MAGIC 1101 · Mesopotamian Divination and the Omen Tradition

Led by Adad-shumu-usur, with Nabu-ahhe-iddina and the Royal Scribe of Nineveh Simulacrum

1. Module 1 ○ Open

   Mesopotamian Divination and the Omen Tradition

   Led by Adad-shumu-usur, with Nabu-ahhe-iddina and the Royal Scribe of Nineveh Simulacrum

   The question

   The systematic study of ominous signs in nature — the entrails of sacrificed animals (extispicy), the appearance of celestial bodies (astrology), the behaviour of birds (augury), the patterns of oil dropped on water (lecanomancy), the interpretation of dreams (oneiromancy) — was developed first and most extensively by the scribal-priestly classes of Mesopotamia from the third millennium BCE through the Hellenistic period. The Mesopotamian divinatory tradition is the deepest layer of the Western magical inheritance: the Greek and later European traditions all emerge from, react against, or extend it. What did the Mesopotamian diviners actually do, and what does their work let us see about the original relationship between religion, science, and magic?

   Outcome

   The student has read the State Archives of Assyria volume X (Parpola's *Letters from Assyrian Scholars*) at least selectively (Adad-shumu-usur's letters to Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal are particularly accessible), Bottéro's chapter on Mesopotamian divination in *Mesopotamia* or Rochberg's introduction in *The Heavenly Writing*, and at least one piece of an actual divinatory text in modern translation.

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   Practice scenarios

   Reading a Letter from the King's Astrologer

   Adad-shumu-usur Simulacrum walks you through one of the surviving cuneiform letters from the court of Ashurbanipal — the *Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal*, edited by Simo Parpola, contains over four hundred such letters; SAA X 226 (Adad-shumu-usur to the king on the appearance of Mars in the constellation of the Lion) or SAA X 8 (a letter on a lunar eclipse) is recommended. Read the chosen letter in modern translation (Parpola's edition is the standard; selections are also in Beaulieu's *A History of Babylon* or in Foster's *Before the Muses*). Then write a 700-word analytical essay: what is the diviner doing — what observation has triggered the letter, what omen-archive reference is being deployed, what political-administrative consequence is the diviner advising; what does the letter tell us about the relationship between the celestial-mathematical observation and the political reading; and how does the Mesopotamian diviner's method differ from what later European magical traditions would recognise as magic?

   Your goals

   • Read the chosen letter carefully and at least one secondary-source treatment of Mesopotamian divinatory method.
   • Identify the structure of the divinatory reasoning: observation → omen-archive reference → political-administrative consequence.
   • Address the question of what counts as magic in the Mesopotamian system (the diviners themselves did not regard their work as magic in the modern sense — they regarded it as the technical reading of divine signs).
   • 700 words ± 100, scholarly register.

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