Bestiarium Mesopotamicum

Table of Contents



About the Project Bestiarium Mesopotamicum

The project Bestiarium Mesopotamicum examines the Ancient Mesopotamian divinatory composition known by its incipit ‘If a city is set on a height’ (in Akkadian Šumma ālu ina mēlê šakin; hereafter Šumma ālu). This composition originally contained more than 13.000 individual omens, i.e., conditional clauses whose protases or antecedents describe a sign, and whose apodoses or consequents give the prediction derived from the sign (‘If a city is set on a height - living in that city will not be good’), which were distributed over more than 100 thematic chapters (in Akkadian ṭuppu ‘tablet’, hereafter ‘Tablet’).

Šumma ālu is one of the most important divinatory series (in Assyriology, a multi-tablet work of literary or scholarly content) from Ancient Mesopotamia. It collects unsolicited terrestrial omens taken from the diviners’ physical, everyday surroundings, including human and animal behavioural omens. The themes treated move from humankind’s immediate environment (city, house, domestic animals) to the city’s hinterland and its fauna (Tablets 1-79). Tablets 80-94 examine certain natural and anthropogenic phenomena, such as the sexual behaviour of animals, human sleep patterns, and meteorological events. The final part of the series (Tablets 95-105+) deals with human ritual and sexual behaviour (Koch 2015, 241-256).
Large parts of Šumma ālu are available in relatively recent editions (Freedman 1998, 2006, 2017), which offer a standard composite text with minimal philological commentary. However, there has been little sustained scholarly interest in the series beyond issues relating to the reconstruction of the text.
Forty-seven Tablets from Šumma ālu are focused on animals, ranging from small animals, such as snakes, scorpions, lizards, and various kinds of insects, to larger domesticated (e.g., sheep and donkeys) and wild animals (e.g., lions and foxes), as well as aquatic and amphibious creatures (fishes, frogs, tortoises) and birds. This vast body of animal-related material has not yet been elucidated comprehensively and satisfactorily.

The first objective of the project Bestiarium Mesopotamicum is to produce a comprehensive analysis of Šumma ālu’s animal Tablets, especially focusing on the text’s structure and on the hermeneutic principles establishing the link between signs and predictions. The general point the project sets out to demonstrate is that animal omens should not be seen as straightforward reflections of actual animal behaviour. Rather, they were constructed to answer to human concerns and to mirror human social values: it is for this reason that the project’s title refers to the animal Tablets of Šumma ālu as a ‘bestiarium mesopotamicum.’
The second objective of the project was to create updated and improved editions of the animal omens from Šumma ālu, as well as an online research guide to their interpretation. The database Bestiarium Mesopotamicum presents the results of this work. It has been created in collaboration with the ACDH (ÖAW).
Each sub-section of the database corresponds to one of the animal Tablets of Šumma ālu and contains the edition of the Tablet and an ‘Overview,’ that is a detailed study of the content, structure, and inner logic of that Tablet.
In the edition, the material is organized into columns with reconstructed transliterations, transcriptions, and translations. In a more detailed view each omen is presented with score and philological commentary. An important feature of the score text is that it includes previous readings every time our readings differ from previous ones, as well as previous different translations. We also highlight differences between the manuscripts, aiming at a more accurate textual reconstruction that reflects inconsistencies and variants. In its conception, design, and comprehensive approach to the study of Babylonian omen texts, our database represents an absolute novelty in Assyriology.
For digitalization, our updated editions are typed into Excel spreadsheets – one sheet per omen – which include three sections (score; reconstructed omen in transliteration, transcription and translation; commentary). From these, omens are read and entered into our database via a computer program created and managed by our project’s collaborators at the ACDH.
The data in the App is stored in a standard TEI format, with Score, Transcriptions, Transliterations, and Translations as well as previous readings and philological commentary for every omen in the series. In the App, each omen has its own unique identifier "xml:id". On the level of the score, all the words are annotated: e.g. the WITNESS ("wit") from which they were culled is indicated, breaks in the text are recorded and of course each word is given a unique identifier "xml:id". On the level of the transcription, the grammatically correct rendering of each word is added to the same identifier; there is thus a perfect correspondence between these different levels.

The current version of the database holds the editions of Chapters 22-24, 32, 35, 37, 38, 41-42. While this is a large portion of the whole corpus of animal omens, covering a wide range of animals (snakes, lizards, mice, ants, pests, caprine, bovine), we intend to add additional material continuously.


An Introduction to Mesopotamian Divination

Divination in Mesopotamia is seen as a practical way to obtain knowledge of socially recognized validity that cannot be gained by any other means. This knowledge is perceived as coming from a supernatural source which is willing to interact with the human sphere. The gods may communicate their intentions on their own initiative by means of ominous signs in heaven or on earth. Alternatively, they may respond to specific questions that are posed to them in specific circumstances and in a specific manner. Such signs can be solicited by investigating the body of a sacrificial animal and the patterns made by oil on water, rising smoke, or scattered flour.
When referring to the process of divination, Ancient Mesopotamians sometimes draw on a writing metaphor: nature is regarded as a ‘tablet’ on which the gods ‘write’ signs that could be ‘read’ by those trained in the divinatory arts. Astrologers speak of the ‘writing of the firmament’ (Akk. šiṭir burummê) and haruspices occasionally call the liver of the sacrificial sheep a ‘tablet of the gods’ (Akk. ṭuppu ša ilī) claiming that the signs they are able to detect on it are ‘written’ on it by the sun-god Šamaš (see Frahm 2010, 93-141). Sometimes, divination is described instead in legal terms: the extispicy ritual is staged as a court of law with deities, most commonly the sun-god Šamaš and the weather-god Adad, presiding as judges. By answering the diviners’ questions, the gods render their ‘verdict’ (Akk. dīnu) or produce a ‘directive’ (Akk. têrtu) (see Fincke 2006/2007, 131-147; Van De Mieroop 2015, 87ff.).

A unique Babylonian composition from the first millennium BCE known as the Diviner’s Manual describes the foundation of Ancient Mesopotamian divination in these terms: ‘Sky and earth both produce portents; though appearing separately, they are not separate (because) sky and earth hold each other’ (Oppenheim 1974, 197-220). The text is saying that the Mesopotamian universe’s parts are ‘entangled’ with each other and that this ‘entanglement’ can be used for divination purposes.
The Diviner’s Manual is one of the very few textual sources from Ancient Mesopotamia, perhaps the Ancient World’s most productive ‘Divination Culture,’ that explicitly address the beliefs underpinning the practice of divination in Babylonia and Assyria. In general, one has to approach the vast corpus of technical divinatory material available from Mesopotamia with a view towards deducting implicit principles from a huge body of primary data that contain very little meta-linguistic reflection and explanation. These principles can be recovered by focusing on the texts most commonly associated with the practice of divination, that is, long lists of predictions or ‘omens’ (Koch 2015, 1-6, 12-15). These take the form of conditional clause consisting of premise and consequent, or, in grammatical terminology, protasis and apodosis: the protasis contains the description of a sign, while the apodosis gives the pertinent prediction. For instance: ‘If a city is set on a height - living in that city will not be good’. By the end of the second millennium BCE, lists including thousands of such omens had developed into thematically organized compositions which are called ‘series’ in Assyriological parlance. These series were transmitted in scribal milieus in a standard or ‘canonical’ form until the very end of cuneiform culture at the end of the first millennium BCE. Šumma ālu is one of the most important divinatory series from Ancient Mesopotamia.

Omen lists represent the academic and theoretical side of Mesopotamian divination. Rather than being records of observed celestial or terrestrial phenomena, as it has long been assumed, they offer general ‘principles’, or rules, that have validity beyond the individual occurrence. These rules are not set out in abstract terms, but they are meant to be deduced from the lists of individual cases.
Mesopotamian omen lists are to be seen as the reflection of theoretical considerations on what might constitute positive or negative signs, such as right is good, left is bad, snakes are bad, eclipses are bad, deformity is bad, etc. Such notions are the result of a schematic, ‘variation-reducing’ categorization of terrestrial and celestial phenomena. In this process, the diviners focussed only on selected sets of phenomena, to which they attributed meaning by means of hermeneutic rules based essentially on analogy. It has been shown that the connection between protasis and apodosis in Mesopotamian omen lists is generally based on some relation of similitude between them on the semantic, phonetic, or graphic level. For instance, in the omen ‘If a woman gives birth (and the creature she gives birth to) has a lion’s head - a strong king will arise in the land,’ the prediction drawn from the ominous malformed birth which envisage the rising of a strong king in the land is implied by the sum of the signs ‘head,’ signifying ‘high-placed, high-ranking’ and ‘lion,’ signifying the ‘king and military strength’ (De Zorzi 2014, 393, omen 1).
The characteristics that could be attributed to the set of phenomena chosen for divinatory investigation to modify their ominous meaning were fairly standardized and followed schematic principles. In particular, the application of a binary logic, i.e., the categorization of phenomena on the basis of binary distinctions (right/left, up/down, front/rear, white/black, bright/dim etc.), which correspond, respectively, to a favourable or unfavourable prediction, is extremely common. Individual omens are then placed in sequences which are organized according to simple and complex patterns of ‘gradation’ – vertical sequences of structurally identical protases distinguished from each other by the variation of a single element –, binary opposition being only the most basic pattern.
The systematic application of theoretical rules such as the ones described above allowed the Mesopotamian diviners to generate almost limitless sets of new omens. The final goal was to create a system of knowledge that was, at least theoretically, all-encompassing and fully interconnected.
The study of omen lists and the relations of similitude between protasis and apodosis both on the level of individual omens and between groups of interlocked omens (Winitzer 2017) allow understanding in which way Mesopotamian diviner-scribes conceive of the ‘entanglement’ of all parts of the world with each other that is referred to in the Diviner’s Manual. It also gives us important insight into how Mesopotamian diviner-scribes structure their world and orient themselves within it.

Animals in Mesopotamian Divination and Divinatory Literature


The divinatory series Šumma ālu contains hundreds of unsolicited omens taken from the appearance and behaviour of a wide array of terrestrial, aquatic and flying animals in the city and its immediate surroundings or inside a man’s house and its immediate surroundings. The series is by far our most important source of knowledge regarding the role of animals in divination. However, it is not the only one. In fact, animals are ubiquitous in Mesopotamian divination and divinatory literature (for an overview see Beaulieu 2000).
Sheep or lambs were the main vehicle of the Mesopotamian variety of extispicy, the most important and best attested Mesopotamian oracle technique (see Koch 2015, 67-134, 144-145) but sacrificial birds could also be used (Maul 2013, 131-153).
Omens from malformed animal births, lambs mostly, and omens from odd births and behavioural peculiarities among specific animals (sheep, goats, cattle, donkeys, horses, pigs, dogs, gazelles) were part of an omen series pertaining to teratomancy known in antiquity as If a Miscarried Foetus (in Akkadian Šumma izbu) (De Zorzi 2014). The omens from the Tablets 18-24 of Šumma izbu concern mostly domestic animals. They stand out within the context of the series by the fact that they contain not only behavioural omens in general, but indeed behavioural omens concerning adult animals, in sharp contrast with the birth-centred focus of the other parts of the series. These Tablets have numerous points of contact and overlap with the animal omens of the series Šumma ālu.
Animals figure prominently in dream omens: some describe, for instance, the encounters between the dreamer and various animals (see Oppenheim 1956, 275 and 281). Omens were also derived from the animals encountered by an exorcist on his way to his patient (see George 1991, 137-163; Heeßel 2001/2002).
In omen literature animals can also be referred to in comparisons or metaphors. Figurative faunal imagery plays an important role in celestial divination (Rochberg 2010), teratomancy, physiognomy, and extispicy. An example, derived from a Babylonian physiognomic omen series known as Alamdimmû (Form) (Böck 2000) concerns a man’s physical appearance: ‘If he has a fox’s face, he is a liar, false - his brother will become poor’ (Böck 2000, 116, Tablet 8, omen 134). Another example is an extispicy omen: ‘If the ‘presence’ (Akkadian manzāzu; a part of the sheep’s liver, probably the impressio reticularis) is like the sting of a scorpion - out of jealousy (lit. ‘through burning of her crotch’) a man’s wife will set his house on fire’ (Koch-Westenholz 2000, 143, no. 19: 84).
In these omens, we see that the several animals that appear in the protases tend to be associated with predictions for the human sphere that fall into a certain limited range. In other words, the animals ‘stand’ for certain aspects of human society or human behaviour: essentially, the diviners map onto the animals their interpretation of their social environment. The associations attached to the animals in question range from the straightforward, conventional and possibly universal, anthropologically speaking, to the culture-specific. Lions are symbols of royalty and are connected with strength and aggressiveness (Watanabe 2002, 42-56). Horses and bulls are also associated with royal power and military might (De Zorzi 2014, 158-159). Foxes represent sneakiness, rapaciousness and treacherous behaviour (De Zorzi 2014, 164-165; De Zorzi 2017, 134-135). Wild animals are generally negative signs, especially when they break into normal spheres of human activity: wolves, for instance, are associated with conflict, plague and death (De Zorzi 2014, 162). Scorpions are metaphors for sexuality and are often associated with women and eroticism (Pientka-Hinz 2009, 576-580).
Animal omens reflect two aspects of Babylonian diviners’ engagement with the animal world. First, animals provided them with images of things to fear: animals can bite, sting, gore; they intrude into the human sphere, often unwanted. This makes animals a prominent part of the unpredictable physical fabric through which gods express their power. Second, like other cultures, Babylonians used animals to ‘think with,’ especially about human nature. Animals provided them with a ‘code’ to articulate thoughts about human qualities and behavior.

The divinatory series Šumma ālu ina mēlê šakin ‘If A City is Set on a Height’


Content


The series originally consisted of more than 100 chapters (Tablets in Assyriological parlance). It collects unsolicited omens taken from the diviners’ physical, everyday surroundings. The themes treated move from the man-built environment (city, house) and the features associated with it (domestic animals) to the city’s hinterland and its fauna (Tablets 1-79). Tablets 80-94 examine certain natural and human phenomena, such as the sexual behaviour of animals, human sleep patterns, meteorological events. The final part of the series (Tablets 95-105+) deals with human ritual and sexual behaviour.
The first group of Šumma ālu omens entirely dedicated to animals and animal behavior includes omens taken from small wild animals: snakes (22-26), scorpions (29-31), lizards (32), lizard-like creatures (gecko, skink: 33), mongooses (34), mice and shrews (35-36), ants (37), vermin and household or crop pests, mostly insects (38), spiders (39) and wood-eating insects (40). Tablets 27-28 are lost, but there are indications that they may have contained additional snake omens. Tablets 41-43 focus on large livestock: 41: sheep; 42: cattle, 43: donkeys and horses; 44 is dedicated to large wild animals, including wild cattle, elephants, monkeys, lions, wolves, gazelles, foxes; 45 contains omens taken from cats. Thereafter, three Tablets concern dogs and bitches (46-48) and one Tablet is dedicated to pigs and sows (49). Afterwards, the composition moves to different topics. The subject of animals is taken up again in 63, which contains omens related to aquatic creatures (fish, turtles and frogs). Bird omens covers Tablets 64 to 79.
The database Bestiarium Mesopotamicum currently hosts new editions of Tablets 22-49. These Tablets were published by S. Freedman in two volumes (2006, 2017), with additional material published by N. Heeßel (2007). In due time, the database will also host editions of the bird omens (Tablets 64-79), which are for the most part still unpublished (De Zorzi 2009).

Sources


Catalogs

Ancient scribes, like modern librarians, compiled catalogues of their texts. Various different types of catalogue have survived. Some, such as the so-called Exorcist’s Handbook (Geller 2020: 292-312) list the titles of texts according to their genre. Others appear to function precisely like modern library catalogues, listing just the tablets in the possession of the scribe. Still others list, in order, the individual chapters of a given text, giving the incipits (opening lines) of each chapter one after the other.
For Šumma ālu, two such catalogues exist – one from Assur (VAT 9438+; Rochberg 2020: 124-131), and the other from Nineveh (K 4094b; If A City 1: 324-325). These two catalogues are not exact duplicates of one another. They show that at least two versions of Šumma ālu, with variation in the order of chapters, circulated in the ancient world. They are also quite badly broken. The Nineveh catalogue preserves the incipits of Tablets 31-44, 48-51, and 53, alongside 8 broken lines; the Assur catalogue is in a better state, preserving more or less unbroken runs of incipits from Tablets 1-26 and 33-62, but is broken thereafter.

Standard texts

The clearest source for reconstructing Šumma ālu are the standard texts. The series had at least 107 Tablets in its fullest form. The standard texts, when fully intact, each contained an entire Tablet, with the omens written in a more or less uniform order that was remarkably stable over time. The colophons at the end of these tablets contain ‘bibliographical’ details of the text, usually in the form dub-x-kam šumma ¬ālu ‘xth Tablet of Šumma ālu’, as well as a ‘catchline’ – the opening line to the next Tablet in the series.
Thanks to the standardised order of the omens, and the details of the colophon, these texts form the basis of the modern edition of Šumma ālu.

Excerpt texts

Alongside the standard texts, a very large number of excerpt texts are extant. In general, these represent abridgements of the standard series. Usually – but with some important exceptions – the omens are presented in more or less the same order as in the standard text, but with many omissions. Excerpt texts often contain omens from several different tablets of the standard series.
There is significant evidence for an ‘Excerpt Series’ among these texts, which is to say a standardised abridgement of the standard text. This is unfortunately not well enough preserved to reconstruct, and it is usually unclear, owing to the loss of colophons due to damage, whether a given excerpt tablet belonged to this series, or was a more ad hoc abridgement.
The excerpts are of the utmost value in restoring the standard text, as they contain complete omens in roughly the standard order. Nonetheless, as many omens are omitted in such texts, they cannot be easily used to recreate the standard text in the absence of standard tablets.

Related texts

1. Forerunner texts

The standardised series of Šumma ālu stems from the late second to early first millennium, but it did not spring fully formed from the minds of scholars. The omens have a long history, stretching back into the third millennium, and many texts are extant from the Old Babylonian period (early to mid-second millennium). These texts preserve earlier forms of the omens found in the standard series of the first millennium. In many cases, the omens are identical, in others, the years wrought significant changes. Successive generations of scholars worked on these texts for centuries, developing them, reordering them, adding new omens, and omitting old ones.
These forerunner texts are often very helpful in reconstructing broken sections of text, and in understanding the development of the text as a whole, but, as a consequence of the long process of development, must be treated with caution. A broken first millennium omen with an apparent duplicate in a forerunner from a thousand years earlier cannot simply be restored from the earlier text, as there could be subtle, or not so subtle, differences between them. Nonetheless, as the raw material from which the standardised series was formed, the forerunner texts are of great value in reconstructing the first millennium text.

2. aḫû omens

Occasionally, omen tablets are designated as containing aḫû ‘additional/extraneous’ omens. The exact meaning of the designation is unclear, however, as aḫû omens are known to appear in the main text of the series. Just one tablet of aḫû omens is known for Šumma ālu. It contains omens related to the activities of dogs, which do not appear in the standard text (Chapters 46-48).

3. Parallel texts

A large number of tablets preserve omens that look like Šumma ālu, but which cannot be placed in the standard text and are not labelled as aḫû. Such tablets may, for example, contain sequences of omens phrased very similarly to those of Šumma ālu, but in a different order, or with subtle differences of wording. It is likely that many of these belong to Šumma ālu itself, either in parts of the series that are not well preserved, or in variant recensions of the text. Others may belong to different omen series, or to smaller ad hoc compilations.
These texts can be useful in restoring broken sections of the standard text of Šumma ālu, but the utmost care is required as there could easily be significant variation between the standard text and the parallels.

a. Reports

Omens were not simply an arcane theoretical novelty, but were a practical tool of daily life, and the omen compendia are referenced fairly often in reports and letters. In response to an ominous event, or perhaps to a request from a patron, a diviner would consult his texts and prepare a report, citing the relevant omens, and suggesting an apotropaic ritual to perform in the event of a negative prediction.
Because the reports usually cite the relevant omens in full, they are an invaluable source for reconstructing the standard text of Šumma ālu. Several such reports are extant, including in royal correspondence.

b. Commentaries

Mesopotamian scholarship was not a static and unchanging field. Ancient scholars continually studied and worked on their texts, frequently reworking them, and composing new works based on older material. One result of this work was the genre of text known today as ‘commentaries’. These are texts in which ancient scholars attempted to clarify or reinterpret an already ancient, and perhaps obscure, text.
The most common source texts for these commentaries were the omens. Around 400 commentary texts survive from Ashurbanipal’s libraries alone, of which 83.4% - around 333 texts, are concerned with omens. In addition, hundreds of commentary texts are attested from outside Ashurbanipal’s libraries, with a similar propensity for dealing with omens.
Several different types of commentary were distinguished by the ancient scholars, who usually labelled them with one or more generic designations in their colophons: mukallimtu ‘the one that shows/demonstrates’, ṣâtu ‘what goes out’, šūt pî ‘those of the mouth’, ša pî ummâni ‘according to the authority of an ummânu-scholar’, and mašʾaltu ‘questioning’. These descriptions give information about the type of content to be found in the commentary, as well as its origin – mukallimtu commentaries chiefly comprise explanations, definitions or descriptions of the phenomena mentioned in the protasis; ṣâtu commentaries focus on defining individual words or ideograms from the omen; šūt pî, ša pî ummâni, and mašʾaltu are labels which show the origins of the information found in the commentary – whether passed down in oral tradition, explained by a learned scholar, or developing through questioning the base text, presumably in a classroom setting.
There are 34 extant commentary texts which deal with Šumma ālu (https://ccp.yale.edu/catalogue?genre=26). The vast majority are said to be ṣâtu commentaries, though at least one mukallimtu text is known.

c. Rituals

The omens of Šumma ālu regularly predict disaster for the recipient of the omen – his house will be dispersed, his wife will die, an enemy will take his possessions, he will die. It is not surprising, then, that there are apotropaic rituals and incantations which promise to counter the evil of a bad omen.
These rituals, known by their Sumerian name nam-búr-bi (Akk. namburbû) ‘Releasing’, are quite numerous. Within Ashurbanipal’s library, as we know from ancient catalogues, and from catchlines and colophons, scholars assembled the namburbi texts into a series of their own, comprising over 135 Tablets. Unfortunately, this is mostly lost, and cannot be reconstructed to the same extent as can Šumma ālu. Nonetheless, around 140 namburbi are extant today.
The apotropaic texts frequently begin by quoting the protasis of the omen whose evil they intend to neutralise. They can therefore be used to reconstruct broken lines in the text of the omen compendia.
In addition to the stand-alone rituals, it is not uncommon for apotropaic rituals to be included within the text of Šumma ālu (see for instance the omen 32.1).

Šumma ālu 22-49: Reconstruction, Structure, and Interpretation


Reconstruction

The philological edition of the animal omens represent the most important result of the project Bestiarium Mesopotamicum. This edition, which is accompanied by an extensive commentary, involved a comprehensive reappraisal of all the manuscripts published by Freedman (2006 and 2017) and Heeßel (2007), i.e. more than 200 individual manuscripts, as well as the in-depth study of several unpublished texts.
Our project has yielded many improvements over the available editions, both in omen reconstruction and interpretation, for all the animal Tablets, to the point that many of them in our editions now are quite transformed. A striking example is represented by Tablet 38, which deals with vermin and household or crop pests, mostly insects. The identification of previously unnoticed overlaps between the manuscripts, coupled with improved readings and new joins, has allowed us to harmonise the manuscripts far more completely than was previously the case. Rather than a confusingly organised Tablet of uncertain length, as it appeared in Freedman (2006), Tablet 38 can now be seen to be a coherent text, from which relatively little has been lost. Furthermore, several of the identifications of the insects mentioned in the omens, notably ‘blister beetle’ (samānu), ‘gadfly’ (šassūru), ‘porcupine’ (ḫurbabillu), and ‘salamander?’ (kitturru, a new reading in our edition), are new and represent a substantial advance in our understanding. Relatively little work has been done in this area since Landsberger’s 1934 Die Fauna des alten Mesopotamien. In our edition, these new identifications are discussed in the commentary to the opening omens of each animal section. They are also discussed at length in a paper currently in preparation.
Important results have been obtained also for the snake (Tablets 22-26), lizard (32), ants (37), and livestock omens (41-43): they are presented in detail in our database, in the three master theses which have been written within the project and, in the case of the ants, in a forthcoming paper.

Structure

Out study indicates that animals in Šumma ālu are grouped into a typology based on the nature of their relation to man. Animals are grouped according to the increasingly close levels of interaction between them and man. On this basis, the animal omens of Šumma ālu Tablets 22-49 can be subdivided into four main groups:

Tablets 22-40 collect omens taken from animals with a ‘competitive relationship’ with humans. Anthrozoology and Human-Animal studies use this term for species whose unwanted but frequent intrusion into the human sphere results in conflict or competition for space and resources.
On the other hand, the large farm animals mentioned in Tablets 41-43 – sheep, cattle, donkeys and horses – have a ‘collaborative relationship’ with humans. These animals live within the human community in spaces clearly assigned to them and are close to man as instruments of labor and source of nourishment.
The third group is represented by Tablets 46-49, which focus on animals living in close, almost ‘symbiotic,’ contact with humans: dogs and pigs. These animals share their living spaces with humans, live on anthropogenic food sources, and their cultural construction straddles the human-animal divide.
In this macrostructure, Tablets 44-45 occupy a liminal position. The large wild animals in 44 are ‘competitive’ as the small animals in 22-40, but their level of interaction with human beings is much more intense: most of the large wild animals mentioned were hunted. In addition, some of them, in particular the lion and the fox, played an important role in Mesopotamian symbolic thinking. This is also true of the cat, which many attestations in the omens connect to the fox. The cat occupies an in-between sphere between ‘competitive’ and ‘symbiotic’ that fits the placement of the cat omens in Tablet 45 between the large wild animals of 44 and the ‘symbiotic’ animals, dogs and pigs, in 46-49.

To sum up, the text’s macrostructure is predicated on real-life distinctions in the typology of animals on the basis of their relationship to man. On the micro-level, the omens do not simply reflect the actual behavioral range of the various animal species. ‘Competitive animals,’ like snakes (22-26), are signifiers only when interacting with humans or human space. For instance:

šumma ṣēru ina bīt amēli mārīšu īkul bītu šū issappaḫ
‘If a snake eats its offspring in a man’s house – that house will be dispersed.’ (23.59)

With ‘collaborative animals,’ such as sheep, on the other hand, the ominous behavior often does not directly involve humans, because these animals’ relevance for the human sphere is implied. For instance:

šumma laḫru puḫāssa īkul būš mātika nakru ik[kal]
‘If a ewe eats her lamb – an enemy [will] co[nsume] the goods of your land.’ (41.33’)

With ‘symbiotic animals,’ we find intense ominous human-animal interaction. A typical omen in this group is:

[šumma kalb]u ana pān amēli epra iḫpirma irbiṣ aššassu nayyākat
‘[If a do]g digs in the dirt in front of a man and lies down – his wife is a serial adulteress.’ (46.51)

On the micro-level, we encounter structures that are ubiquitous in the divinatory genre, in particular pairs of omens structured around binary opposition, such as right/left or up/down:

šumma ṣēru ištu imitti amēli ana šumēl amēli ītiq šum damiqti irašši
‘If a snake crosses from a manʼs right to the manʼs left – he will acquire a good reputation.’ (23.16)

šumma ṣēru ištu šumēl amēli ana imitti amēli ītiq šumšu ina lemutti ippaṭṭar
‘If a snake crosses from a manʼs left to the manʼs right – his reputation will be cleared of evil.’ (23.17)

Long vertical sequences of thematically interrelated animal omens are also frequent. We find long lists built around the months of the year for snake encounters (22.26-32, see Rinderer 2021, 123-126). Another sequence lists all the locations within a man’s house where ants are seen (37.92-126) ordered from outward to inward and bottom to top. These lists reflect Babylonian diviners’ desire for comprehensive classification. The interconnection of the horizontal (i.e. protasis – apodosis) and vertical axis of omen production resulted in carefully crafted sequences of interdependent omens. Thus, we can conclude that divinatory genre conventions significantly influence the presentation of animals and animal behaviour.
Our study revealed that Mesopotamian animal omens exhibit a high level in systematisation both on the horizontal level (protasis-apodosis) and on the vertical level (sequences of two of more omens). This is especially interesting for the apodoses, which at first glance show less variation than the protases: the scribes frequently used standard, repetitive apodoses. However, we were able to demonstrate for the first time that the scribes created connections between individual omens through the clever arrangement of standard apodoses on the vertical axis.
Another important result is represented by our discovery of what we have labeled ‘pivot’ omens. These omens are characterised by the fact that they bring together on the horizontal axis elements taken from the preceding vertical sequence with new elements that are then assimilated into the following vertical sequence. Importantly, pivot omens have the function of semantic and structural bridge stitching together text parts that may be seen as separate. They draw from the previous omen(s), while at the same time propelling the meaning forward. Pivot omens demonstrate that Mesopotamian scholars strove to interlace omens, on both the horizontal and the vertical axis, through numerous small-scale connections.
Results of this work have been presented at various lectures and conferences. Case studies are included in the introductions to the digital editions (see for instance the introduction to 37) and in the three master thesis which have been written within the project. A paper by Pfitzner, showcasing our study of the structure and organization of 37 (ants), is forthcoming.
Interpretation

WORK IN PROGRESS – FORTHCOMING

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Nicla De Zorzi