people despise him. Erra, roused, approaches Marduk, urging him to go and have his now-shabby divine statue refurbished. Marduk has been unable to leave his post for fear of things going wrong, but Erra persuasively offers to stand guard in Marduk's absence. Erra is spoiling for a fight, but no one attacks, so he works himself up into a battle fury and creates universal chaos, inciting wars, rebellion, and savage reprisals, killing people and animals, destroying cities, and promoting sacrilege. The other gods abandon their cities, sick with disgust at the wanton destruction and anarchy. Erra exults in the universal devastation, but Ishum, his levelheaded captain, channels the violence in a more useful direction, attacking the mountain lands of the enemy Sutaeans. He flatters Erra by pointing out his supreme power and ability to strike terror, and at last Erra allows Babylonia to restore itself, promising prosperity to those who recite the poem to keep his "valor" known and appreciated.
World History
